Before Sarah could think of a reason to refuse, she was gone, and Sarah was left staring helplessly at Douglas.
“It’s only a meal, Sarah,” he said, his tone absurdly kind.
She nodded.
“It’s only a meal,” she repeated, but that didn’t make her feel appreciably better.
Douglas began to change out of his wet clothing. Not behind the gold screen, or in the room behind it, which did turn out to be a bathing chamber. Instead, he simply peeled off his clothing, acquired a towel, and wrapped it around his waist. All done with the unselfconscious actions of a human who knows he’s quite attractive.
“Have you always been that way?” she asked, grateful to have a subject to discuss other than her mother or grandfather.
“What way?”
“Comfortable with being naked. Especially in front of a stranger.”
He folded his arms and regarded her, the expression in his blue-green eyes one she couldn’t decipher.
“I wouldn’t consider you a stranger, Sarah. It concerns me thatyoudo.”
Perhaps this wasn’t a good topic of conversation after all.
She turned and walked to the bureau, removing her bonnet with its lone wilted feather. It had begun the journey so perky, and now it looked so bedraggled. While she couldn’t have said that the journey was begun with any perkiness on her part, she felt the same.
Those blasted tears were back. She blinked them away furiously, wishing that she’d been given her own chamber. If she had, she would probably have succumbed to a bout of weeping and felt better for it.
“You will get through this,” Douglas said, coming up behind her and placing his hands on her shoulders. Slowly, he drew her back. She closed her eyes and allowed herself to rest against him.
“You will get through this, Sarah. But you won’t get past it. You will always grieve, in your way, for your mother. You will always miss her. If I had the power of God, I would take away your grief, but in doing so I would have to take away your memories. Would you want that?”
“No,” she said softly. “It’s just so hard. How did you bear it?”
He pressed his cheek against her hair and didn’t quite answer her. “One day you’ll smile, then you’ll find yourself laughing. But the moments will always come when you remember. You’ll feel her loss forever, all the while you’ll know you were blessed by being loved.”
She was so tired, tired of fighting the pain, tired of being strong. Douglas wrapped his arms around her, and she turned her head, laying her cheek against his chest. For long moments they stood simply and quietly together.
Finally, Sarah pulled away, conscious of two things. Douglas was nearly naked, and she liked touching him.
She busied herself by investigating the bathingchamber. The copper tub was a beautiful piece of art, deeply embossed with thistles and roses along the edge. Two sets of taps sat on the edge, and when she opened one, she was shocked to find that hot water ran through it. Evidently, Kilmarin had a boiler—more than Chavensworth could boast.
The drain in the bottom of the tub led to a series of pipes, and she could immediately see that the system was the same as at Chavensworth. She couldn’t help but wonder if they had the same problem of the drains occasionally becoming clogged, but when she mentioned it to Douglas, he only laughed.
“You are not the chatelaine here,” he said, “and you needn’t worry.”
“I know,” she said, “but habits die hard.”
He smiled at her, and she looked away. That was another thing she should caution herself about—she was becoming habituated to his smiles. She had even grown to anticipate them, if not to encourage them. She’d never been overly adept at womanly wiles, at least those practiced in her two London seasons. She couldn’t flirt coyly, and she was abysmal with a fan—she kept knocking it against objects and people, or dropping the silly thing. She didn’t bat her eyelashes prettily, and she really wasn’t interested in playing to a man’s vanity.
But Douglas brought out something in her that she’d never before identified, a certain wantonness of spirit. She’d begun to think errant thoughts, improper thoughts, but that wasn’t the only sign that she was skirting impropriety. Her body seemed to know when he was near, as if attuned to him in some odd way. Her pulse raced, her breath tightened, and her heart beat louder.
Even in the midst of her grief, there was anothercomponent to it, something new and different and almost overwhelming.
Perhaps her life would have been so much easier if she’d remained unmarried, but then, what would have happened in the last weeks? Once, she would have been confident enough to say that she could handle almost any situation, but now she knew there were some circumstances beyond her. Sometimes, she needed other people’s assistance, and this time had proven that fact only too well. What would she have done without Douglas? Had she even thanked him adequately? Had she told him of her certainty that Chavensworth was a better place for his presence there? Or had she simply assumed that he would know?
She walked into the sitting room, where he stood in front of a now-roaring fire, still clad only in a towel.
“Thank you,” she said.
“For what?” He turned to face her.
