Helena was speechless. She rolled his statement around in her head.
“Do not get on?” she repeated blankly. “Is that what you think?”
“I think it’s best if we do not examine it from every angle. Instead, we restrain. We cannot touch,my lady. Ours should be a very simple groom-charge relationship.”
“But you are not really a groom, and I’m not really your charge. We have this very important thing we are doing, and... and there is more. Do you deny there is more?”
They’d reached the busy corner of Oxford Street and Bloomsbury. To their left, the museum sprawled like a marble plateau in the center of an expansive lawn. Carriages and wagons clattered around them. The museum grounds milled with the lazy day-trippers. Declan gestured to the looming building and led them along the network of walkways to the front steps.
Helena followed, eyes narrowed, heart pounding. A knot had begun to form in her throat, cinching tighter and tighter with every step.
When they were up the steps, Declan led them down the front colonnade and ducked behind a marble column.
Taking a deep breath, he said, “Let us simplystart again.”
“Start this conversation again?” she asked. She was so confused. She knew he was angry but she hadn’t expected him to proclaim them “ill suited.” Helena had waited half her life to feel as connected to another person as she felt to Declan. He validated her intelligence and humor and desired her. They wereof the same mind. Her attraction to him was physical, yes, but it was also in her heart and in her head. After a lifetime of sprinting uphill to escape, she finally felt like she was coasting downward toarrive somewhere. She was falling in love with him.
And now this?
Declan repeated, “My lady—”
“Can you not call me Helena?”
“My lady,” he repeated, swallowing hard. He paused.
Helena waited, studying his face. He no longer looked angry, he looked... anguished. Helena could relate, she also felt anguish; she felt anguish and heartsick and the cold fear of losing him. But she would not stand in the shadows and silently stew about it. She reviewed the conversation in her mind. What had he said? He’d said he’d indulged, that he never should have touched her, that he’drevealed too much.
She cleared her throat, banishing the tears. “You said,” she began, “that you’d ‘revealed too much.’ About what, exactly, have you revealed so very much? You share cryptic details of your mysterious life in drips and drabs, usually in an odd moment in a crowded street.”
“You’ve just said you chose me on instinct,” he countered. “Why should you know anything about me at all?”
“Instinct said you would take notes at a party,” she shot back. “Which you did.Don’t oversimplify. We are—” A deep breath. “Surely we can agree that now we areallies. At the very least. Is it not common foralliesto know a thing or two about each other? Certainly I have been an open book. And that says nothing of the other ways we are... connected.”
Declan said nothing, staring down at her.
She amended, “No—forgive me, not ‘connected.’ ‘Enmeshed.’ ”
He let out a deep breath. Finally, he said, “When I discuss my life, it draws us closer.”
“Oh no, not that.”
“Exactly.Not that.It leads nowhere, Helena. Not for us. I can reveal a handful of personal details to you if you like. But there’s very little to say. My life is very meager and plain compared to yours.”
“I live in the forest,” she said. “I tend an orchard. I am not put off by meager.”
“You are the daughter of a wealthy earl, Helena. I am yourservant. Honestly, that should be the end of it.” A long pause. “And the physical intimacy must stop. Every time I touch you, I am crossing a very dangerous, very significant line.”
She blinked at him, trying to understand.Crossing a line?Wasshethe line? Had she behaved so inappropriately in the presence of Miss Keep? Did he simply not fancy her? Or not fancy her enough to risk being discovered?
She looked away. Her heart lodged into her chest and slid down, slicing her open. She wanted to sit. She wanted to run. She wanted her grandmother to tell her what to do.
She took a deep breath. She would neither sit nor run, of course. And she had no one to counsel her but herself.
She looked up to Declan and said slowly, “I’ve been terribly thick, haven’t I? Clueless, really. You are handsome and strong, and you agree to my plans and validate my need to escape Lusk. You collaborate and praise and make me feel as if I matter. You exude confidence even in that ridiculous yellow livery—and you should be confident. You are so very proficient and clever and thoughtful. You look out for me as no one has.
“Taken altogether,” she said sadly, “I’ve misinterpreted the situation. I didn’t know. I’ve... I’ve rather hurled myself in your direction, and you don’t like it. And now you are trying to pull away. The... er, ardor I feel is not mutual.”
The pain of realizing these words, and in nearly the same moment she expressed them, was almost too much, and Helena held out one hand as if to stop the march of time.
