Doubtless the death of her dreams had left a vacancy in her soul and lust, like an opportunistic demon, had seen an opportunity to move in when she was at her weakest. What other reason could there be?
Inexplicably, it was the most alive she’d felt in weeks. There was a good deal of unworthy satisfaction in knowing that Hugh Cassidy would not be getting what he wanted, either.
And what he wanted was her.
She sighed, drank another cup of growing-cold coffee, and contemplated what to do with the empty, quiet hours ahead of her.
She would never dare tell anyone in her family that she’d come to rather enjoy having them underfoot. She liked all the bickering, laughing, and rustling about in the mornings and evenings. There was so much echoing space, so much coming and going in their London home and their country home, and so many servants to tidy them andmanage them as they moved through their days so that no evidence of actual living—crumbs, a stray stocking, an open book—was left to linger for long.
Although it was admittedly convenient to come in the door from a walk and hold out her pelisse and have an arm take it away at once to be hung in her wardrobe. That sort of thing.
From the window she could see, down below in the courtyard of The Grand Palace on the Thames, an improbably lush little garden about the size of four picnic blankets sewn together, complete with little trees and blooming flowers, enclosed in a wrought iron fence. She hadn’t yet visited it.
“Even the poor flowers are in jail,” she muttered.
Surely it wasn’t violating the spirit of her sentence if she were to have a look? Of a certainty, itwason the premises. She hesitated.
Then she snatched up her sketchbook and a packet of pastel crayons and a holder, and made her way down the stairs and burst into the cool, clear morning.
She lifted the latch on the gate and ventured in. The shortest little flagstone path led to a pair of wood and wrought iron benches arranged across from each other. A dense little thicket of tall, healthy trees stood at one end. Some of them were the fruiting sort, and were now breaking out in blooms; flowers on stalks were crowded chummily between them, and arranged in a circle at the center.
She settled on one bench sporting a little engraved plaque and stared down at her sketchbook.
Perhaps she would draw a flower.
The impulse to move her hand across the page,a sensation once so delicious, seemed to have deserted her. She wondered if it was because it had once been born of joy.
She stared at the blank page until she saw black spots before her eyes. Then she shaded her eyes with her hand very briefly, a fleeting, despairing gesture of the sort she seldom allowed herself to indulge in. And certainly never when anyone else was about.
She let her hand heavily fall to the blank page again, sighed, and raised her eyes absently toward the cluster of trees.
Her heart leaped into her throat.
Standing as still as a tree—in fact, looking like a cousin to a tree—was Hugh Cassidy.
He was wearing buckskins, boots, a black coat, and a gradually growing, rather wicked smile.
In his hand was what appeared to be a letter.
“Well,goodmorning, Persephone. Something about your expression suggests you wouldn’t mind if Hades would burst through the earth right now to pull you under.”
It was a moment before she could pull enough air to speak.
“Forgive me for disturbing you, Mr. Cassidy. It’s just that I might have easily mistaken you for a tree if you hadn’t been staring so intently at me.”
He offered a gently solicitous smile. “My apologies. Would you prefer that I do something else to you, instead?”
Her heart thunked as though toppled from a turret. Blood rushed into her cheeks. The backs of her arms went hot.
She couldn’t speak.
His sympathetic smile was the sort a master fencer would aim at a novice.
Mr. Cassidy, she realized,alwayscame out fighting. Which she supposed was flattering: it was a measure of the sort of adversary he saw in her.
He moved toward her slowly. Then lowered his large self slowly, gracefully, down on the bench across from her, as if he didn’t want to spook her.
They regarded each other.