He had lifted his soup spoon to his lips, but now he froze there. As he slowly lowered it back to his bowl, he said, “Hers?”
As if he didn’t know theherto which she was referring.
“The woman you discussed with me earlier. The one who disappeared into the brothel. Louisa.”
His felt his jaw tightening. Felt the strong desire to dress her down for daring to ask that. Instead he ground out, “Yes.”
She nodded slowly and ate a few bites of food. “Who was she?” she asked at last. “A sister?”
“No, Mrs. Huxley,” he said softly.
Her gaze flitted down to her plate and her voice caught as she asked, “A—a lover?”
“Imogen,” he rasped out because he couldn’t find his full voice.
He thought she might stop then. Her cheeks flushed and he could see she was uncomfortable with pressing and poking and prodding. But then she slid her hand out and covered his for the second time that day. Her skin was warm and soft, the weight of her fingers somehow…comforting.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered. “I only ask because I’m wearing her dress. And you say she disappeared into the very brothel where I nearly lost my own life.”
“And you think you have the right to know,” he finished as he slid his hand away and rested it on his thigh beneath the table. He flexed it because he could still feel the weight of her palm on his knuckles.
“Perhaps not the right,” she said. “I suppose I don’t have the right. But at present I feel so raw about what I saw, what I experienced. Nothing feels normal or right or peaceful. I can’t even go home.”
“And if you crack my chest open and spill some of me out, that will make you feel that the scales are balanced?”
Her eyes went wide at the image and she shook her head. “No, I suppose it won’t. I’m sorry, Mr. Fitzhugh. You’ve been nothing but kind to me since I destroyed your peace by colliding with you last night. I won’t pry.”
She returned her attention to her plate, but Oscar couldn’t do the same. He stared at her face, her lovely face. Her kind face. Her troubled face. And in that moment, he wanted to give her what she desired. Anything she desired.
He cleared his throat. “Louisa was a courtesan.” Her gaze shot up and her dark eyes widened. “And for a while I was her protector. Her lover.”
“It ended.”
“Yes,” he said. “Long before the Cat’s Companion.”
“Wh-why?” she asked, and then she shook her head. “I’m sorry.Thatanswer is certainly none of my affair. I shouldn’t have asked it.”
It wasn’t her affair, but he had studiously avoided speaking to anyone about Louisa for six months. He spoke around her, but never directly about her. Now that he’d opened those gates, it was like he was compelled to walk through them.
“She wanted more,” he said, trying not to think of Louisa’s tear-streaked face as she told him that she loved him. As she begged him to feel the same emotion. As she realized he didn’t. Couldn’t, he had told her. “And I couldn’t give it to her. So it ended. Badly.”
Imogen had shifted, leaning forward, entirely engaged with him. Her steady stare should have made him uncomfortable, but instead it was…comforting. Almost a beacon in a storm that he’d been navigating for months.
“She disappeared a few months later,” he said. “And I started looking for her. I heard she died. I know she died. And it is…my fault.”
“Oscar,” she whispered, using his first name for the first time since he introduced himself. No one called him that. Everyone called him Fitzhugh. Even Louisa had done so. Fitz, if she was being cheeky.
But hearing his real name, his given name, from this woman’s lips was…intoxicating. Some of the pain of the past slid away when she said it, replaced by far darker and more desperate emotions.
Needs.
“I’m so sorry,” she continued, completely unaware of what he was thinking.
She reached out and caught his hand again, this time with both of hers. She cocooned him with her warmth and his gaze slid to her lips.
Very kissable, full lips. He hated himself for noticing that in this moment of high emotion and tension. He hated himself for being able to divorce himself from what had happened with Louisa and instead focus on what his body drove for with Imogen.
“Be careful, Imogen,” he said, his voice rough with desire.
