“The next Kirkford. Who was murdered by his cousin, yes?” Asher asked.
She nodded. “Who took the book. And all the evidence it contains that I am a murderer who should be sent to the gallows.”
He stiffened. “When did this happen?”
“Last month. The only reason he hasn’t already done something with it is that the book was encoded. If we can get to it before he breaks that code, we can destroy it.”
“And you’ll be safe,” Asher finished, his tone breathless now.
She hesitated. Safe. She’d be physically safe, perhaps, but she wasn’t certain she’d ever feel completely comfortable again. It had been three years since Barbridge breathed his last on her chamber floor and she still lay awake at night, analyzing every creak of every floorboard, every shadow that moved across her wall.
Safe? She wasn’t certain that was possible for her.
“What can I do?” Asher asked.
She blinked away her troubling thoughts and forced herself back to this moment with this man. “Stenfax and Gray are working to find where the book and the man who took it, Roger Beckford, have gone. They want to find it before the guard finds him and it all becomes more…complicated. They have help. Rosalinde—that is Gray’s wife—her sister is married to a former agent for the War Department.”
Asher’s eyes went wide. “I see.”
“He’s good at a lot of things, but he welcomes help with tracking the financial trails.”
“You think Kirkford and his cousins have blackmailed others with the information he collected,” Asher said.
“It’s a possibility,” Felicity said with a shake of her head.
“I do have some experience with that,” Asher admitted.
“And will you…will you help me?” she asked at last, holding her breath as she waited for him to abandon her just as he had abandoned her all those years ago.
His brow wrinkled and he moved toward her. He slid a hand across her jaw, cupping her face gently. “Felicity, with all we once were to each other, do you really think I would ever answer no to that question? That I wouldn’t do everything in my power to protect you?”
His breath was warm on her skin and he was so damned close that she swore she could feel his pounding heart, throbbing in the same rhythm as her own. Her lips parted and she stared up into his face, his utterly beautiful face, and was lost.
His pupils dilated, and there was a moment when everything in the room, in between them, shifted dramatically. His gaze became heated, hooded, and slowly he began to lean in toward her.
He was going to kiss her. Right here in her brother’s office, like no time had passed. Like he was picking up a book he’d stopped reading on the terrace all those years ago and turning the page.
And she wanted him to do just that. She wanted to pretend the intervening years hadn’t happened and to open herself to him. To let him in.
Only she knew how that would end. He’d walked away once with no trouble. There was no reason in the world to believe he wouldn’t do exactly the same thing again.
She ducked her head before his lips could touch hers and pulled back. He released her immediately, watching wordlessly as she turned away from him.
“Stenfax will want to see you now that you know the truth,” she managed to whisper in a broken voice that felt so hollow and foreign. “I’ll fetch him. Excuse me.”
Somehow she didn’t look back as she walked away, even as she felt Asher’s stare burning a hole through her back. Somehow she managed to breathe as she stepped into the hallway and toward the front parlor where she was certain her brother was waiting.
Somehow she managed to pretend that everything was fine and normal and not turned upside down. But it wasn’t. Asher was here, Asher was still everything she’d ever wanted…and Asher was the one thing she’d never have. She couldn’t let herself even dare to want him.
It was too dangerous.
Asher stared at the stop in the door where Felicity had just walked away and tried to control the sting that worked through his body after her rejection. He understood it on some level. After what she’d been through…
He muttered a curse and fisted his hands at his sides. The two years Felicity had been married, Asher had tried his level best not to think of her and what her life was like. When he did, though, he pictured her happy, well taken care of, loved, because of course any man who spent more than ten minutes with her would love her.
Now he knew how wrong he was. How terrifying and painful and brutal that time had been for her. Obviously that horrible time in her life still affected her.
Even if all that wasn’t true, the fact remained that Asher was no more than a servant’s son to Felicity. This wasn’t a night on a terrace when she was a girl. His father was right that Asher didn’t belong. His time as a solicitor had proven that to him. His friendship with her and her family had always been tenuous at best. They saw him as a servant first. That night…what had happenedafterthe kiss…proved it.
