She would not allow him to take it from her.
But now she was staring at him, as if he were a stranger.
His complexion was gray-white in the wan light of dawn. Perhaps it was strain, or weariness, or grief. His hand was visibly trembling as he ran it over his jaw. She stared, mesmerized by the glints of copper whiskers along his chin, this profoundly intimate thing she had never seen because she had never awakened in bed with a man.
“Thank you,” was all he said. He sounded broken. He was clearly in terrible pain. But what had she expected?
She could not accurately say whether any of his suffering had anything to do with her. Perhaps itwas moot. Her own was blinding. Her own was crippling.
“For the forgetting?” Her shock sent the words out almost blithely.
His breath was audible.
“For the comfort,” he said firmly. “And for the pleasure of your beautiful body.”
The effort to say these words clearly cost him.
What was happening? She didn’t know why these polite, honest, very true words were like a sword stuck right through her.
His voice was a graveled hush.
He said very carefully, “I have asked Dot to hail a hack. She thinks it’s for me. It will be waiting outside. Your parents will be ill with worry if you aren’t home straightaway. And we must have you out of here safely before everyone is awake.”
She was already furiously moving, faster than she’d ever moved, yanking on her clothing, clawing her fingers through her hair to straighten it and twist it up into its pins, jamming her feet into shoes.
She seized her pelisse and thrust her arms in.
Could she blame him?
Grief could be a madness.
Same as love.
Same as love.
There was indeed no one to blame. She at least could truly say that. She’d wanted him. God, how she’d wanted him. He knew it. She’d taken and partaken. It had been glorious.
And now she supposed they were truly done.
Because Giles would arrive at their family townhouse at five o’clock and she would need to be there.
“Lillias.”
But he said nothing more and she’d lost the ability to speak and it didn’t seem to be anything more than a word, anyhow. A sort of “amen.”
She turned and, with as much dignity as she could muster, made her way quickly down the stairs.
Chapter Twenty-Three
“A package has come for you, Mr. Cassidy. It was brought by a messenger.”
Hugh had come down the stairs not more than an hour after Lillias left, though he wasn’t certain why. He was vaguely aware that he was a little hungry. It could be Armageddon—and of a certainty, the morning after saying goodbye to Lillias felt like it—and he was fairly certain his appetite wouldn’t leave him.
He was met in the foyer by Dot. The only maid who’d forgiven him for becoming engaged, and who had let Lillias into The Grand Palace on the Thames last night and likely knew precisely where she had gone and what they’d gotten up to, held the package out to him, eyeing him with a combination of pity and reproach, which was only what he deserved.
It was wrapped in brown paper and tied with a string. There was no indication who it might be from.
He took it from her.