Chapter Eight
Della was immensely grateful she’d been sitting down. Though she wanted to do Clara bodily harm for this incredible surprise, she may have actually swooned had this happened while upright on her feet.
Andrew was here. In her sitting room. Standing near the door, staring at her.
He seemed overdressed, but perhaps that was because she never saw men in the latest fashion anymore.
Everything about him felt polished and new and somehow still so achingly familiar.
So safe. His hair was still the color of warm chocolate, with more of a curl than she remembered.
His big, brown eyes made him seem so serious. So earnest.
His mouth quirked, not in a smile, but in what Della thought was an expression of abject discomfort. That dimple appeared in his cheek, and she was lost. Utterly, irrevocably lost.
“Your maid unsettles me,” he’d said.
How long ago had he said that? Had she been simply staring at him wordlessly, as if trying to communicate by blinking?
Della moved as her hip started to scream.
She shuffled her feet back and forth against the floor.
She crossed one ankle behind the other and hoped the pain she felt didn’t show on her face.
“Clara has that effect on people,” she responded, finally. Della had no way of knowing if she’d done so in an appropriate matter of time. She had no idea what she’d done with her face. Had she even managed to smile at him? She couldn’t recall.
Andrew shifted, too, bearing his weight on one foot then the other. Almost fidgeting. Della remembered herself as she absorbed his awkwardness.
“Please do sit down.” she gestured to an armchair opposite her.
Much, much closer than he’d been before.
She hadn’t realized the impact those ten or twelve steps would have on her.
First, she heard them. Soft footfalls on the plush carpet.
Then, she felt him. A sudden hum of awareness down her spine as he entered her space.
Della knew how improper this was, this man in her private sitting room. She couldn’t care less.
Della had been lost ever since he came through the door, but she looked up at him now, and she was found.
Her rooms were not particularly sunlit, but the rays streaming through the window illuminated his face and Della had to stifle a gasp.
He looked softer, somehow, in this light.
The sharp edges of his cheekbones seemed to melt, and his lips relaxed into something that resembled a smile.
Della realized all at once that this was someone she’d never met.
The Andrew she’d last seen in London was a boy of barely twenty.
This was a man who felt familiar but looked entirely changed.
Andrew sat. He observed his surroundings in silence, and his face scrunched up as he looked toward Della’s writing desk. The dimple popped out on his cheek, and Della nearly sighed. Perhaps he was more familiar than not.
“How was your trip?” she asked him, just to break the quiet. He didn’t look particularly travel weary, but she feared he never would. He was simply too handsome for something as trivial as travel to dampen his appearance.
He didn’t answer for the longest time, continuing his perusal of the room.
Although the lack of conversation felt less than comfortable to Della, oddly enough, so did the thought of talking.
Perhaps he felt the same. They’d shared so much in writing for so long, that she found she didn’t know how to speak to him anymore.
She couldn’t put on the mask she wore with the few strangers with whom she interacted, one of politeness and entirely artificial charm.
Sitting in front of her at this moment was a true rarity in her life.
He was someone who knew her, and she found she didn’t know how to deal with that.
“Andrew?” she prodded, finally. He’d been looking so intently at the wallpaper she wondered if he were counting each bloom within the floral pattern.
“I am sorry.” He shook his head and laughed, seemingly at himself. It wasn’t the laugh she remembered. That had been open and free. This one felt sardonic and somehow guarded. “What is it you said?”
“I asked about your trip.” She repositioned herself again, but she realized she was running out of comfortable shapes to contort her body into. Soon, she’d simply have to move, whether she liked it or not.
“Oh. Yes. It was quite an easy journey, all things considered.” He stated simply.
He was looking at her now, finally, and Della almost wished he’d go back to his study of the room.
The deep, complex brown of his eyes was entirely too intense.
There was a necklace her mother used to wear, made of large, heavy brown zircon stones.
Della remembered that color so vividly, how it sparkled and shifted from gold to bronze to brown depending on the light.
It was as if his eyes were made of such gemstones, and his gaze was much more than a woman so delicate should have to handle.
“You seem rather . . . focused on the room,” she said. There had to be a topic of conversation, she supposed. So, she pointed out the obvious.
“I am,” he confirmed with a polite nod that made a curl fall over his forehead. “It’s not what I’d pictured. I suppose it was silly of me to have imagined you in some decrepit hovel all of these years, when you seem to be getting on rather well in your golden rooms.”
Della wasn’t sure what was more of an assault on her sensibilities—that one rogue curl or the idea that he’d been imagining her at all.
