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“Yes,” he whispered.
“Did you look into Chunee’s eyes?”
“A remarkable beast.” He was trying. Could she see that he was trying? “But hardly suited for display as, to quote the bill, “the most scientific male elephant.”
“The saddest elephant, more like. The way his big honey-brown eyes fixed on the man with him...”
“Harrison,” Asquith supplied.
“He looked at Harrison with eyes Emily calls l’amour yeux—love eyes.”
Love eyes. Like how Lenora looked at him. Or, at least, how she had looked at him up until moments ago.
He cleared his throat. Stick to the mundane. At least until she is fully recovered. “Harrison is not one of his original keepers. He is a carpenter by trade who had worked on Chunee’s new enclosure.”
“Chunee developed an affection.” She frowned. “Poor thing.”
“Animals sense good hearts.” Hadn’t wounded Mont nuzzled her hand at their first meeting?
“Good hearts,” she echoed.
She turned her head to the side and rested her cheek against his chest. Her warm breath seeped through his layers of clothing. The rush of relief left him lightheaded.
He moved his injured hand from her hip to her neck. The tip of his crooked pinky rested against bare flesh. She hadn’t worn a high-collared spencer today. The soft layers of her low-cut bodice tickled his wrist. And the lace trim of her cap brushed across his fingers with each breath.
Mundane. Familiar. What else had happened that day? “I’m sorry I made fun of your hat.”
“Oh, that,” she ran her fingers over her simple cap reaching for the befeathered bonnet. “No need to apologize for that.”
He understood himself to be as yet unforgiven for the deeper transgression.
He regretted raising his voice. Regretted chastising her for a simple question. He regretted...everything.
Why had he not understood what he had in Lenora from the start? Why had he not taken up her challenge and fought through the obstacles between them?
Because the real Lenora wasn’t just someone he needed to protect; she was someone he wanted to love, both with his damaged heart and his damaged body.
“I looked ridiculous,” she said.
“You looked lovely.”
She sighed. “Why did you try to make me feel bad?”
“Is that what I did?”
Her nod ruffled his waistcoat’s lapel. “Then... And just now, too.”
“For what it’s worth, I’m ashamed.”
She went quiet. Then she asked, “Do you have to be ashamed? Can’t you simply be aware? And take responsibility?”
Briefly, he closed his eyes. “Guilt is necessary after bad behavior.”
“Contrition, perhaps. But wallowing is a form of self-indulgence.”
He winced. She was not wrong.
“And you,” she said, “are not, by nature self-indulgent.”
