And they were sitting so very close, their knees turned to one another as their faces were mere inches away. Somehow his arms had come around her, drawing them together until they were all but embracing, and Hettie’s pulse quickened.
“I desire you, Hettie,” he repeated in a quiet yet firm tone. His gaze drifted to her lips, and she leaned closer, pulled toward him like a magnet. Trembling, she had just enough forethought to wonder what she ought to do before their lips brushed, stealing her breath from her lungs.
Snow smacked Mr. Baxter’s head, knocking off his hat and splattering them both with watery shrapnel. From the river, boys laughed and jeered, showing just a hint of bravery before scattering. Mr. Baxter sat like a statue where they’d hit him, and he stared off at nothing. As much as she longed to hurl a snowball back at the little terrors, Hettie’s hands rose to her mouth to stifle a laugh as a glob of snow dripped from his nose.
Lowering his head, he let out a halting chuckle. “I am quite the dashing beau, aren’t I?”
Hettie nudged his chin up and brushed away a splatter of snow from his jaw. “You aremydashing beau.”
As much as she longed to recapture that moment, the world had shifted (as it was wont to do), leaving no way to return to what was now gone. Moving so they were shoulder to shoulder once more, Hettie leaned close, and he drew his arm around her shoulders, holding her there.
“We need only be patient, Hamilton.” As he had taken that liberty, Hettie couldn’t help but reciprocate. Yet when his name passed her lips, he jerked back and stared at her. Brows pulled tight together, she studied his expression, but she couldn’t countenance what he was thinking. Or rather, her thoughts on the matter were not of a happy sort.
But Hettie forced them away. A man who had just nearly kissed her (or had kissed her? Hettie wasn’t entirely certain if they could count that brief touch as such) and called her by her Christian name wasn’t going to be upset about her doing the same. So, she waited for him to speak.
“Baxter,” he said. Hettie’s head cocked to the side, but before she could ask a clarifying question, he continued. “Please call me Baxter. It’s the name I prefer.”
“Certainly,” she said, though her confusion didn’t dissipate. “But if that is so, why did your friends last night call you Hamilton?”
“My wife thought it more dignified than Baxter.”
Though no further explanation was given, she didn’t require one. What Mrs. Dolores Baxter wanted was granted or others were made to suffer, none more so than her long-suffering husband and innocent children. And Baxter had surrendered another part of himself to protect them.
Hettie shifted again, lowering her head to his shoulder as her breath caught. Tears pricked her eyes, and try as she might, she couldn’t keep them from gathering. Though none fell. Slipping her arm around his back, she held fast to her dear beau. Surely a man not allowed the freedom to use his preferred name deserved some happiness, and Hettie’s resolve firmed.
One way or another, she would do what she could to grant him that.
“We need only be patient, Baxter,” she amended, turning back to her previous statement. “Surely it is just a shock for them. They are grieving their mother, and it must be difficult for them. A few weeks or months and their feelings will change.”
His arm tightened around her shoulder, and in a tone far brighter than before, he said, “Of course they will. How can they not come to love you?”
Lifting her head, Hettie met his eyes and saw nothing but earnest truth there. Such certainty and faith in her ability to win them over, coupled with everything else that had passed in the last few minutes, made it even more difficult to keep from becoming a weepy mess. A lady of her age and experience ought to have a better hold on her emotions, but it was near impossible when such a wonderful man said such wonderful things.
“I assure you, I have flaws aplenty that are bound to irritate.” Hettie had meant it to be a jest, but Baxter’s brows pulled tight as he blinked at her.
“I have yet to discover one.”
Yes, there were objections she could make—despite how it felt, they hadn’t known each other more than a month—but Hettie couldn’t voice them when he watched her with such unblinking certainty. And that was when the first of her tears escaped. Huffing at her sentimentality, she wiped it away.
Resting her head back on his shoulder, she mumbled, “You are a silly man.”
“Am not.”
A little patience. So many of the ills of the world could be erased with that virtue, and Hettie knew that whether it be weeks or months, she was quite willing to wait. She had waited her whole life for such a man. A few months was nothing.
***
Arm in arm with her dear Baxter, Hettie beamed at the world around them as they wove through the streets of Bath. Though she maintained a bit of decorum while they were passing others who might overhear, she found herself saying his name without the honorific “Mr.” as often as she could manage, tacking it onto every sentence. Baxter slanted her little smiles, his eyes alight with a laugh as he responded in kind.
As heavy as the beginning of their outing had felt, Hettie felt all the lighter now. No true decisions had been made, for they hadn’t spoken of love or marriage, but she felt the ghost of it hovering at the edge of the conversation. One could not speak of the future with a beau without some implication (however slight) that both parties believed there was some future to be had.
With such animosity pointed at their coupling, surely Baxter would simply break with her if he did not have grander intentions than a mere courtship. And as long as marriage was within the realm of possibility, Hettie was willing to overcome any trouble his children caused. Surely they would manage it together.
Her brother’s home was just ahead, and Hettie squeezed Baxter’s arm and nodded toward the door. “Would you come in? You can keep me entertained until dinner, and Victor has said you are always welcome to join us—”
“There you are!”
The hard voice sliced through the air, and Baxter turned the two of them around to see his eldest son striding toward them. The young man’s expression was as hard as carved granite, his eyes narrowing as they glanced over Hettie before settling on his father.
