His hands traveled to her shoulders. Gripped them. With a sigh, he stepped back and held her a full encyclopedia set’s length from him. “Two terrible gins are not enough to fell me, though I fear you might be.”
Her cheeks burned hot. Nothing would be more well received than disappearing into the floor.
Oh, Eleanor. You’ve read too many novels. Why can’t you distinguish between what is realistic and what’s a fantasy?
She shook her head so hard her slippery face could not keep up with it. “Of course. That was incredibly inappropriate. We are not… We should not be… This cannot…”
He put a finger to her lips, and she ceased mumbling. “If we cannot be friends, can we at least be friendly?” he asked.
Did kissing constitute friendly? Or was it something unrelated? What on earth had just happened?
He stared at her as if waiting for an answer. Crap. She hadn’t answered. Her befuddlement was total. She shut her mouth to avoid saying something stupid and nodded.
He grinned. “Perhaps we can be friendly tomorrow afternoon? I’ll meet you at the front of the zoo at three and we’ll coax the wombat from its lair.”
“Burrow.”Damn.
He raised an eyebrow. “My mistake.”
She swallowed and worked her tongue around the inside of her mouth. Only when she was sure that she could respond without another wombat-related tidbit did she attempt further speech. “I am accompanying Lady Wharton to Lady Anne Lester’s garden party tomorrow.” Which she was grateful for, given her current discombobulation. Lions at the Paris Zoo had escaped last year. If she was always to be this off-balance around him, the zoo was dangerous. She would not have the wherewithal to avoid an escaped Tasmanian tiger.
“Lady Anne’s, you say?” He retrieved his coat from the hook by the door, cheerfully shrugging into it. “Perfect. I’ll see you tomorrow. We can be friendly there.”
In half a second, he was gone. The door snicked shut, and she was left questioning everything.
Dear Booklover,
Do you believe in fate? I have not until now, but everything in my life has been preordained. I was always expected to take on the family business, and so I have. My siblings have been tiresome since birth, so spending my time putting out their fires is not destiny but an ongoing reality.
However, the fact that my sister’s lady’s maid was called away just as Jacqueline needed help with her correspondence cannot be accounted for by genetics. Which leads me to think that fate might just exist. What else can be responsible for our meeting?
My youngest sister has an overabundance of enthusiasm for Christmas. Every time she sees something shiny, she’ll nab it for the tree. Her branches are chaos. I imagine yours are festooned with colors that are perfectly complementary and arranged in orderly patterns that match what could only be a perfectly arranged home, surely? I imagined your branches and hers, side by side, and the picture stuck with me all night.
She left a string of bells in the hallway yesterday, and I thought of Baskerville. Cats like to play, do they not? My sister won’t miss them. If she does, she won’t blame me.
Yours,
Captain
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Peter had barely slept, yet he wasn’t tired. She’d kissed him last night.Shehad kissedhim. Perhaps there was indeed hope. Perhaps there was a chance of her falling for the version of him that was somewhere between the duke society knew and the Captain who had been hers alone.
Instead of sleeping, he’d ruminated on a thought that had teased him for weeks. He couldn’t be the Captain entirely. Nor did he want to be just the duke. Not forever. He had to find a way to merge the two and last night, he might have managed the beginning of that.
He scooted into the sitting room, where Winnie was reading the gossip pages and Jac was drinking tea. They jumped at his sudden entrance and Winnie yelped as Jac unwittingly splashed liquid on the thick blanket that protected her legs.
“Winnie, we are going shopping. Gather your things.”
Winnie tossed aside the gossip pages and clapped. “Of course, brother. Thank you, brother. I am in dire need of a new dress and purse.”
Jac turned. He could not see her scowl, but he felt it nonetheless. “That is notfair. I want to go shopping. I want a new dressand purse. I haven’t left the house in months and yet she gets to go out whenever she likes.”
Peter bobbed down, taking a napkin and soaking up the spilled tea. He was tempted to tell her that her confinement was her own doing, but over the past week she’d become increasingly distressed by it. “The bandages will come off soon,” he said gently.
She gripped his hand. “I could just take them off now. It is only a few days early. When you changed them last night, there was only the slightest blur.”
He stifled a groan. “Jacqueline, you should not have had your eyes open when we changed the bandages. The doctor was very clear.”
