But she’d be gone soon enough, and he could begin the process of putting her out of his mind. Or resume it, rather, as he hadn’t managed to forget her for more than two minutes at a time since their first fateful meeting six weeks earlier, despite a humiliatingly vigorous attempt to do so.
“Come with me, Miss Templeton.” He marched down the hallway, sidestepping the stream of muddy sludge Barnaby and Lady Fosberry had left in their wake. He didn’t look at her again, but he could hear the wet squeak of her boots and the soggy drag of her skirts behind him.
They met Barnaby coming out of the study. “Ah, Cross, there you are. I’ve just left Lady Fosberry in her bedchamber, and ordered a bath brought up for her. May I take you up as well, Miss Templeton?”
Miles didn’t give her a chance to reply. “Not just yet, Barnaby. I’d like a word with Miss Templeton first.”
“For God’s sake, Cross, she’ll catch her death—”
“It’s quite all right, Lord Barnaby.” Juliet gave him a warm smile. “I thank you for your assistance with Lady Fosberry.”
“My pleasure, Miss Templeton.” Barnaby bowed, then drew Miles aside and muttered, “I can’t imagine what you need to say to Miss Templeton that can’t wait until tomorrow, Cross, but do behave yourself, won’t you?”
“I think I can be trusted not to behave like an utter savage in my own study.” He pushed Barnaby out the door, closing it on his cousin’s warning look, and turned his attention to Juliet. “Well, Miss Templeton. You certainly know how to make an entrance.”
It hadn’t sounded like an accusation in his head, but the words fell between them with an edge so sharp and flinty, it might have sliced through bone.
If Juliet noticed it, it didn’t dim the smile she gave him, the one that drew his gaze to her lips like a starving man to a feast. “Lady Cecil thought so.”
She had, indeed, and Lady Cecil, for all her ill-tempered arrogance, had been perfectly correct about Juliet’s presence here. “Lord Barnaby tells me your driver left you and Lady Fosberry stranded on the road.”
“Yes, I’m afraid he abandoned us as soon as he realized the carriage was in danger of tumbling down the hill. I can’t say how grateful I am for your assistance, my lord. I don’t know how you managed to catch me, but I might have broken my neck, but for you.”
It was a pretty speech, but he waved her thanks aside with a sweep of his hand. He didn’t want or need anything from her, aside from her absence from his home.
But he was a gentleman, and gentlemen didn’t toss young ladies out of their houses in middle of the night after they’d nearly tumbled over the edge of a cliff.
No matter how much they might wish to.
“May I offer you a splash of port, Miss Templeton?” Yes, that was very good. Courteous, even solicitous. He’d have no reason to reproach himself for his behavior once she was gone.
She smiled that smile again, like a flower bursting into bloom. “Is itMiss Templetonnow? It was Miss Juliet before you left London.”
Yes, he remembered, and he also remembered what followed. It was risky, calling her Juliet, because then he’d think of her as Juliet, and that sort of familiarity led to… inappropriate thoughts, to longing and yearning and aching, and all manner of other dangerous things.
“Are we no longer on such intimate terms as we once were, my lord?”
Miles fumbled with the bottle of port in his hand, the clink of glass loud in the quiet room. If they had been on intimate terms, thenintimacymeant far less to her than it did to him.
Abruptly, he was deeply, hotly furious.
Since he’d arrived at Steeple Cross, he’d done everything he could do to forget her.
Her name, her face…
Now here she was again, her smile like a red cloak waved in the face of a charging bull.
It would take weeks for him to unsee that smile, weeks to unhear that soft, teasing voice, and longer still for him to banish the face it conjured. “We haveneverbeen on intimate terms, Miss Templeton. Indeed, I find myself at an utter loss to explain your presence at Steeple Cross.”
Her mouth dropped open, and she flushed to the roots of her hair. “I don’t understand, my lord. Lady Fosberry—”
“I didn’t invite you here, so what in the world could have possessed you to appear on my doorstep?”
Good Lord, had he said thataloud?
Juliet Templeton had the widest, bluest eyes he’d ever seen, but somehow, incredibly, the damnable woman contrived to make them even wider and bluer. “You didn’t invite me,” she repeated, as if to be sure she’d heard him correctly. “You didn’t invite me to Steeple Cross.”
Hehadsaid it aloud.That is, he’d meant to say it, of course, but not quite so harshly. “I beg your pardon. I didn’t mean…”
