“I have always thought so.”
Morgan appreciated her wry tone. “Give me your hand, Jane.” She swiveled a little toward him then, searched his face, and after a moment in which he could not begin to guess her thoughts, she gave him her hand. “Look at it,” he said. “Can you appreciate how impossibly delicate you seem to me?” His thumb made a light pass across her knuckles. “I can be afraid for you with a man like me.”
“I think you are confusing delicate with weak. I will not break if you touch me. You have only to look to your own hand to know that truth. A man like you? You have nothing to fear on my account. See how you hold me. That is the man you are.”
Morgan wished to the God he believed that was true. He stared at their hands and said nothing. When Jane withdrew, he let her go.
Jane rolled the tumbler between her palms. “What advice did Mrs. Sterling share with you?”
The question brought Morgan back to the present. “She told me that a woman like you would need time to adjust to the idea of marriage and?—”
“A woman like me?”
“I took it to mean she meant refined. Delicate in your sensibilities.”
“There it is again,” said Jane. “ ‘Delicate.’ I believe I am beginning to dislike that word.”
“Maybe I should have said she thought you might be easily offended.”
“I am not sure she thought that at all, but you certainly did. And what is it that you thought would offend me?”
“Me, I suppose.” Morgan wondered how Jane had come to occupy the high ground because he certainly felt as if he were no longer explaining things, but defending himself instead. “You are rather particular about your manners, and there’s not an edge on me where you can’t find a rough spot.”
“That is not true.”
Morgan saw Jane’s eyes drop to his mouth. She tore them away, but not soon enough. He touched the crescent shaped scar at the corner of his lips. “It is true. Even here.” He raised his tumbler and drank. “There I was, already thinking that I could snap you in half if I wasn’t careful, and then I’ve got Ida Mae in my ear telling me I should be real easy with you when I took you home, and to have a care how I introduced you to the marriage bed.”
Jane dropped her head and stared at the glass in her hands. “She did not say that.”
Even though she wasn’t looking, Morgan crossed his chest. “Swear.”
“I am not sure that even a mother would take the liberty of saying that to her son.”
Morgan shrugged. “It’s no good trying to reason out what Ida Mae does or says or thinks. She’s a force of nature. You duck or run or get swept up. I guess you realize now that I got swept up.”
Jane lifted her head again. “Tell me true,” she said, her voice not much above a whisper. “That very first night, did you want to…to…that is, did you want?—”
“Yes.” He smiled a little crookedly as Jane polished off her drink and handed him her glass. He set it on the table beside him and then added his unfinished drink as well. “That first night and every night since. You can’t know how sorely I regret heeding Ida Mae’s advice.”
“No,” she said. “I only know how sorely I regret it.”
She said this so feelingly that it surprised a laugh from Morgan. He took her hand again and squeezed it this time. Jane was right. She did not break. “I left the house that night,” he said, “to keep from going to your bed.”
“Did you suspect you were capable of such noble sacrifice?”
He liked the way her eyes sparkled when she tried and failed to temper her wry humor. She could never quite contain her amusement. “Humor will out,” he said under his breath.
“Pardon?”
“Nothing.” He shook his head. “Just something I’m realizing.”
“You’re staring again.”
“So I am.” He did not look away. “I’ve been thinking we should start over, Jane.”
“Start over?”
“No, that’s not what I mean exactly. I think we should just start.”
