“By all accounts, my mother’s beauty was what first drew my father to her.” Taking the seat Evie had vacated, he stretched his legs out in front of him and his arms along the back of the bench. “That, and the knowledge they’d make a splendid match. Which they did, until she passed within hours of my sister and me being born.”
“I am sorry for your loss,” Evie said softly. “And even sorrier that you never had the chance to meet her. Every child should have their mother, even if just for a little while.”
“Do you remember your mother?” he asked. “I understand she died when you were very young, as well.”
“Yes, she did. When I try to recall her face…the details of it…” An ebony tendril, loosened from their tryst in the barn, slid free of Evie’s coiffure and tumbled across her cheek as she shook her head. “But I remember the scent of her perfume. Lilacs. She smelled like lilacs. And I remember the sound of her voice. When she was first stricken with fever, my sisters and I would all sit beside her in bed. She’d read to us for hours. Until her voice gave out. Or she grew too tired to speak. I think…” Evie’s voice cracked, and Weston’s heart ached in response.
He wanted to get up and gather her in his arms, but he didn’t trust himself. How could he, after they way he’d nearly lost all control? Thus he remained sitting, his expression carefully stoic, and allowed her to finish without interruption.
“I think she was…” As Evie paused to take a breath, she cast her gaze heavenward, and her mouth curved. “I think she was trying to fit an entire lifetime of reading into that last month she had with us. I shall never open the pages ofOliver Twistwithout thinking of her.”
“She sounds as if she were a wonderful mother,” he said gruffly.
“She was. Patient, and kind, and loving. I realize you may have a different perspective, given the…the unique relationship between her and your father, but–”
“No.” At that, Weston could not remain seated any longer. Rising from the bench, he went to Evie and gently took hold of her wrists, his fingers easily encircling the tiny bones as his thumbs came to rest on the fluttering points of her pulse. “I will admit that when I first learned of the affair, I was angry. Furious, even.”
“You?” she said, blue eyes widening in exaggerated surprise. “Furious? Surely not.”
He squeezed her hands. “Since I’ve had time to contemplate, I realize that the source of my fury stemmed not from the affair itself, but rather from learning twenty years after the fact that I have a half-sister my father never bothered to mention. I may have…misplacedsome of that anger on you and Joanna. Given the timing of your arrival, I thought that you were here for the purpose of monetary gain through blackmail, or some other nefarious means. I can see now that I was…I was wrong.”
It was the closest Weston had ever come to an outright apology. The closest hewouldcome, banning some unforeseen natural disaster or a horrific form of torture. As a prideful man, and an arrogant one besides, it was difficult for him to admit that he’d jumped to a conclusion too hastily.
But not impossible.
He owed Evie this much, if not more, for suspecting the worst of her without taking the opportunity to get to know her first. She may have been many things. High-spirited. Argumentative. Stubborn to a bloody fault. But she wasn’t a liar or a schemer, out to steal his family’s fortune. The past few days in her company had taught him that, if nothing else.
There was a flicker in Evie’s gaze. An undecipherable flash, there and gone again, like the blink of a firefly on a humid summer night. Then she smiled. Smirked, really. “You’re right. Youwerewrong. We only came here to retrieve our mother’s ring. And to find out the identity of Joanna’s birth father. It was never our intent to make any demands of you or your family. We also didn’t plan to create such a stir at the countess’ ball.”
“Two Americans set loose on theton, one the illegitimate granddaughter of a duke and the other a raven-haired goddess, and youdidn’tthink you’d cause a stir?” he said drolly.
A pleased blush enveloped her cheeks. “Is that how you think of me? As a raven-haired goddess? It has a nice ring, doesn’t it?”
He quirked a brow. “What makes you believe I think about you at all?”
“That kiss in the stables, for one.”
As he was reminded of their passionate embrace, and her response to it, Weston sobered. His behavior in the barn had been abominable from start to finish, and judging her too harshly before they’d even met wasn’t the only thing he needed to apologize for.
“Miss Thorncroft, I–”
“If you are about to mention my tears, I’d prefer you didn’t.”
He frowned. “But–”
“No, thank you.”
“I–”
“Onveryrare occasions, Lord Hawkridge, I succumb to…emotional distress. It was nothing you did,” she said before he could speak. “I was just…overwhelmed by the moment we found ourselves in. I’d like to forget it happened, if it’s all the same to you.”
“The kissing or the crying?”
“Both, I presume, as one wouldn’t have happened without the other.” Her expression grew serious. “I am not a plaything, my lord. To be picked up and cast aside whenever the whim strikes you.”
His grip on her wrists tightened imperceptibly, and then fell away as he took a step back and ran his fingers through his hair. “I know that,” he said defensively.
“Do you?” she asked. “Because what occurred in the barn implied otherwise. Not to say I wasn’t a party to it. Or that I did not enjoy myself. But I…I should like to know where I stand with you, Lord Hawkridge.”
