Also now, Joseph was not part of her life.
Tessa took a deep breath and brushed the crumbs from her hand. She gestured to the wine bottle. “May I?”
She brought the bottle to her lips, laughing a little. He watched her struggle to drink and grin at the same time.
“I’ve compelled you to drink wine straight from the bottle,” she said. “I would understand your wanting to leave this habit behind.”
“Drinking from the bottle is one of the few habits I carry over from youth. There was precious little crockery in Barbadoes. Life at sea, and all of that.”
“Stop,” she teased. “I cannot imagine you drinking wine from a bottle as a matter of course. In fact, I can’t imagine you drinking to excess at all. You were rather temperate at Berymede, I recall.”
“I nearly drank myself to death,” he said, “in Barbadoes.” All pride seemed to have left him.
“Oh.” She looked over her shoulder at a bed of moss and rock. “I’m glad you did not.”
He watched her profile, soft and perfect in the waning light, and she felt his gaze and smiled. Something warm and soft flowed between them.
I’m glad you did not.
It was hardly a declaration, but it was better, he thought, than wishing him dead.
He stood, grabbing the bottle of wine by the neck. With his other hand, he gestured to the path. “Come on then. There is more to see.”
He saw her eyes trace the tall, solid line of his body, saw awareness and playfulness and something more flit across her face. Her cheeks pinkened, but he didn’t look away. Slowly, he cocked one suggestive eyebrow.
She rose as if in a trance. He had the overwhelmingly welcome thought that she would walk to him, walk right into his arms, but instead she reached for his outstretched hand. He’d only meant to point the way, but she closed her fingers and tugged.
Joseph allowed her to lead him, following her down the trail. By the next turn, she had coiled her hand around his bicep and leaned in. His heart went very still for two beats but he strode on, escorting her with a nonchalance borne of a thousand female encounters with a thousand women all over the world, and thank God. It would not do to stumble now.
“What would you like to see?” he asked.
“Everything.”
Chapter Seventeen
The spectacle of Vauxhall Gardens was an entertaining diversion, but Tessa found it inconsequential compared to the conversation.
Ultimately, her talk with Joseph did very little to raise the topic of her departure from Belgravia, but it had been gratifying in a more intimate, personal way. She learned things about him that she’d not known. She’d been treated to the sight of him drinking wine, straight from a bottle. In all honesty, she’d been loath to leave their quiet bench for the next footpath, but his mood had shifted, and he held out his hand, and the only thing better than talking to him had suddenly seemed like touching him.
It was no mystery why his mood changed. She’d made the suggestion that he’d married her to enhance his collection of fine, expensive things—that she was one of these fine things—and he had objected. It was a ploy reminiscent of the Old Tessa, and she’d made the suggestion for the sole purpose of hearing him deny it—which he did, with an emphasis that sent a small shock down her spine. The heat of his denial made her realize how much she’d been waiting for him to make some... claim. To her. To offer his arm, or to rest his hand on the small of her back, or tosay something.
But then the conversation had gone a little off, and she’d lost her nerve, and the New Tessa was out of her depth as how to salvage it. Never fear, the Old Tessa had danced back in and taken his hand, slid close, and leaned against him as he led them down the path.
In all honestly, the New Tessa did not hate walking down dark paths on his arm. The New Tessa wanted a night out at Vauxhall Gardens with Joseph Chance just as direly as the old one. But she had to be careful, so very careful. If Joseph rejected her, every incarnation of herself would be shattered.
“I’ve heard there will be fireworks,” she said, glancing at him on the dim pathway.
“Indeed,” he said. “There is also a small replica of a palace and formal grounds, with an orchestra and dancing. We’ve somehow managed to bypass it so far, but it is worth seeing.”
They turned one corner and then another, less able to find their way in the dusk. He allowed her to choose the route, and she wandered with no real direction, enjoying the feel of his bicep beneath her hand, his warmth, the intimacy of tucking herself so closely beside him. They passed one food stall and then another, but when they came to a cart selling fragrant fruit tarts, Tessa paused.
“Will you take a sweet?” Joseph asked.
She was just about to point to a strawberry tart when laughter burst from around the next bend. She raised her eyebrows at him and drifted to the sound.
The path opened to a clearing where a crowd had gathered around an informal theatrical performance. Actors in bright costumes had taken over an expanse of exposed rock and they portrayed some manner of domestic melodrama with exaggerated aplomb. A young mother and father fussed over a bundle of cloth meant to be an infant while a disapproving grandmother looked on.
Tessa grinned, immediately taken in. “Do you mind?” she whispered to Joseph, stopping at the edge of the crowd. “Surely I’ve not truly experienced Vauxhall without live theatre?”
