Emmeline’s chest tightened so fiercely that she had to turn toward the nearest shelf for a moment. Her fingers brushed the spine of a slim blue volume without seeing the title. She could hear Aaron behind her, answering more slowly now, still stammering, still pausing, but not fleeing the conversation.
She opened the book in her hand and looked down blindly.
Poetry.
Her eyes caught on a line about longing and immediately, traitorously, Rowan’s presence filled her awareness. He stood somewhere behind her, too close and too quiet, and she knew without turning that he was watchingher.
Her fingers tightened around the book.
She imagined, foolishly, what it would be like if he came up behind her and reached past her shoulder to take it. If his chest brushed her back. If his voice lowered at her ear and asked whether she liked poetry. She would answer something sensible, of course. Something composed. But her body would burn before he touched her.
“Aaron has chosen three,” Rowan said behind her.
Emmeline turned too quickly.
He was closer than she expected. The dark scent of him threaded through the paper and dust and beeswax, close enough that she had to look up to meet his gaze.
Aaron appeared beside them with three books hugged to his chest and Biscuit tucked awkwardly beneath one arm. “This one has a m-map.”
“Then it is essential,” Emmeline said gravely.
The shopkeeper wrapped the books carefully. Rowan paid without comment.
Only when they reached the carriage did Emmeline notice the fourth parcel in Rowan’s hand.
“I thought Aaron chose three,” she said.
“He did.”
Her gaze dropped to the parcel. “Then what is that?”
Rowan handed it to her. “You looked at it.”
For a moment, the lane, the carriage, even Aaron’s chatter seemed to fall back.
Emmeline stared at the neat brown paper, her fingers closing around it slowly. “You bought it because I looked at it?”
His eyes held hers, steady and unreadable. “Was I mistaken?”
She could not speak at once. Her fingers tightened around the parcel, the paper crackling softly beneath her grip, because something inside her had gone painfully still before it could soften. He had noticed her. In the middle of watching Aaron, guarding the village, enduring greetings and gossip and his own rigid control, Rowan had seen one small thing she had touched.
“No,” she said softly. “You were not mistaken.”
His gaze dropped to her mouth for the briefest moment.
Her breath caught.
Then Aaron climbed into the carriage with Biscuit and cried, “Bark! We must read them at once.”
The moment broke, but not cleanly.
As Rowan helped Emmeline up, his hand closed around hers, firm and warm.
For one heartbeat, he did not release her.
The smallest thing, really. A husband helping his wife into a carriage. A courtesy any gentleman might offer without thought. Yet Emmeline felt it move through her with quiet, dangerous force.
She looked down at their joined hands, at the contrast of her glove against the strength of his fingers, and her breath caught softly.
