Mary stared at the place where Evander had been and felt her throat tighten.
The library was the third.
She needed a book. Any book. Something to occupy her hands and her eyes during the long evenings when the nursery was quiet, and her room was too empty, and the only alternative was sitting in the parlor pretending she did not hear Evander’s pen scratching in his study across the hall.
She found the shelf and reached for the top row, stretching onto her toes. Her fingers grazed the spine but could not grip it.
A hand appeared above hers. Evander pulled the book down and held it out.
“Apologies.” His voice was careful, measured. “I heard you come in. I was only trying to help.”
“Thank you.” Mary took the book. Their fingers brushed against the leather. The contact lasted less than a second, and both of them pulled away.
“I had it,” she said.
“Of course.” Evander’s jaw tightened. “I should not have presumed.”
“You did not presume. It was kind.”
“It was instinct.”
They stood three feet apart in the library with a book between them, and the word “instinct” hung in the air, because both of them knew what it meant and neither of them could afford to say so.
“Goodnight, Mary.”
“Goodnight, Evander.”
She took the book to her room and did not read a single page.
Each encounter left her skin humming and her chest tight, and each time she retreated to her room or the nursery or Charlotte’sside, she pressed her hands against her face and told herself to stop. Stop remembering his mouth on hers. Stop imagining his hands. Stop replaying the softness of his kiss in the bedroom and the word he had whispered, the word that had undone everything because it was real and he could not admit it.
She pushed the thoughts away. They came back. She pushed harder. They came back louder.
By the third day, pushing had become exhausting.
The worst was the parlor. Mary had gone in to retrieve her embroidery, the disastrous rose she had been neglecting since Isabella’s visit, and Evander was standing at the window reading a letter. He turned when she entered, and their eyes met, and for two full seconds neither of them breathed.
“I was just leaving,” he said.
“I only came for my embroidery.”
“Of course.”
“It is on the settee.”
“I see it.”
Neither of them moved. The embroidery hoop sat on the settee between them like an artifact from a civilization that no longerexisted. Mary crossed the room and picked it up. Evander folded his letter and put it in his pocket. Their paths crossed near the fireplace, and his shoulder brushed hers, and the contact lasted less than a second, and Mary felt it for the rest of the afternoon.
“Sorry,” he said.
“It is a narrow room,” she said.
It was not a narrow room. It was one of the largest rooms in the house. They both knew this. They said nothing further, and Mary left with her embroidery clutched against her chest, and the rose was still terrible, and her hands were still shaking.
“He kicked the blanket off again.”
Charlotte tucked the wool back around Tommy’s legs and shook her head. “Every time. I turn around for ten seconds, and the blanket is on the floor.”