Blast him.Blast his eyes and his patience and the way he stood there, looking at her as if what she said mattered.And a horrifying thought occurred to her.Was she about to break his heart?
Heat crept up her neck.“This is…difficult.”
“Then we can make it easier,” he said gently.
“How?”
“By sitting down,” he suggested.“You look as if you’re about to bolt.”
“I don’t need to sit,” she informed him.
He nodded gravely.“Are you certain?You’re positively vibrating with nerves.”
She swallowed.“Do you wish to hear this or not?”Her voice shook.
“I do,” he said.“Very much.But I also wish you to breathe while you say it.”He gestured to the settee near the hearth.“Please.”
Her spine wanted to remain rigid.Her knees, unfortunately, felt oddly unreliable.After a moment of trying to catch her breath, she relented and crossed to the settee, sitting on the edge as if she might spring up again at any moment.
Nicholas followed and took the other end, leaving a respectable space between them.Too much space, part of her thought.Not nearly enough, another part countered.
She folded her gloved hands tightly in her lap and fixed her gaze on the mantel.“I need you to know that if I don’t say this now, I may never say it.”
“All right,” he said calmly.“Say it now.”
“I’m trying,” she insisted, but she still couldn’t catch her breath.
He said nothing.Just waited.
The silence roared in her ears.
“Nicholas,” she started again, “there are things about me you don’t know.Things that would change how you see me.I am not just Winston’s daughter, or your prospective bride, or?—”
He exhaled a soft laugh.“I should hope not.”
“I am serious,” she said.
“So am I,” he replied.“I have never once looked at you and seen ‘just’ anything.”
Her throat tightened.“I am not fishing for compliments.This is?—”
“A matter of trust,” he said quietly.
She looked at him then.A lump the size of a goose egg lodged in her throat.
His gaze was steady, dark, and disconcertingly unguarded.
Her heart stumbled.“Yes,” she whispered.
“And you’re afraid I haven’t earned it,” he said.
“I’m afraid,” she said, “that if I give it to you, you’ll cut my head off with it.”
“Bea.”His voice gentled.
The way he said her name—soft, not teasing—pulled at something inside her.He shifted, angling his body toward hers, closing a fraction of the distance between them.
“You are shaking,” he observed.