“I’m very fortunate,” she said, simply stating a fact that she’d only recently realized.
Andrew raised one eyebrow, as if in suspicion. He crossed one leg over the other, resting his left ankle over his right knee. He rearranged his jacket. It drew her attention to his hands, and she looked away so sharply her neck creaked.
“You consider yourself fortunate, then? Living here?” His tone had smoothed some.
Before today, if she’d closed her eyes and tried to imagine what his voice might sound like, it would have been this.
Gentle. Slow. That feeling of safety washed over her again, and some part of her wanted to rebel against it.
He was a man she was alone with in her private chambers. She was not supposed to feel safe right now.
“I do,” Della said. She stood up, taking slow, deliberate steps in an effort to regain control of her aching limbs. “I have many wonderful people here with me, and I am content. I have far more than many others, especially those in my condition without any support.”
Della couldn’t see his face from this angle, still walking slowly on her path to nowhere.
He was silent again for long moments, and as she ran a hand over her still aching hip, she wondered if they’d truly lost the ability to talk to each other.
Maybe she’d write him a letter and hand it to him instead of sending it through the post. That seemed easier.
There was a knock on the door. She was close enough to open it herself, so she did.
“Time for dinner,” Clara said, her fist still raised to the now-open door.
Her smile was that of an excited child. Della half thought Clara was more thrilled about Andrew’s visit than she was herself.
“Mrs. Goldsmith sent me to see about you and Mr. Lockhart. Will you want a tray in your room, or will you be joining us in the dining room?”
Della turned around to ask the same question of Andrew, but he was suddenly much closer than he’d been before.
He stepped up right next to her, in fact.
Their bodies took up the entirety of the doorway.
She looked up at him. He looked down at her.
They were stuck in silence again, but this quiet wasn’t heavy with awkwardness. This was alight with possibility.
“I should like to go to dinner, but I might require some assistance,” Della told Clara. Her pain today was becoming such that movement hurt less than stillness, but the staircase was an entirely different beast. She’d never make it down and back up without help.
“Please,” Andrew said, extending his arm in her direction. “Allow me.”
Della froze. Clara let out a pleased little giggle that made her seem girlish.
“I’ll tell Mrs. Goldsmith to prepare for two more,” Clara said, promptly leaving them alone once again.
Della tried to communicate by blinking again. Once, twice, three times. His eyes weren’t responding to hers. They were such deep pools of amber. She forgot what she was trying to say in the first place.
Slowly, so slowly, Della wrapped her fevered fingers around Andrew’s elbow. At the first touch of her ungloved hand against his greatcoat, she sucked in a heaving breath. Or maybe that was him. Perhaps it was them both. She dared to squeeze his arm, even though the action made her knuckles twinge.
“Shall we go?” he asked in that same quiet voice she’d already become so fond of. She nodded and grabbed her trusty walking stick from its ever-present place by the door.
They took tentative steps toward the grand staircase, lost again in an absence of conversation that was starting to feel comfortable.
Della could smell him, musk and leather and rain.
She could feel the fabric of his coat against her fingers, the warmth of his skin beneath.
Della realized she’d never been on a man’s arm before.
She wondered if what she enjoyed so much was being on someone’s arm or being on Andrew’s.
They took the first step gently, but even so, a low hiss slipped out from between Della’s teeth. Andrew did not respond. Not verbally, anyway. Instead, he shifted their stances until her nagging hip was resting against his. They took the next step in tandem, him bearing some of her weight.
“Is that better?” he asked, that low voice becoming a near whisper.
“Yes,” she told him honestly. Even if he hadn’t helped her pain, she would always assume things were automatically better being this close to him.
The remainder of the stairs were easier, but they took them at a snail’s pace.
She wasn’t in any rush to be parted from him, and he didn’t seem to be in a hurry, either.
They made it to the ground floor, and the grand hall was suspiciously empty, but Della could hear that the revelry had already begun in the dining room.
“Thank you,” she whispered, squeezing Andrew’s arm once more for good measure, and just because she felt as if she could.
She’d been trained in the art of the marriage mart. Had dances with all manner of tutors. She’d worn gowns straight from the best designers in Paris. Despite all that, Della couldn’t recall experiencing anything as lovely as this simple trip down the stairs.
“My pleasure,” Andrew said.
He smiled, a genuine, charming grin wide enough to make those fathomless eyes crinkle and both of his dimples appear.
It was almost boyish, and in it, Della saw the only man she’d ever loved.