His hands lingered there, lightly. Long enough that he could feel the lift of her rib cage when she drew in a long, shaky breath. Long enough to feel the soft, warm give of her waist.
She slowly raised her eyes to his.
He lifted his hands.
“Go inside, Lillias,” he whispered. He said it almost roughly. “You don’t know what you’re doing.”
“I’ll warrant you’ll spend the rest of the night thinking about me, Mr. Cassidy,” she replied softly. “And that alone proves I know exactly what I’m doing.”
And then, like one of the eleven or twelve ghosts Angelique had teased about, she turned and vanished swiftly through the door the way she’d come.
Chapter Nine
“Lillias, Claire. Something terrible has happened!”
Lillias was in the midst of splashing water on her face—the way she began every morning—and flew, dripping, out of her bedroom, nearly colliding with Claire dashing out of her own room.
For the next few seconds, a veritable abyss of horrible possibilities opened and howled at her feet.
“Your father tried to hire away the cook. And now the ladies of The Grand Palace on the Thames want to throw us out.”
Lillias stumbled to the settee and sat down hard, then dropped her face in her hands. “Thank God!”
The worst thing she could imagine was losing anyone she loved.
Claire sank down next to her.
Relief made Lillias weak. Which was how epiphany swept in with a violence: Hugh Cassidy had lost so many people he loved. How on earth was he still able to face each day?
Let alone climb a ladder to the roof, lecture her, and refuse to kiss her when she’d all but stood there in the misty, starlit moonlight and, like a wanton, implied he ought to go ahead and do it?
“It’s rather embarrassing,” her mother added, more mildly. “And your father and I don’t want to leave.”
“More embarrassing than Papa shooting a hole in our walls?” Claire said somberly.
Lillias peered through her hands at Claire and flashed a smile.
But her mother seemed genuinely distressed.
“But Mrs. Hardy and Mrs. Durand wouldn’t make us leave... would they? But... they’re so very amiable,” she pointed out gently.
“And strict,” her mother reminded her, with a certain regretful relish.
“There are other places we could go...” Claire ventured, reluctantly. There likely were, but there was no guarantee that rooms would be either available or comfortable for all of them.
“Your father and I like it here,” her mother said firmly. “We like having everyone together in one suite. And it’s so inconvenient to move everyone all at once.”
Her mother poured tea for the daughters she’d startled awake and a lull settled in and heartbeats slowed and nerves quieted.
And it was strange... but as of late, when Lillias awoke in the morning, she enjoyed three blissful seconds of consciousness before Landover-Ball-dread rolled in like a cloud bank.
This morning, her first thought had been of sitting with Hugh Cassidy out on the roof.
It had also been her last before she’d finally, just before dawn, slept.
From his first appearance on the roof holding a lamp, like Diogenes looking for an honest manuntil he swung her down from the ladder—she’d spent the balance of the night poring over every moment as though they were tea leaves. Butnow, in the hard light of day,the dread set in.
Ten more days.