They hadalmostkept quiet long enough to allow a bird to flutter in. Almost, but not quite.
“So,” she repeated.
He laughed, not unkindly, but still a laugh.
“What?” She looked to him.
“Your expression.I’mmeant to be the one with the perpetual scowl. Either I’ve rubbed off on you, or you’ve not recovered from your mother’s visit. Or perhaps I’ve intruded on your time with the birds, and you resent it.”
“It’s not that,” she said quickly.
He studied her more closely. “Perhaps it’s not a scowl. Perhaps you are holding your breath.”
“That is possible,” she whispered. “If I’m being honest.”
“Why?”
“Because I’m afraid of what... you think.”
“Of what I think?” He frowned, confused.
“About the morning.” It was not untrue. Of all the things she was afraid of, this was among them.
“My mother has ruined a great many things for me,” she explained, “and it would be just like her to... to...”
“Ithink,” he provided softly, “that I amworriedabout you.Ithink,” he repeated, “that you may need looking after.”
“Oh,” she said.
She forgot to breathe. She forgot everything but the faint hope that this conversation was drifting where it might, possibly, a-million-to-one chance, be drifting.
“Do you need looking after, Miss Trelayne?” he asked, leaning back to take her in. Lazily, he perused her face, her throat, her chest, and back up to her face.
“Um,” she said, swallowing. He’d used her professional name again.
“Perhaps you would sit in my lap and allow me to assess your general well-being? To consider what you may need?”
“Sit in your... lap?” Drew repeated in a whisper. Her heart began to drum, the beats so fast they became one constricted pulse.
She looked at him, just inches from her; she looked at the stump beneath them, a smooth round platform grown over two hundred years ago and felled, surely, for no other purpose than this. She looked around at the mirage of seclusion in a public park.
“Miss Trelayne?” he sang, invoking the name from last night.
She looked back to him, searching his face.
“Would you sit in my lap?” he whispered. “Just for a moment?”
“I... I don’t know how,” she admitted.
“You don’t know how,” he repeated, feigning puzzlement.
She laughed nervously. “Lachlan, I’m not a small—”She exhaled. “I’m not small, and my cloak is voluminous and constricting, and for all practical purposes, we’re sitting in a hollowed-out log. I’m not given to clambering abo—”
He leaned in, scooped her up, and settled her, sideways, in his lap. It was a tidy movement, one boot heel braced in the sod, an arm around her shoulders, another under her knees, up and over, her cloak swinging out and then draping around them.
“Oh,” she said.
“Now,” he said, wrapping one hand around her bottom, leaning back on the other, bracing them on the stump, “that’s better.”
