She tilted her head and a smile brightened her face. But this was Charlotte. He had made a life out of the study of her expressions and moods. This smile was not real. None of them had been real since the moment he left her in Griffin’s shop.
“What is what?” she asked. He tilted his head and held her stare, not signing, not demanding, just waiting. She huffed out her breath. “Gracious, don’t do that.”
“What?” he signed with a flick of his wrist.
“Read me like I’m a book in your library,” she said, tugging her hand from his. She smoothed her skirt. “I promise you, nothing is wrong.”
She was lying and it stung. It shouldn’t have. In truth, heshouldn’tbe the place she took her troubles. He’d already told her why a future wasn’t possible for them. To demand that she give him something as deep as her pain wasn’t fair now.
But he still wanted it, damn him. He still wanted to be the place where she rested her head or whispered her secrets. He never wanted her to take those things someplace else. Tosomeoneelse.
“Did Griffin say something to you?” he signed slowly. Her gaze darted away and it answered his question. He sat back, quiet a moment before he carefully spelled out, “When my father took me here years ago, back before the abandonment, he’d take me to Griffin’s shop. They’d talk about me like I wasn’t there.”
She shut her eyes and a shudder went through her. Not of pain, though. Not of embarrassment. No, when she opened her eyes, there was only one emotion there: rage. She was angry.
“I wouldn’t have spent a farthing there if I’d known,” she snapped, folding her arms. “Awful man.”
He shrugged. “His shop gives a job to two men in my shire.”
“And that makes his horrible behavior acceptable?” she asked.
He scrubbed a hand over his face before he signed, “My job as duke is to protect those in my care. What would you have me do, march into his shop and destroy his merchandise? Raise his rent until he had to go?”
There was a wicked twist of her lips for a moment. “He’d deserve no less.”
He felt his cheeks burn as he signed, “I don’t know what he said to you about me to get you so vengeful on my behalf, but I’m accustomed to it, Charlotte.”
“You shouldn’t be,” she whispered.
“But I am.” He leaned forward and brushed a lock of hair away from her forehead. “You prove my point by despising him. If you had a life with me, I can well picture you’d spend it slaying dragons on my behalf. You’d hate me for it after a while.”
He began to draw away, but she caught both his hands and kept him on the edge of his seat. She scooted forward too so they were face to face. Nose to nose.
“Ewan, if I had a life with you, I would gladly live it slaying your dragons. I would expect you to slay mine. Ask James and Emma or Simon and Meg or Graham and Adelaide—I think they would say that is what love is.”
He shut his eyes, as if he could block her out that way. But he couldn’t. She was tenacious, as always, and she kept talking.
“You want to pretend that I don’t love you. Or think that if you refuse to accept it that it will hurt me less. But look at me.”
He slowly opened his eyes. Hers were filled with unshed tears and his stomach turned at the sight. He shook away her hands. “I don’t want to cause you pain.”
“Then let me love you,” she whispered. “Take a chance that love won’t be anything like what you experienced in your past. Give me the credit that I could be better. Thatwecould be better.”
His head spun. She was saying things that he wanted to surrender to.
“You don’t have to answer me,” she said, tracing his cheek with her fingertips. “Not today. Not tomorrow. But I hope you’ll think about what I’m saying. Really consider what I’m offering and what you are so easily throwing away.”
He wanted to argue that nothing about this was easy, but she didn’t allow it. She leaned forward and kissed him. It was deep, passionate, and his mind emptied as he caught her waist and pulled her even closer, almost off the seat. She tilted her head, granting him all the access he could want, making soft sounds of pleasure in her throat as their tongues tangled.
He wanted to take it further. To draw her into his lap and claim her body as he kept telling himself he couldn’t claim her heart. But the carriage slowed and stopped, and he pulled back to find they had arrived at his home.
She smiled again, but this time there was nothing false about it. She touched his cheek once more and slid back into place, like they’d never done anything inappropriate, like everything was fine and normal.
But it wasn’t. He knew it. She knew it. The time they’d spent alone together had changed everything, no matter how he’d tried to convince himself that he could ensure it didn’t. Now he just had to decide what to do about it.
Before it was too late.
Chapter Fourteen
