This won him a ghost of a wry smile.
But something was still troubling her.
He tried not to frown. Somewhere between that doubtlessly difficult admission and the baffling rumination over Mrs. Locksley lay the answer to the cause of her mood tonight. He suddenly felt a bit like he was searching for shrapnel in a wound, which he had indeed once done—his own.
He had not, however, ever before, had this kind of conversation with a woman.
He did not know what she needed.
He would feel his way in the dark. He would steer with his heart.
“Do you know, Angelique,” he said conversationally, “when I first noticed your eyes... I was sitting on the little settee in your reception room, and the light was behind you. I was reminded of... well, it was a bit like looking out the window of my father’s country house as the sun was just rising. The sun seemed to touch one leaf at a time on its way up. Green and gilt. It made one restless and hopeful. As though anything wonderful could happen.”
Her head slowly lifted.
She stared at him. She in fact looked very nearly stricken.
“Doubtless you find that absurd,” he added hurriedly, somewhat panicked. Because hefeltabsurd. It wasn’t the sort of thing he would have shared with another soul.
She shook her head slowly to and fro. Still wordless.
His relief was short-lived, however. She pressed her knuckles to her lips. And that’s when he saw that her eyes, to his horror, were shining.
“If not, then dear God, why are you weeping?”
“Weeping?” she muttered scornfully. “Now who’s being absurd?” She ducked her head and sneaked one knuckle toward the corner of her eye.
He sighed, stood, and resettled himself down next to her on the little settee at a genteel distance. He retrieved a handkerchief from his pocket and held it out.
She took it wordlessly and pressed it once to each eye. “Dust,” she muttered. “I’ll have a word with those shiftless maids.”
Never mind every speck of dust that dared enter The Grand Palace on the Thames was evicted before it could even settle, let alone in the finest suite in the building, and that the maids might be a little flighty but they were ever-so-slightly more afraid of Mrs. Breedlove than of Mrs. Hardy. They both knew it.
She handed the handkerchief back to him with great conviction, as if to say:that is the last time I shall ever weep.
He tucked it back from whence it came.
Silence, unlike dust, did settle. For quite some time.
He didn’t try to disturb it.
Mainly because he hadn’t the faintest idea what to say. But sitting here with her was as interesting and fine a thing as he could imagine doing, whether or not anyone ever said a word again and the silence went on so long that her words rang like a bell when she said them quietly.
“I do not want to want you.”
She’d said these astonishing words almost lightly, ending the long silence as though they were in the midst of a conversation.
In truth, they were. They always were. A silent conversation that had begun the moment they’d laid eyes upon each other and had not ended.
The breath stilled in his lungs. Those words coursed through him as a rush of heat and ice. He thought he understood now the source of her anguish tonight.
And his heart pounded.
His every muscle was at once taut, imagining her wanting him. The way he wanted her.
“One of the grand tragedies in life is that we cannot have everything we want.” His voice was low, amused. His eyes were burning.
Her smile was just a wry lift of the corner of her mouth. She pressed her lips together.