Chapter 9 #2
He looked down at her fingers linked with his. “Of course.”
It had been easy enough to promise when she went away from him. She had been upset, yes, but her distress was threaded through with amusement. He had done that, he thought with some satisfaction. He had made what she carried less heavy.
But when she returned to the stand of trees off the path where he waited for her, the warmth on her face had fled. She did not come up to him or take his hand.
Which—well. He did not want her to, of course. He wanted to keep his distance from her. Except her face had changed while she was gone. Her skin looked marble-cold, her lips pale, and he could not quite recall why he was not supposed to warm her.
“Are you all right?” he asked.
“They’re fine. They’re well. They will not follow us.”
Christian wondered if she’d misunderstood his question on purpose. “And you?”
“Oh,” she said, and laughed, a short, uneven sound. “Yes, of course, I—” She broke off. Her gaze was on the ground, and then it was on his face, searching. She bit her lower lip.
He should not move closer to her. He should not put his hands on her shoulders.
Only—why should he not? He meant only to keep her warm.
He touched the outside of her cloak with his knuckles, a whisper of connection.
“It was harder,” she said abruptly, “to lie to her face. Than it was to lie in the note I left.” She looked up.
He was closer to her now, and she had to tip her head back to look him in the eye.
“I tried to remind myself why I was doing it—for your sister, to right what I had set wrong—but it did not feel right at all. I—” She swallowed, and he thought her voice might have broken if she had continued on.
“Matilda,” he said, “you don’t have to talk about it if you do not wish to.” He turned his hand so that his palm cupped her shoulder, and he felt her lean against it, the barest hint of pressure into his hand. He would have liked to take her weight. He would have liked to ease her.
She shook her head. “I told her all manner of truths mixed with lies—that we were to be married, that I loved you, that I did not want to be a Halifax Hellion any longer. I told her to pay attention to the bloody idiot at her side who has pined for her for years. And I am such a hypocrite!”
He had not expected that. He pressed his palm against the soft, yielding flesh of her shoulder, then slid his hand to the back of her neck. He wanted to bring her into his body, but he could not. “How do you mean?”
“I was angry with her.” Matilda’s voice rasped.
“She did not listen to me. I told her not to follow. I told her I knew my own mind. I—I told her she did not trust me. But I have been lying to her for years. I wanted to protect her—Margo—she is so sensitive! She blames herself—she takes things so painfully to heart, I—” Her lashes were wet and dark.
He made a soothing noise, the kind he would have used on Bea when she was a child. “It’s all right. It’s all right to be angry.”
She lifted her lashes, and her expression was fierce and uncompromising. “Have I told you why we got sent down from finishing school?”
He shook his head.
Her jaw went hard as she clenched her teeth, her lips tightening for a heartbeat before she spoke.
“After our parents died, Spencer didn’t know what to do with us.
He was only nineteen. He asked if we wanted to go to school, and we did.
We loved it: the books, the teachers, the other girls.
But that first year we—we had a dancing master. He—”
Christian’s heart clenched as he looked at her, vibrating with indignation before him. He felt a swoop of fear for what she was about to say.
“God,” she went on, “it’s been so long and I am still so angry.
He desired Margo. He kept saying she needed private instruction.
She was—” She looked up at him, her expression pleading.
“We were sixteen. Margo was so open-hearted, so generous—that was why he picked her out, I think.
I was afraid she would not know what to do. I was afraid she would get hurt.
“So I pretended to be her. It was easy. He could not tell us apart. I told him I was there for his first ‘private lesson,’ and when he made his advances, I nearly twisted his bollocks off. I told him he mustn’t touch me or my sister ever again, or else my brother, the Earl of Warren, would have him transported. ”
He started to say her name. He was not sure what would follow—it was all tangled inside him, outrage at what had happened, and guilt, and a fierce pride in her that made his chest hurt. But she stopped him.
“That’s why we were sent down. He went to the headmistress and told her that I had tried to seduce him. Spencer kept it quiet, and Margo—Margo does not know the truth of it. She thought we were expelled for our general hoydenishness, which I suppose was partially true. But I knew why.”
Her voice was brittle, and it did him in, that absurd bravery. He wanted to tell her she had no need of it—not any longer. Not with him. He dropped his hand to her lower back and slowly, so slowly, pulled her into his body. She held herself firm for a heartbeat, and then half-tumbled against him.
She was a little thing. He wrapped both arms around her and rested his chin on the top of her head.
“It was not your fault,” he said.
She gave a little sob into his shirt. “I know it was not. It was his fault, the scheming, lecherous bastard. I only wish I’d had Spencer prosecute him for something.”
He did not let her go.
“I lied,” she said. “I lied to Margo then. I did it to protect her. I thought—well, I thought it was the right thing to do. And I kept lying, somehow, pretending I was happy, pretending I wanted to be a hellion and a walking scandal, and I do not know if any of it was the right thing to do after all. I was so angry with her for what she did—with you in London and then following us here … Only I wonder how very different her actions were from my own.”
Christian did not have an answer for her.
He had wondered so many times these last weeks whether it bothered her to be the center of so much scandal. He should have known that she had gone into it clear-eyed, ready to put her feet to the coals so that her sister would not have to walk alone.
“I think you’re doing fine,” he said. And then—and then he could not help himself. He turned his head so that his mouth was on her hair.
He did not kiss the top of her head. But he breathed her in, the warmth, the scent of her hair—soft and delicate and floral and right.
Everything about her felt right.
Later he would regret it. Later he would lie awake and think about how wrong it was for him to hold her, how dangerous it was, how little he had left to lose, and how closely and ferociously he guarded what was left.
Later. Later he could think that he’d made a mistake, his arms around Matilda, the waterfall a distant gallop in his ears and the taste of the wine they’d shared still in his mouth.
But for now, he only knew that she needed to be held. She needed to be comforted and warmed, and he was there—yes, he was there, and he could do this one thing, in this one right moment.
She needed to be held and he wanted to hold her.