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The recollection of Merciless Morgan’s beady eyes gleaming with avarice stuck in Shelby’s mind.
“A pleasure doing business with you, Mr. Tellinger,” the odious man had wheezed, pocketing Shelby’s payment with fingers as gnarled and grimy as tree roots.
Shelby had resisted the urge to douse his hands in a bucket of turpentine.
With that weight off his shoulders, he could face his future unfettered by the past—by another’s bad choices.
By Mitchel Danforth’s poor decisions, to be precise.
Now free and unshackled by another’s debt, Shelby could forge a new life.
And he must know if that life included Roxina.
He wouldn’t consider another course until he had spoken to her. He swore love had glimmered in her eyes as she stared at him, facing down the barrel of Desmond’s gun.
Why else would she have used herself as a human shield?
“I am surprised.” Roxina gave a slight nod, bringing Shelby back to the present.
“Or…” Shelby leaned in and whispered sotto voce, “Are you avoiding your busybody neighbor? What would Mrs. Beale do if I swept you into my arms and kissed you soundly? Swoon? Run screeching down the street again? I’m curious to know how the citizens of Blackheath would react to another such episode.”
“You are ridiculous.” Opening the door wider, she chuckled at his antics.
Shelby stared at Roxina, thunderstruck.
God, how he loved hearing her laugh—seeing her happy.
Even in her disheveled state, never had she looked more beautiful.
Dirt smudged her gown, and she must have rubbed her face because soil marked one ivory cheek. Wisps of silky sable hair framed her sun-kissed face.
His heart swelled with love for this incomparable, unique woman.
“I had accepted that you weren’t coming.” Her whispered words held a thread of reverence and awe. Heartbreak and resignation.
“How could you ever doubt it?” Shelby pulled his brows together as he gently brushed dirt from her shoulder. “I told you, I would always be here for you, Roxina, should you ever need anything. I do not make vows lightly.”
Lifting one shoulder an inch in an unconvinced shrug, she schooled her features into a benign expression. The one she had presented to him dozens and dozens of times before when he accompanied Mitchel to his house or social gathering.
Coolly polite but absolutely impenetrable.
Shelby’s heart sank to his shiny new boots and flopped there like a banked trout.
Roxina didn’t believe him.
He couldn’t catch his breath.
Had a horse gut-kicked him, the pain couldn’t have been worse.
The notion that she doubted him—even for a moment—cleaved his chest.
Had he truly given her cause to question his devotion?
He thought back to the last weeks, to the time and space that had separated them.
To her, his absence might have seemed neglectful.
But to him, every day without her had been an aching, unbearable time, filled with thoughts of her, of them, of what he had nearly lost—could still lose.
