He paused mid-bite. “Ask. I can’t promise I’ll answer.”
“If you could turn back the clock, knowing me as you do now, would you still have asked me to dance at the Templeton ball?”
He inhaled so deeply she thought he might not stop. Then he stood, took the long bolster, and laid it between them in the centre of the bed.
The cushion felt both merciful and cruel, a reminder that he was close enough to touch, and yet entirely out of reach.
He stretched out beside it, crossing his arms behind his head, eyes fixed on the hieroglyphics etched into the ceiling panels.
“Well?” she asked softly. “Would you?”
“Go to sleep, Miss Harland.” He turned his back to her, and the space between them grew colder by degrees. “Trust me. Neither of us want to hear the answer.”
CHAPTER TEN
“What do you think it says?” Miss Harland held the sealed letter in her hand, her finger tracing the red wax. The carriage bounced through a rut in the road, and she gripped it like the last piece of wreckage in a volatile sea.
In truth, he didn’t know. And didn’t want to care.
He was simply glad she was speaking again.
She’d barely said two words since posing that damnable question last night. A question he’d mentally wrestled while his body lay stiff as mortuary stone.
He hadn’t answered because he didn’t dare.
If he had, he wouldn’t have stopped at words. He’d have kissed her senseless, rolled her beneath him, and given her the only answer his body knew.
He’d woken first, harder than he’d been in years, only to find them facing each other, their hands brushing across the bolster. Ramsey would flay him alive if he’d witnessed the cosy scene. Dominic Hawke did not lace fingers with a woman, let alone stroke them in his sleep.
But by God, she’d looked beautiful.
Lashes dark against porcelain skin. Lips parted, breathing slow, sinfully slow.
“I believe Mrs Flavell wanted you to open it,” he said, though last night’s question lingered between them like the ghost of their kiss. “Preferably before we reach Kingston.”
“Do you think Mrs Flavell spoke the truth?” She stared at the letter as if the contents might answer a centuries-old mystery. “I find it hard to believe my mother would call at Grosvenor Place. That she would trust a woman with Mrs Flavell’s reputation.”
“Mothers keep secrets too.” He thought of his own, of how she’d died protecting hers. “She may have turned to an old friend to spare you pain.”
Yet his mother had confided in no one.
Why would she, when she didn’t trust a soul?
She met his gaze for the first time in an hour. “Do you know, when you’re not playing king of the underworld, you can be quite thoughtful.”
“Keep it to yourself. Tell Ramsey and I’ll deny it.”
She smiled. “Let it be our secret then.”
In the space between breaths, he felt it again. That trace of connection. That odd affinity with a woman who should hate him.
“Keep our kiss a secret, too,” he said.
She nodded, not from embarrassment, it seemed. “And that you called my name in your sleep last night.”
Bloody hell. “A nightmare, most likely.”
“I’m not sure. You made a strange sort of hum.”
