What if he was the only man she’d ever want in this way?
Her stomach tensed at this, too.
Because it seemed he no longer wanted her.
In the drawing room at The Grand Palace on the Thames, she surreptitiously studied Mrs. Hardy and Mrs. Durand and Captain Hardy and Lord Bolt, and wondered about their road to this domesticity—there Lord Bolt sat, holding yarn, while Mrs. Durand knitted, Captain Hardy quietly, intently listened toThe Arabian Nights’ Entertainmentsread by Mrs. Pariseau. Had their romances been paved with turmoil? Or passionate grappling?
“Well. Let that be a lesson to you,” Lady Wisterberg said, after they had looked their fill at Colin Eversea’s suit. “It is best to associate with men whose clothing does not end up in museums. Or whose names do not regularly appear in the gossip sheets.”
Catherine and Lucy exchanged swift, droll glances and she led them out of the place to go and get ices.
Within a few days of his return from Sussex, it had become very clear to Catherine that Lord Kirke had drawn a line between the two of them again. This one seemed absolutely impermeable.
He appeared in the sitting room at night, and he either played chess with Mr. Delacorte, or brought a book and quietly read it, or wrote letters or speeches and whatnot at a little table. He did no further orating.
He did not look her way or address her.
Not even once.
This omission seemed so violently apparent to her that she thought surely it was obvious to others, too. But no: the events in the sitting room at night were as peaceful, cheerful, and civilized as ever, with the clicking of knitting needles, the rustle of pages turning, the murmur of voices, the delighted commentary from listeners to the stories inThe Arabian Nights’ Entertainments. And this was so at odds with how she felt it seemed as though she was observing it all from within a dream.
Suddenly it seemed to her that she was on as much tenterhooks as poor Scheherazade, who had to wait night after night to see if she would get to keep her head.
She began to wonder if he had perhaps found the way she kissed unsatisfactory, though all signs at the time had pointed to otherwise. Perhaps he thought of her as a mere country girl, unsophisticated, not worthy of additional time or attention, after he’d satisfied his curiosity. He’d compared her to clover, after all.
Or perhaps—and this made her stomach turn over in sick misery—she had vacated his mind completely, the way one wouldn’t continuously reminisce about or yearn for a perfectly ordinary meal.
She found it difficult to believe any of this was true. But what did she know?
It was as though he was afraid one look from him would feed her fevered imagination and hopes. Which was galling.
Her character clearly held unanticipated corridors, and she would never have known if she hadn’t journeyed to London.
It seemed wildly unfair that she would be left to wonder, even as she knew it was sensible to let itbe. If she were wise, she would simply follow his example.
A lull in entertainments left Catherine at loose ends the following afternoon, so she decided to visit the library room in the annex in search of a new book to read.
She froze in the doorway when she got there.
Her heart catapulted into her throat.
Lord Kirke was sitting at the little table. His coat was hung over the back of the chair, his shirt sleeves rolled up, leaving his forearms bare.
His quill was darting across a half sheet of foolscap, and around him on the table he had built a little fort of fanned-open books and papers and ink and sand.
She supposed this room offered him more space to spread out.
She stared at him in faint surprise, jarred into a realization. She so seldom saw him in the full blast of sunlight. And she’d been spending so much time of late with coltish boys and dewy young women that she was suddenly forcefully reminded Kirke was a mature Man, with a capital “M,” and not a young one—the contrast seemed stark in this light. Everything about him seemed more distinct, imposing. Outside of his dark coat, the shoulders filling his white shirt seemed vast. His arms were corded with muscle and dusted with intimidatingly manly hair, dark as the hair on his head. In which a thread or two of silver glinted. His expression was absorbed and remote, and he seemed charged with fierce purpose. His fist had quite a passionate grip on his quill.
Suddenly confused and abashed, she hoveredin the doorway in an agony of indecision about whether to stay or go. It suddenly seemed outlandish that she knew how he tasted, or had ever had the nerve to kiss him first. Or that she knew how it felt when those strong, hairy arms tightened around her body as if she was the thing anchoring him to earth.
His head swiveled as if he’d heard a sound.
She could have sworn his breath stopped when he saw her. He was utterly still.
He rose slowly to his feet.
The only movement for the next few moments was the curtain at the window, languidly lifting in a breeze.
