His hand in her hair, his mouth finding hers, the hunger in it that had nothing to do with control and everything to do with a man reaching for something he had trained himself to refuse.
And then, the apology was followed by his retreat.
Mary pressed her palms flat against the table and stood.
Tommy would be awake by now. Tommy needed her, and Tommy was the one thing in this house she understood.
Mary rinsed the cup in the morning room basin and set the cup on the tray. She had been sitting with Mrs. Cahill’s words for the better part of an hour. The corridor outside Evander’s study was quiet.
Mary paused on her way to the staircase, her hand resting against the wallpaper, and listened.
Through the heavy oak door, she could hear the scratch of a pen and the occasional rustle of paper being turned.
Working. Of course he’s working.
The estate ledgers, the Bow Street correspondence, and whatever other crises filled his desk would keep him sealed inside that room until dinner, and dinner would be another exercise in politeness so careful it bruised.
She could knock. She could open the door and ask about his arm, ask if the stitches held, ask if Dr. Kreutzer had been as dry and cutting as his name suggested.
She could stand in the doorway and make him look at her, and then they would both have to acknowledge what had happened in the kitchen.
Yet… the acknowledgment would either open something or close it, and Mary was not sure which possibility frightened her more.
Her hand hovered near the door. Inside, a drawer opened and shut. The pen resumed.
Mary lowered her hand and climbed the stairs.
Mrs. Bridwell met her on the landing with Tommy draped across her shoulder, his face red and unhappy, his fists working the air. “He’s been fussy all afternoon, Your Grace. I think he’s overtired but won’t give in.”
“Stubborn.” Mary took Tommy from the nursemaid’s arms and settled him against her chest. “He gets that from his uncle.”
Mrs. Bridwell smiled. “I was going to say he gets it from you, Your Grace.”
“Go and eat, Mrs. Bridwell. I have him.”
The nursemaid curtsied and disappeared down the servants’ stair. Mary stood on the landing with a fussy baby and the sound of a pen scratching somewhere below her feet, and she began to walk.
Walking settled him faster than rocking in the chair. She had discovered this two days ago when Tommy’s cries had refused to yield to any of the usual methods, and Mary had picked him up and simply started moving. Down the corridor, around the landing, past the gallery of portraits where Evander’s ancestors stared down from gilt frames with expressions ranging from stern to disapproving.
Tommy had quieted by the time they reached the end of the hall, and Mary had added walking to her growing catalog of things that worked.
She descended the staircase and turned toward the back of the house, following the servants’ corridor that ran parallel to the kitchens. The floor here was bare stone instead of carpet, and her slippers made soft, rhythmic sounds that blended with Tommy’s breathing.
His fist gripped the fabric at her collar, and his cheek pressed warm against her neck, and his weight settled into the crook of her arm with the trust of a child who did not yet know enough to doubt.
Voices drifted through the half-open kitchen door. Two of the younger maids, their words punctuated by bursts of laughter they were trying and failing to suppress.
“He brought the flour in himself this time. Carried the whole sack on one shoulder.”
“You noticed his shoulder, did you?”
“I noticed his arms, Lucy. A girl would have to be dead not to.”
More laughter, bright and conspiratorial, the sound of two young women savoring a harmless thrill over a handsome delivery boy.
Mary smiled. She had been that age once, whispering with Charlotte in their shared bedroom about which of the footmen had the nicest calves, dissolving into giggles that made their governess bang on the wall.
The smile faded as the memory turned, the way memories did lately, and led her somewhere she had not permitted it to go.
