“You were alone.” Nathaniel didn’t recognize the guttural rasp of his own voice.
She nodded. “You know what that is like, I expect.”
“We are not talking about me.”
“Aren’t we? At any rate, I was luckier than most. I had friends, a community, support. My aunt took me in, and she did her best by me, I believe. But I didn’t feel as though I truly belonged until…well, until I came to know Henrietta and the girls. They have a way about them, of pulling one close and making one feel like a part of something. A part of them. They’re my family. I would do anything for them.”
She spoke so plainly. Straightforward and blunt, like a left hook to the chin. Nathaniel closed his eyes for a dizzy moment as he took the hit. Then she went in for the knockout.
“I expect you know something about that too.” Gentle, her voice was, though her eyes were blade-sharp on his face when he blinked his open. “Although I think along the way you’ve confused protecting your family name with protecting the actual people in your family. Something to think about, perhaps.”
Nathaniel was aware of the heavy beat of his heart as he regarded her. The light from the window slanted down over the burnished gold of her hair, turning her creamy complexion as warm as honey. But it was nothing to the light in her eyes, the light that shone from inside her, calling to him.
It was a call he couldn’t answer. Else he risked dragging her down into the dark with him.
Angels had no place in the dark.
He turned his gaze back to his work, dismissing her from his sight if not from his mind. “I do not require your advice on how to conduct my family’s affairs. All I require is that you attend the ball tonight looking presentable. Good day.”
She drew a breath as though to say something else, and Nathaniel couldn’t help but hold his own breath in, ears straining for her reply.
But he didn’t look up, and she didn't speak. Instead, he heard the soft pad of her slippered feet as she left the study and closed the heavy door softly behind her. The click of the latch echoed in the silence like the bars of a prison gate locking him in.
Alone. In the dark.
Where he belonged.
Chapter Eight
Hours later, Bess’s heart shook in her chest when she remembered how close she’d come to revealing that her entire family was gone, along with the boy she’d loved, and that she’d only met the Lively ladies a year ago.
They were supposed to be her relatives! She was meant to be a modest widow, like most chaperones; she couldn’t afford to say anything that might cause Ashbourn to dig deeper.
Bess wasn’t cut out for this cloak and dagger nonsense.
The deception was beginning to weigh on her; several times while out and about with Lucy, Bess had felt an itchy, twitchy sensation on the back of her neck. As if someone was watching her.
But every time she’d looked, there’d been no one paying her any mind, that she could see. She could only assume it was her guilty conscience prickling at her.
Now here she was in this evening gown she never would’ve chosen for herself, trimmed and primped and decorated like the hot water crust pastry lid of a picnic pie.
“Bess, stop fidgeting. You look lovely,” Lucy said. Her blue eyes were wide in the dim interior of the carriage. “Though I admit I’m surprised you changed your mind about the gowns.”
Trying to set a good example, Bess dutifully said, “It was very kind of the duke to think of me and to take any trouble over my appearance. I should not have made such a fuss over a generous gesture.”
“Oh, Bess. You are entitled to your feelings, you know.”
Entitled to have them, perhaps. But not to act on them. Bess gave Lucy a determined smile.
“Well, in that case, I feel like a…like a very grand lady in this gown! Though it is a bit of a strange color.”
She had chosen to wear this one, in fact, because it was brown. And because the neckline wasn’t too low nor the skirts too clingy about the legs, like the dressed of some young ladies she’d seen where you could almost make out the shape of their limbs beneath the diaphanous silk.
Bess had thought she’d be able to fade into the background in a dress of nice, unassuming brown—but once she put it on, she’d realized her mistake.
First off, the neckline wasn’t low, but it was wide, skimming straight across the tops of her breasts to two narrow bands of cloth that draped her upper arms and bared her shoulders completely.
Cascading folds of the same brown fabric attached to the backs of those minuscule sleeves and trailed down to the floor, floating as she walked. The whole dress seemed to float when she moved, in fact, because the tricky fabric that had looked like plain brown muslin in the box turned out to be something much lighter and finer, gossamer smooth and shot through with some sort of thread that made it shimmer in the candlelight.
