“Willow?” he called suddenly. His voice was too loud. He cleared his throat. “I plan to return to London tonight.”
She froze, mid-step. Her shoulders tensed.
“You’ve said that your move to London was well in hand,” he said. “That Mr. Fisk would drive the wagon with your trunks, and you would travel in the carriage your mother has given you. I took you at your word and planned to ride ahead tonight.”
She did not respond.
“Will your mother find it odd that I don’t stay the night?” he asked the back of her head.
Finally, she turned, searching his face, her wide blue-green eyes looking for something, perhaps, that she hadn’t heard him say.
“My mother will be in the stable all night with the mare,” she said, and then she turned away. There was a closed door behind her, and she pushed it open. Dogs filed into the room at her feet.
Cassin squinted into the brightness of the room beyond. It was airy and light, pale walls bathed in midday sun. White, so white.
“Congratulations, my lady,” sang a cheerful voice from the floor. Perry knelt over a trunk. “Oh, and your hair. . . it still looks so beautiful.”
“Go to the kitchen and have a piece of cake, Perry,” Willow said quietly. “The footmen will devour it, and there will be nothing left for you.”
The maid’s head popped up at this suggestion, and she scrambled to her feet. She bobbed a curtsy to Cassin as she darted out the door. Five dogs followed in her wake.
Cassin stared back at the room. A bedchamber. His wife’s bedchamber.
His knees locked.
I should run, he thought.
I should follow the maid and leave for London now, just as I’ve said. She will be angry and disappointed but not heartbroken.
Instead, he took a step inside. And then another, and another, and another, until he was in the bright, white room, which was dominated by a bright, white bed.
He looked around as if in a daze. Every non-wooden surface was of the purist white or softest ivory. The bed—tall, wide, almost square, he’d never seen a bed like it—was a profusion of gauzy lace, fluttery canopy, and folds and flounces of heavily draped material. Cushions and coverlets abounded, white on ivory on white, velvet on linen on cotton. It was a like a soft platform designed for no other purpose than—
He swallowed hard and looked away. Fluffy white carpets stretched across the floor. Low-slung eruptions of fluff, barely distinguishable as chairs, reclined before the fire.
Taken together, it was an oasis of cool, beckoning, bedlike surfaces. A pasha’s tent, bleached to colorless layers of softness. The image of Willow’s bright auburn hair flashed in his brain, splayed out against all of that soft whiteness.
He ran a hand through his hair, continuing to walk inside, step after thoughtless step. He was hit by the distinctly cinnamon scent of her. His mouth began to water; he heard his heartbeat drum in his ears.
Willow, meanwhile, ignored him. She paced the floor in an energetic line, biting her fingertips to loosen her gloves. She yanked them off and tossed them on the back of a chair. She strode to a bureau and yanked the doors open wide. The shelves were bare except for a stack of folded yellow fabric, and she snatched it up, crossed to the open trunk, and deposited it carelessly inside. Each movement was quick and jerky. She did not look at him.
“You’re cross,” he said, but he thought,Thank God. If she gave me even the slightest invitation . . .
She returned to the bureau and yanked open a drawer. It was filled with what appeared to be silk stockings. She scooped up an armful and returned to the trunk.
“Cross?”she asked slowly, affecting an expression of exaggerated confusion. She went back to the bureau for another armful of silk. “Would I describe what I’m feeling ascross? No, I don’t believe I would. What I am feeling is . . . weary. So incredibly weary.” She was back at the bureau, yanking open another drawer.
“Because of the wedding?” he guessed.
“No. Not because of the wedding. I’mcrossas you put it, because I amalwaysthelast to know,” she said loudly, scooping up a limp tangle of something silky and pink and striding to the trunk.
“The last to know?” he repeated.
He was trying to follow the conversation—honestly, he was—but he was transfixed by the strident, energetic, almost incandescent vitality of her. Her cheeks were pink; her bosom rose and fell. Her sculptured coiffure was beginning to erode under the agitated jerking and stooping and flinging. First one auburn tendril, and then another. Burgundy ribbon slipped loose and slid to the floor. A lock of hair fell across her cheek, and she blew it away. Cassin licked his lips.
“Yes, the last to know,” she said, gathering up another armful from a drawer. “I am the last to learn of what . . . what . . .thingwill happen to me next. Even now—especiallynow. After I’ve taken such great pains to make my own way. Meanwhile, you and every other man I know may do as he pleases.”
She fished an empty velvet bag from the tangle of silk in the trunk and hauled it to the mirrored vanity. Pulling open the drawer, she began to drop brushes, hairpins, combs, and loose ribbon into the bag.
