Page 14 of The Boxer’s Belle

“It’s your home.”

A queer expression crossed Eliza’s face, one Bella couldn’t name. Still, Eliza made her way to the end of the bed. “It is your home as well.”

“Is it?” The question slipped free without permission. For a moment the words hung between the two women, heavy and pointed.

“Of course.”

Bella nodded. She had no particular interest in a more earnest discussion with her sister by law. “I trust you are feeling better?” she asked instead.

Eliza shifted, her gaze flicking down to her lap. “Ah, yes.”

“I assume you’ve not shared the news with Ben yet?”

“Shared what with Benedict?”

Unwilling to play act at ignorance, Bella tipped her brow skyward again.

Eliza sighed. “Do you think he suspects?”

A half-hearted puff of laughter escaped Bella’s chest. “My brother is a great many things. A quick study of the female condition is not one of them.”

A flush bloomed across Eliza’s cheeks. “He’s studied a few things.”

A more genuine laugh bubbled out of Bella. “So I’ve heard.”

Eliza’s hands came up to cover her burning face. “Oh, good Lord. I am so⁠—”

“Let us never speak on it again.”

“Please,” Eliza agreed readily. “I actually came to apologize.”

“Whatever for?”

“That,” she said, tipping her head toward the window.

Bella’s gaze shifted back outside where West was still dragging his chin up to the bar—she could practically taste the metallic tang that certainly clung to his fingers.

“Not the view, of course— We can all appreciate that. But his presence here.”

“Ben invited him.”

“No— Well, yes. But on my request. It is only… you sounded genuinely distressed this morning when you spoke to Benedict and I— I should have asked you first.” Eliza was entirely genuine in her tone. She hadn’t mastered the practice of artifice in the months since Bella first met her.

“It’s your home,” Bella repeated.

“But it was your home first. And I’ve been—” She broke off with a sigh before catching Bella’s gaze again. “I’ve been trying so hard to be a proper countess that I may have overstepped. Quite a lot. In this and… perhaps a few other areas.”

Bella desperately wished to be anywhere else in that moment. She may have felt a great deal of guilt for her part in the events of the previous spring, and she had abandoned her previous animosity toward Eliza and her father, but she had no desire to deepen their relationship beyond that of acquaintances who happened to share a living space.

“I haven’t the slightest notion of what you’re speaking.”

“Bella… Never mind. I only came to say that I’ll send West back to town if that is what you wish. You needn’t see him again.”

The offer was precisely what Bella wished—to never have to see Miles Weston again. So why did the notion sit so uneasily?

She exhaled, slow and shaky. “That is not necessary.”

“I will— I can even blame it on my… condition.”