Chapter 16
Graeme had never been more aware of his own heartbeat.
He stared down at the untouched cup of chocolate cooling on the desk, then at the doorway, then back at the cup, hoping the answer could be found within the dark depths—how was a man supposed to behave the morning after kissing a woman who made the world tilt on its axis?
He had barely slept. Every time he closed his eyes, he tasted sunlight and the miracle of her yes. And now, he had no earthly idea how to look her in the eyes.
A gentle knock broke through his thoughts. He nearly upset the chocolate.
“Mr… Graeme?” came the soft voice, her voice.
His pulse somersaulted.
The door cracked open, and Phoebe stepped inside, pausing in the doorway. Hands clasped before her, cheeks tinged with rose, and a shy smile told him she was as undone as he. But oh, that luminous smile… the world held its breath.
“Good morning,” she said.
His reply stuck in his throat. “Good… good morning.”
Brilliant, Graeme. Very suave.
Tucking a curl behind her ear, she looked everywhere except at him, the bookshelves, the windows, the tea tray, until at last, with effort, her gaze rose to meet his.
“Did you… sleep well?” she asked, then winced at her own question, painfully aware of its intimacy… or did she wince at his startled expression to have been asked so intimate a question?
“No,” he blurted, then, in a panic, lest she misinterpret, “That is, I slept adequately. Perfectly adequately.”
Silence followed. Not cold, not strained, charged, too full of yesterday morning to navigate. He should never have let her leave the gallery, not without something to anchor them to the day ahead. Another painting session, a walk, anything.
He gestured towards the tray in a hurried attempt at normality. “Would you care for chocolate? Or tea? I can ring…” Good Lord, Graeme, stop talking. “Tea?”
She tittered nervously. “Tea would be lovely.”
He poured with unsteady hands. She reached to take the saucer at the same moment he passed it. Their hands bumped, fingers brushing.
She jerked away, startled.
He froze.
Her hand inched back towards the cup, fluttering with indecision. It struck him like a blow. Heat rose up his neck.
“Forgive me,” he murmured. “I didn’t mean—”
“No! No, it was only, I—” She fumbled. “I’m not usually so fidgety in the morning.”
Breathe, man. She is embarrassed, not recoiling.
He covered his awkwardness with a smile. “Nor I.”
Phoebe returned the smile, hers flickering between tender and timid, smothered beneath some delicate restraint neither seemed able to shake. Tea in hand, at last, she wandered towards a window and gazed out over the grounds.
“It’s a lovely day,” she said.
“Yes, it is.”
Another hush. Comfortable, yet perilous, like standing at the edge of a cliff, the sea churning below.
She angled enough for him to see her profile in the morning light. Her lashes lowered. “About… yesterday.”
His heart punched his ribs. “Yes?”
Was it his imagination, or did her fingers tighten around the teacup? “I hope I did not… behave foolishly.”
Foolishly? Foolishly? My Lord, had the moment meant so little to her?
“No, you could never.” He rose and approached her, but not close enough to touch. Oh, how he wanted to reach out, wrap an arm around her waist, pull her to him….
Her breath hitched, a small, telling sound, and she nodded but did not lift her gaze. And he did not reach for her.
How was he to read this moment? Or was it yesterday’s moment that he had misread?
Returning her cup to the tray, she smoothed her hands over her gown. “I… I should go. I promised Fanny I would…”
“Of course,” he said before she could finish, although every fiber within him wished to cry, “Stay!”
She moved towards the door with slow, uncertain steps. Reluctant to leave? At the threshold, she looked back, offering a meek smile that weakened his knees.
“Until later?” she asked.
“Yes. Later,” he vowed.
And then she hurried away.
Graeme pressed his palms to the edge of the desk, grounding himself in the solid wood.
Had he frightened her? Moved too quickly?
Made himself too vulnerable with his earnest attraction?
She did not regret the moment; he did not believe, but he wagered she was frightened.
As was he. Not of the kiss, of everything it implied. Only everything.
With a sigh, he let his head fall forward. If he was not careful, if he kept tumbling towards her at this rate, he was going to lose his heart entirely. In fact, he suspected he already had.
Long after Phoebe’s footsteps faded down the corridor, Graeme remained in the study, alone with the humming quiet she left behind. The silence felt different this morning, too sharp, too full, as though it carried the echo of her yes and the breathless press of her lips.
He had kissed her.
More impossible still: she had kissed him back.
He closed his eyes, letting the memory wash over him, recalling the tremble of her breath, the way her hand had curled onto his sleeve, the quiet little sound she made when he deepened the kiss.
Heaven help him. He wanted her. Not in the idle, daydream way a man might admire a beautiful woman, but deep in his marrow, within the vulnerable place he had kept locked from the world.
This wanting made everything inside him turn precarious.
And now, he replayed every detail of their parting.
Her startled flinch when their hands touched, her shy question of how he slept, the nervous smile in the doorway.
Embarrassment? Or regret? Had she enjoyed the moment in the gallery, or had she only submitted to the heat of that moment?
She had teased him about being “a fellow tradesman,” more truth than jest, perhaps.
What future could she imagine with a humble clerk?
What did she believe he could promise her? Love alone?
Graeme paced the room, dragging a hand through his hair. His steps, almost of their own volition, carried him to the locked drawer where the codicil lay hidden. His hand hovered over the brass handle. He knew every line of that cursed document by heart.
