She stood still, the way she did with the students when they were getting rowdy. Sometimes silence was more effective than words. It was a trick she’d learned from her mother, of all people. Her mother had wielded silence with the same sharp precision she’d used her words.
“Do you always use that smile of yours to beg for forgiveness instead of permission?” she asked at last.
He shrugged. “I can’t help it if it works much of the time. What’s a few pieces of paper?”
“To a man who runs the largest lumber company in the northeast, I suppose nothing,” she said. “Our circumstances are a little more dear.”
He set down the pen, genuinely chastened. “My apologies, Miss Murray. I’m a little out of sorts. I’m not used to being so dependent on other people.”
“I brought you some coffee,” she replied. “You must have slept horribly in that chair.”
He rose and accepted it from her, but stood nearby, looking eye to eye. “Beats the gallows.”
“Before you send off any notes, check with Dominic,” she said. “If your whereabouts are traced here, you put Everwell at risk—and I can’t let that happen.”
“Of course not,” he said. “I have a contact in Boston, and I’ve asked him to send something to the company on my behalf. Throw them off my scent as it were. He owes me a favour.”
Maddy couldn’t disguise the surprise that must have come over her, because Mr. da Silva flashed that telltale smile.
“You didn’t think I’d be that smart,” he said.
Damn him for reading her mind. “You don’t know what I think.”
“I have a long history of people underestimating me, Miss Murray,” he said, and Maddy couldn’t help but wonder at the hint of bitterness that marred that otherwise cocky grin. “Though I might be a tad bit disappointed you have.”
Maddy swallowed the unexpected sting of his retort. The warmth of his body and the brushing of Foster’s silk robe against the wood of her desk as he rose captured her attention. He gave her a cursory glance, then walked to the door.
“I didn’t see the book,” he said, pausing just before he left. “Did you not like it after all?”
The book? Heat rose into Maddy’s cheeks even as she pushed away the sensation that he cared if she’d displayed the expensive poetry book.
It was already gone, delivered by Reg Knickle to Mrs. Cornish. According to Reg, Mrs. Cornish had been moved to tears upon its return.
It had been so hard to give it up. Maddy had loved it. Loved it the way she loved so many of the other books in her collection—they were filled with beautiful plates of flowers or pages of verse. Words she could lose herself in, if only for a little while. But there had been something even more particular about that one book, and Maddy would die a thousand deaths than admit to anyone, including herself, why it had been so hard to part with. He’d bought that book for her because he’d decided she’d deserved such a beautiful gift. Even if it was just to aggravate his aunt.
“It’s where it belongs,” she said at last, as much to herself as to him.
“By your bed, I hope,” he said, raising his eyebrows, a sly grin on his face as he walked out the door.
Chapter Six
Maddy ran her fingers over the spines of the books stacked on her bedside table. Normally, choosing a book to read was a pleasurable sort of agony. In the most private parts of her imagination, she imagined them as suitors, eager that she might bestow her favour upon them. Even alone, her cheeks warmed with embarrassment at the idea. She devoured fairy tales, yellow-backs, and romantic poetry because they allowed her the fantasy that, at least within the pages of the books, she might be worthy of a man’s desire. It was a secret she would take to her grave rather than reveal.
She pulled out a slim volume of John Donne’s poems and a copy of Sense and Sensibility from the pile, sliding them in her case alongside a few other titles. If she was going to be miserable for an undetermined length of time watching Beau da Silva, torn from her roses and the safe familiar space of Everwell, she reasoned, she could allow herself some modicum of comfort.
She’d just closed the trunk when a knock at her door snagged her attention. Recognizing the quick taps as Rimple’s, she called out for her to come in.
“How is the packing?” her friend asked, poking her head around the threshold.
Maddy looked down at the modest chest sitting on her bed. Once upon a time her mother would have insisted on her packing an entire wardrobe for a trip like this. This time she’d packed far more books and equipment than changes of clothes.
“Done.”
“The train departs in an hour,” she said. “Phillipa’s got her watch out.”
Maddy wanted to roll her eyes. “Is he ready?”
Rimple nodded, walked into the room, sat on the bed, and took Maddy’s hand.
