The moment stretched between them, endless and fragile as a soap bubble—and it burst when the door to the surgery slammed open and the carriage rocked as the coachman leaped down, ready to open the door for Lucy’s return.
A curtain dropped behind Ashbourn’s eyes, all the heat and hunger she’d glimpsed there extinguished in an instant. Before the carriage door had cracked open a single inch, Bess found herself back on the bench opposite, flushed and disconcerted and still catching her breath.
Across from her, Ashbourn sat straight and tall, entirely composed and looking as if the very idea of having a human emotion like desire would never occur to him.
He turned it off like a spigot, she thought somewhat hysterically.
She still felt the thrumming of needy heat throughout her lower body. Her breasts still tingled from being crushed against his chest. Her lungs were still full of the breath they’d shared in the intimate space between them.
But he looked at her now with the empty eyes of a cold, dispassionate stranger. The sharp line of his jaw was the only place she could discern any feeling whatsoever, and more than anything, the way he clenched it looked angry.
This was a man who ruthlessly controlled his own emotions, she realized with a chill. A man who would never listen to his heart—if he even possessed one.
He hadn’t been trying to turn her up sweet with all that talk about how seeing her every day would be torture, she realized. He might be attracted to her, but he didn’t want to be.
Ashbourn was used to being in control. More than that, he needed it.
Perhaps Bess knew of a way to convince him after all.
Lucy was walking toward the carriage, still chattering away to the surgeon’s wife. Looking Ashbourn in the eye, Bess took a deep breath and said, “This is your chance to take the reins of a situation that has been running wild out of your control for more than a year. Welcome Lucy and her mother into your home, lend them your social influence and help Lucy find her footing, and you need never see me again.”
His pale eyes flared molten silver for a heartbeat of a moment, and then Lucy was upon them. She scrambled into the carriage unaided, too impatient to wait for the groom to hand her up, and flopped onto the bench beside Bess.
Bess supposed it did no good to wish Lucy would behave decorously and make herself more palatable to her older brother. Lucy could only be who she was, and Bess had no real wish to see her sweet, lively friend shaped and molded into a Proper Young Lady.
Thank goodness Bess wasn’t truly Lucy’s chaperone, as Ashbourn had assumed, or that task would fall to her! She had thought it better to go along with his supposition rather than admit Lucy had committed the social faux pas of appearing in public with neither her mother nor a respectable chaperone.
All these rules fair made Bess’s head ache, and for what? It was all a lot of nonsense. Still, she noted the way Ashbourn’s finely shaped lips pressed together in disapproval at Lucy’s unladylike pose.
“How is the patient?” Bess asked quickly as the horses pulled away from the surgery and into the heavy flow of London traffic.
“He came round long enough to give his name, Charles Truitt. He is a midshipman in the Royal Navy; his grandfather was a sailor from the West Indies who actually fought and perished in the real Battle of Trafalgar, so Charles was determined to take part in the mock battle today. Although he regrets it now, I imagine. Or perhaps not, he passed out again before I could ask him. But I expect I can find his mother easily enough, now that I have his name, and perhaps the captain he serves under ought to be informed.”
Lucy broke off to frown out the window. “Where are we going?”
Heartbeat quickening, Bess craned her neck to see past Lucy. The streets of London all looked much the same to her, however, an indistinguishable warren of narrow lanes chockablock with carts and carriages and people on horseback and afoot.
“You are going home,” Ashbourn said, his deep voice rumbling through the carriage like a pronouncement of prophesy.
“This isn’t the way to Charlotte Street,” Lucy argued. “The driver ought to have turned left at Goodge Street, not right. This road will take us all the way to Mayfair.”
Mayfair. When Ashbourn said home he didn’t mean the rented lodgings in Charlotte Street. He meant his home. Ashbourn House.
Bess whipped around to stare at him. He was looking at Lucy, which was good as it meant he didn’t see the moment Bess realized that removing herself from the situation was the final inducement he’d needed to change his mind.
She wasn’t as good at controlling her emotions as he was. In that moment, all she could feel was an aching sense of disappointment.
But this trip to London had never been about Bess. Of course she couldn’t impose on her friends’ kindness to keep the Charlotte Street lodgings just for her, and Bess couldn’t afford it herself. But there were worse things than returning to Little Kissington without having tasted the pleasures she’d missed since Davy died.
The past two weeks had still been exciting. And if the memories of London and the feeling that there was more out there than she’d yet seen made her life in a sleepy Wiltshire village seem awfully small, well.
A small life could still be a good one.
Rallying herself, Bess managed a soothing smile for Lucy. “Your brother has been generous enough to extend an invitation for you to come stay with him at Ashbourn House.”
There was a pause like the moment between the flash of lightning and the crack of thunder. Bess braced herself.
“I won’t go!” Lucy stared at her brother’s blank expression in outrage. “You can’t make me!”