The inheritance would free her. Not only from her father but from the shadow of a ruined reputation and the necessity of marriage, free her from needing any man. It would free her to choose her own life.
Free her… from him.
The thought struck sharply, venomously. He braced himself against the desk, exhaling through the ache that if she learned of the codicil now, too soon, before there was anything solid between them, she would have no reason to stay.
Independence would open every door she had been denied, and she would be free to choose any life she wished.
Why would she choose a life tied to him?
And yet… he wanted her to have everything.
He wanted her free and happy.
But he also wanted, God forgive him, time.
The moment he gave her the codicil, he would lose any hope of being counted among her choices. “She deserves freedom,” he murmured to the empty room. “I want her to have the freedom she desires. But… I also want time…”
Time to know her.
Time to court her.
Time to see whether these feelings, wild, impossible, and glorious, could become something enduring.
Was it selfish to want this? Perhaps. Dishonorable to delay the codicil a little longer?
Perhaps. But he was not denying her the inheritance forever, he reasoned, only borrowing a little time and courage before he handed her the freedom that might take her from him.
At the back of his thoughts was the estate solicitor’s most recent inquiry about the codicil, a brief and impatient letter from London, concerned only with the estate’s precarious financial position and indifferent to the human cost of haste.
Haste… the very element he did not want, not now.
He paced anew, mind racing ahead of his feet.
What if what they shared in the gallery was not merely a moment but the start of something more?
What if she felt even a fraction of the pull he felt?
What if he could show her that he was worthy of her trust?
Worthier than her father, worthier than Freddy?
What if she chose him even after she was free?
His breath caught.
Dangerous hopes. Foolish hopes. Hope, after all, was the most treacherous emotion of all.
Graeme sank into the chair, bracing his elbows on his knees and covering his face with both hands. He was not prepared for this. He certainly was not prepared for her, not for wanting her so fiercely so soon, or losing her before he had a chance.
Phoebe closed her chamber door with her back pressed against it, her breath catching in her throat as though she had run the length of the manor.
She had expected to feel timid after the kiss, a little flustered, but never like this.
This strange, uncontainable flutter beneath her ribs, a fire within her breast, spreading as if something in her had been cracked open and filled with light.
She pressed her fingers to her lips. They still tingled.
Graeme’s kiss had not been stolen, not coaxed, not claimed. It had been gentle, devoted, intentional, a kiss that said you matter. No one had ever kissed her like that.
She crossed to the dressing table and sat, staring at but not seeing the painted chinoiserie.
Then the humiliation of the morning returned in vivid detail: the way she had fumbled the teacup, stammered, asked that utterly dreadful question about whether he had slept.
Saints preserve her. What sort of woman asked a man that?
But he had been so formal, so stiff, so unlike the man who had kissed her in the gallery. She had panicked. Surely he had regretted the kiss. Surely he feared she expected something from him now, courtship, promises, all the inevitabilities that followed a kiss.
But then… did she expect those things? No… but she hoped. Hope was a fragile creature, flightless but fluttering.
Love.
She had only just sworn it off, vowed she would never fall prey to such foolishness again. One kiss, and here she was, thinking of him, wanting him, aching from it all. But this was different. This was not gullibility falling for a practiced charmer. Graeme was no Freddy. He was… he was genuine.
And worst, most wonderful of all—
“He sees me,” she whispered to the empty room.
He did not see her as her father’s ornament, not a foolish girl who ruined herself on the promise of love, and especially not a dowryless burden.
No… he sees me.
The thought unraveled her.
Unsteady and terrifying, hope fluttered.
With trembling fingers, she traced the edge of the table.
Wanting was dangerous. Wanting had cost her everything once before. But… Graeme listened. Graeme cared. Graeme looked at her as though she were more than beauty and more than money.
Could he truly want her without money, though?
A fine thing to like her, but could a tradesman-turned-solicitor, however kind, however good, afford to marry a woman who brought nothing with her but a tarnished name and a bruised heart?
She had no dowry, no security, no father’s approval, nothing to offer him, nothing to tempt him, nothing but herself.
She knew all too well she was not enough.
She inhaled a shaky breath, gripping the table corner until the wood bit into her palm.
What if leaning into this, whatever this was, only made the fall harder? What if his awkwardness this morning had been a warning, and she was too giddy to heed that warning? What if he woke tomorrow and realized he wanted something simpler, cleaner, safer than a woman with her past?
Her heart twisted.
How humiliating it would be to want him more than he wanted her. How painful to reach out and find no hand reaching back.
Clutching her gown with her free hand, she swallowed against the sting behind her eyes. Foolish, foolish girl! All this turmoil over one kiss and one awkward morning!
Phoebe hardly knew herself now. The old Phoebe would have marched into the study, grabbed the man by his cravat, and kissed him senseless.
But she was no longer that Phoebe. That girl had been cracked open and emptied.
What remained was the fragile core of someone who had once believed in love, someone afraid to believe again.
This… this feeling for Graeme frightened her. It unsteadied her. It awakened something in her she thought long dead. She could not trust herself not to love him too much. Her heart beat too fast. Her fears tangled with yearning.
He had not yet claimed her heart, but his kiss had been enough to stir it from sleep.