Della looked around, observing the dressing table with beautiful, old perfume bottles and expensive cosmetics—more than anyone could ever use. There was a champagne silk dressing gown thrown over the privacy screen near where she sat, and a pair of pink slippers left abandoned beside the bed. It was a startling combination of wealth and carelessness, just like her mother. She tried to remember the mother she’d grown up with. The one who’d truly loved her, cherished her like a parent should. There was no evidence of that person left. It was all gone, lost forever to the depths of caring for Della.
“I don’t believe we’ll find anything of use here,” Andrew muttered. He shut the last drawer and rose to his full height. He came to stand in front of her, then sat down on the plush and overly ornate bed.
There was something heady in this, sitting in a bedchamber with him. Alone. That overwhelming feeling wasn’t the goal of this adventure, but Della let it wash over her anyway. It amazed her, how he was all at once so calming a presence and so exciting an idea.
“In fact, I have another thought.” His voice was low and comforting and a tingle ran down Della’s spine that had nothing to do with the lingering cold from their walk. “I’ll go back to London, speak to a fewpeople. See what I can find out.”
Della’s heart skipped an agonizing beat at the thought of him leaving, but she’d always known he’d leave. He’d left her once before, and she knew he’d do it again. His life was in London, hers was here. Men like him didn’t want women like her, anyway. Not in the long term. Not to marry, and not to love. She had his friendship, and his loyalty, and she told herself to be grateful for that.
“I couldn’t ask you to do that,” she said. Her eyes wouldn’t meet his, no matter how hard she tried to appear unaffected.
“You did not ask, and I am more than happy to do it. There are many people I need to get reacquainted with in town, anyway.”
Della was silent for long moments. It seemed there was nothing more to say.
“Thank you, Andrew,” she finally murmured. She forced herself to look up at him again, to memorize that face she held so dear. Messy curls. Sharp jaw. Tensely held mouth bracketed by frown lines. Those fathomless eyes she’d never be able to forget if she tried. The ache in her toes spread throughout her whole body, and that cold took root in her chest.
Della didn’t know what she was thanking him for. His willingness to help? Or for being the one to leave?
Chapter Fourteen
There was somethingabout the dark that made Della foolhardy. In the dead of night, she was thoughtless and hasty, unheeding of her own rationality. She knew this, and yet, she continued on.
Down the hallway, walking in the pitch black. Sensing where she was only through muscle memory and the feel of her fingertips against the walls she hugged. She’d been counting doorways since she’d left her own. This was the right room, she knew it. The pads of her fingers drifted over the wood. They wrapped around the doorknob.
This was hide and seek all over again, but they weren’t children anymore, and never before had she needed to find him so desperately. That desperation was as senseless as this entire endeavor. She’d climbed out of bed on a whim, tossing a warm robe over her night rail to protect her fragile joints from the pain of cool air. Only then, when she stopped in front of his door, did she realize what she was doing.
The silence around her was brittle, broken by the echoes of her soft footfalls. Trying to fight against a sudden wave of her own good sense, she closed her eyes. She stood so close to the door she thought she felt her eyelashes brush the wood.
Della blinked exactly three times to gather up the courage she’d somehow lost in the space between her own bedroom and his. As she twisted the doorknob, she heard a creak, and she couldn’t be sure whether it was the door or her own wrist. At the sound of a click, sherealized he’d left his chambers unlocked. She hadn’t considered what she might do if he hadn’t. There was a rush of air as the door opened. Her room was cooler than his. Della attributed the new warmth she felt to Andrew himself. Surely any place where he lay would naturally be as warm as the therapeutic baths Della loved to sink into every night.
For a moment, she stood frozen. Two steps inside the room, the door still wide open. She took a couple of breaths. She watched the rise and fall of his chest, just a hazy outline. He was a shadowed silhouette, but the briefest glimpse was enough to stop her in her tracks.
She must have moved eventually, shifted her weight to ease the terrible ache in her left hip. He stirred, made some noise that was halfway between a gasp and a groan, and then, “Della?” he said, and his voice was a dim whisper, as silhouetted as his form itself.
There was some clutching sensation behind Della’s ribs. A gnawing that left her almost bereft. She wondered if he recognized the shape of her in the fading firelight or if she was simply the first person he’d thought of as he startled awake.
“Della?” he repeated, because she’d been too busy trying to move her heart back into its rightful place in her chest to answer him. She rolled her eyes at her own behavior.
He was so, so close, and still entirely too far away.
“Yes,” she said, finally. “It’s me.” She didn’t know what to do. This mission was entirely improvised, and she hadn’t thought much past getting out of bed. She’d never even considered what she might do if she ever got this far.
Abruptly, she realized she still hadn’t closed the door. Anyone could be roaming about the house, even at this hour. Stranger things had happened. She peered out into the hallway, looking left and right to make sure no one had seen her. As gently as her clumsy hands could, she eased the door closed.
“Come here,” Andrew murmured. She was still turned away from him, and she pressed her forehead to the door’s scratchy wood. She needed a reminder that she was here, in reality. That she remained grounded on this planet, and not truly in a world where Andrew spoke to her like this, so softly and so close in the dark. She had to maintain her awareness of the circumstances. She’d done something ill-advised and inappropriate. Absolutely irresponsible. She should be deeply afraid of the consequences. The aching sense of anticipation she felt at those two words were completely misguided. This was not a moment she was going to remember as long as she lived. This was not the single best night of her entire twenty-five years. It simply wasn’t.
Della turned, and she couldn’t make herself look at him as she took slow steps across the room. She had to focus on her gait. She stared at her bare feet, willing them and the rest of her traitorous body to behave. She reached the edge of the bed, and she had to look at him then. There was nowhere else for her gaze to fall.
All the air in her lungs—all the air in the room, the world, maybe—was suspended in motion. That indistinct silhouette was gone, replaced with Andrew’s true profile highlighted in sharp relief. Moonlight danced through the gauzy curtains and hit the high points of his cheek bones. It emphasized the way his bottom lip was just the slightest bit fuller than the top.
“Della?” He wouldn’t stop saying her name, and she didn’t want him to. “What’s the matter?” He’d sat up, his torso leaning against the pillows and his shoulders resting against the headboard. Once again, she became devastatingly distracted by the skin at the top of his chest his nightshirt didn’t hide. She wanted to run her fingertips over the dip between his collarbones.
“Nothing,” she said, reflexively. Then she cursed her own strange behavior again. There was no reasonable explanation for sneaking into his room in the middle of the night if nothing was amiss. Unfortunately for Della, there was no reasonable explanation at all.
She hadn’t liked how they’d left things after their discussion in her mother’s rooms. Hated it, in fact, and instead of speaking to Andrew at some point during the day as most people would, she’d allowed herself to sit and stew and overthink every word and every gesture, until she’d ended up here. In his bedchamber. Hovering uncomfortably at the edge of the bed and staring so intently at the fine hairs on his chest that she thought she might be able to count them. Perhaps it was time to admit that indeed everything was not all right.
“I...” She twiddled her fingers, but that made her realize how much they were starting to curve in different directions, and she was no longer soothed by the motion. “I couldn’t sleep.”
