He looked up at her.
She took a breath. “I should like to say... I am very sorry that I hurt your feelings when earlier I implied... that you were cold.”
He went still.
Clearly absolutely stunned.
And then, before she realized she was doing it, she reached across the table and slowly, gently laid her hand on top of his.
It was, on the surface, an instinctive transferring of comfort to another human.
His eyes flared at once in surprise. Then, she felt an unmistakable heat at the base of her spine as surely as a torch had been swiftly touched there.
And from there it spread everywhere, everywhere in her body.
Oh, he was too much for her. She’d already known that.
But the deeper truth was that she could not go another moment not knowing if she could feel that force that hummed inside him. The thing that shortened her breath when she walked into a room that contained him. That made her brace herself as if she was about to go off the jetty.
They both stared at her hand over his. His skin was hot.
If she shifted her hand a very little, she could feel his pulse.
Her courage did not extend that far.
And then she withdrew her hand, and folded both hands together as if sheathing weapons.
She fancied her hand still buzzed.
She kept her head ducked.
Neither one of them spoke for a long moment.
She looked up to find him motionless, his expression carefully unreadable, eyes fixed on her, and the clock hand twitching forward to four o’clock.
They heard the rattle of the tea tray borne by Dot coming down the hall.
“I don’t think I want to learn the Italian word for ‘jetty,’” she said, finally. “Hopefully I’ll never again find it terribly useful.”
Chapter Ten
The sitting room that night was filled with chatter and the homey, domestic snick of scissors and the rustle of industry. All feminine hands were needed to fashion stars and roses and to embroider the initials TGPOTT into twenty surprisingly fine white handkerchiefs. No consensus had yet been reached about how to make the ceiling of the ballroom midnight blue.
Captain Hardy, who knew how much handkerchiefs cost, had eyed them askance on his way into the smoking room.
So far he hadn’t asked any questions.
The duke was out. Perhaps dining with a family who were blessed with a pretty daughter or two. Mariana could hardly stop it. Why wouldn’t he enjoy their company?
But she’d excused herself from the sitting room earlier than usual that evening, to be alone with the enormity of the things she felt that she had no business feeling.
She settled gingerly in at the little desk in her room and stared at the foolscap, her old friend, and thought:
Dear Mama,
I hope this finds you well.
Help me. Oh, help me please. I need help. I am worried.
