Chapter 7 #2
“Long enough to know you were weeping,” he answered. “Here,” he said, again taking her hand in his.
Jeremy eased her damp glove off until her palm lay bare and the crimson drops left by the thorns stood bright upon her fingertips. Reaching inside his dark-grey greatcoat, he withdrew a white kerchief from within his jacket.
Jeremy gave it a snap and then, with an infinite tenderness, touched the embroidered cloth to her injured flesh.
While he gently cared for her, Linnie remained motionless. She stared at his bent head and tried to reconcile this beneficent side of him with the cold, hate-filled stranger he’d been at Lord and Lady Rutland’s masquerade.
“There,” Jeremy murmured when he’d finished.
They stood there a moment. Linnie wanted it to continue on but ultimately knew, as last night had proven, these magical interludes with Jeremy were fleeting and not the forever she craved.
“I would offer to escort you back, Linnie, but—”
She interjected swiftly, “I know.” They couldn’t risk being seen together, for if a gossip happened to clap eyes on her and Jeremy together and her family were to find out . . .
She shivered. Either way, the outcome would be calamitous.
Jeremy hesitated; it appeared as though he wanted to say something more.
Please. What are you thinking? I need to know . . .
He bent a deep bow. “Goodbye, Miss Smith.”
Funny how three casual words she’d heard uttered over the course of her life should break her heart so.
Goodbye.
Miss Smith.
Emotion welled in her throat, and she cursed the McQuoid-Smith curse of free-flowing tears.
Linnie lowered her eyes so Jeremy couldn’t see those drops he’d once both teased her for and wiped away, just as he’d done this day.
“Captain Tremaine,” she murmured, sinking into a curtsy.
Jeremy nodded once.
As she watched him walk away and out of her life, panic pounded in her breast.
Today had been as chance a meeting as last night. She’d never continue to be this lucky.
His long, bold strides carried him farther and farther away—until he’d be gone from her sight entirely.
Desperate to stop him, she cried out, “Jeremy!”
With her voice echoing loud in the preternatural winter quiet, Jeremy stopped and turned back.
Even with a full five paces between them, Linnie still could make out the question in his eyes.
“I . . .” Now that she’d stayed him, she didn’t know what to say. “I . . . wanted to thank you,” she murmured. Linnie cleared her throat. “For . . . helping me, and for being so nice.”
A faint smile on his lips, Jeremy inclined his head. “No thanks necessary.”
That same sense of urgency when they’d parted moments ago compelled her to call out again. “But . . . there is. Based on last evening . . . with everything you . . .”
Jeremy slowly doubled back, and Linnie faltered until he reached her.
“With everything you said,” she said. “You were well within your rights to keep walking, and yet you stopped to help, and that . . . means so much to me,” she finished lamely.
Means so much to me?
Linnie inwardly cringed. God, how both trite and pathetic she sounded.
“What manner of gentleman would I be to leave a lady to her own devices, Linnie?”
Linnie. I am Linnie again. Not Miss Smith.
For a flicker of a second, she thought she detected a dark glimmer and double meaning to his words, but his smooth, easy, charming smile she’d dreamed about marked him as the Jeremy of old.
Unnerved by his vacillation between this version and the darker, cynical one of yesterday, she eyed him cautiously.
Linnie needed him to explain. “You said you were no gentleman, Jeremy,” she reminded him, desperately trying to make any of this make sense.
“I did not.”
She searched her mind. “I’m sure you—”
“I told you I was a rake. As such, these two things”—he lifted his index and middle finger and gave them a little waggle—“can both be true.”
Recalling as she did every last part of their exchange, she knew every word he’d spoken—both the hateful and the wicked—and yet this light glibness once again gave Linnie pause.
“Yes, you are right,” she said softly. “That is what you said. You also said the man I thought to be a gentleman only treated me with respect out of loyalty. Given that, why would you now choose to help me? Why not continue on your way and leave me stuck in the thorns?”
“I’m not a total monster,” he murmured.
No, again, there’d been his sharing his cloak with Linnie and his attempt to reassure her about her family’s intentions for her.
His expression darkened. “But do not take my aiding you to mean I’m anything good, Linnie. I’m not. I’m still a monster.” An acerbic laugh spilled from his hard lips. “As you can clearly see for yourself.”
Not for the first time, she wondered what had wrought these changes in him. She yearned to know. She ached to take him in her arms and hold him tight until he found the parts of who he’d been. They were still there, buried somewhere deep inside him.
“You’re no monster, Jeremy,” she said quietly. “You’re the same man you’ve always been.”