Chapter 6 #2
Miss Tregian said nothing, did not even glance at him, the cut blatant and severe.
Minerva raised a brow at Kitty who raised both in return. There was a story here.
After a long moment during which the siblings made no move to offer introductions, Mr. Penrose turned to Minerva. “Miss Ashworth? I did not have the pleasure of a formal introduction at Mr. Granger’s office. Dashiell Penrose.”
“Minerva Ashworth,” she said. “And my friend and companion, Miss Kitty Dorsey.”
“A pleasure,” he said with a bow to each. His manners were flawless, but the effect was not reassuring. He unsettled her, an undercurrent of watchful restraint beneath the courtesy. “I wonder if I might call on you in a day or two. I have a business matter I’d like to discuss.”
“If your business is buying Min’s cottage, then you’ve no business to discuss,” Kitty said, taking a step forward and inserting herself between Minerva and Mr. Penrose, hands on her hips.
“Min’s, that is, Miss Ashworth’s solicitor must have told you by now that she will not be selling.
” And there was the Kitty she knew and loved, finding her voice once more.
Mr. Tregian’s eyes widened. Miss Tregian stood still as if turned to a pillar of salt.
To his credit, Mr. Penrose made no outward show of taking umbrage at either Kitty’s words or her brash manner, though the interaction was certainly outside of polite discourse. He only glanced at Kitty with a flash of amusement and Minerva realized he was not offended, he was entertained.
“You are fortunate, Miss Ashworth, to have a worthy protector in Miss Dorsey,” he said, his attention fully focused on Minerva once more. “Still, I would like to call upon you. Consider it a welcome visit.”
Minerva had the feeling that whatever Mr. Penrose liked, he was wont to get. She inclined her head, feeling unnerved by his intense regard.
“Jago and I should like to call upon you,” said Miss Tregian. Minerva noticed she did not say as well, as if Mr. Penrose had not spoken. “At a convenient time, once you and Miss Dorsey are settled.”
“I would welcome visits from my new neighbors,” said Minerva, including both the Tregians and Mr. Penrose in her reply. “But please allow me a few days.”
Mr. Penrose offered a spare nod, his expression unreadable. She felt as though her request for time to settle in had been expected. And that it altered his plans not at all.
Dashiell kept his expression bland, hands loose at his sides, shoulders easy. The mask was so practiced it cost him nothing.
Jago Tregian’s jaw flexed. He had never learned the discipline of stillness; his emotions lived too near the surface.
Tamsyn, however, understood restraint. She did not so much as glance Dashiell’s way, her indifference deliberate. He respected that, even as he understood it for what it was: armor. They were more alike in that regard than either would like to acknowledge.
Miss Ashworth stood between them, occupying the space where old histories pressed close and dark memories stirred.
Precisely where he had no wish for her to be.
She smiled at her companion, expression serene, though she must feel the crackle in the air.
It was impossible to stand between the Tregians and the ghosts of the past without sensing the tension coiling like a serpent.
She stood there anyway, steady as ballast.
The tap of her finger against her thigh caught his attention. Once. Twice. Thrice. Not a display of nerves, he thought, but a deliberate distraction she employed at will. She had taught herself a private language in order to maintain control.
He knew that language. He had his own version of it, studying the night sky, listing stars and constellations, calculating distances.
He had expected the woman who inherited Catherine’s legacy to sell it all sight unseen and never set foot in Cliff Cottage. Instead, she had chosen to come.
For her sake he wished her gone. For his own, he was beginning to suspect that wishes were complicated.
Seeing her now, he could not deny the unsettling pull of her. So careful. So controlled. He recognized those qualities the way he recognized the scars that marked him.
He wondered what it would take for her to lower her carefully maintained barriers, to allow him close enough to shatter her composure…
Proximity. Intrigue. Attraction.
Therein lay the danger.
She was the danger.
The wind tugged at her bonnet ribbons and lifted an errant strand of dark hair. He had the urge to tuck it away, to brush his fingers against the curve of her cheek, feel the softness of her skin.
The turn of his thoughts both surprised and annoyed him. He was not usually inclined to search for poetry in a woman’s eyes.
Lifting her hand to the pendant at her throat, she rested her fingers on the purple stone. The light danced across it, making it appear that something moved within its depths.
For an instant, he was carried back to the cottage parlor, sunlight filtering through the lace curtains, Catherine reading aloud to him, fingers resting on that same pendant.
The smell of woodsmoke. A jar of wildflowers on the table.
A house where there was no one waiting to strike with palm or fist or words sharp as knives.
After Jory’s death, Catherine had been the only kindness he had known.
Jory.
The memory slid away before he could fully seize it, leaving fractured fragments where something whole should have been.
He despised that emptiness, the portions of that summer that remained beyond reach, as though someone had taken an axe to his memories and hacked them out in gouges and chunks.
He did not remember how he had come to be lying at the edge of the cliff with blood in his hair, salt on his tongue, and deep runnels carved in his wrists as though fingernails had gouged flesh in a last desperate attempt to cling to life.
But he did remember the keening of the wind and the voices, whispering, beckoning.
His fingers curled at his sides before he forced them still again.
Miss Ashworth lowered her hand from the pendant slowly, carefully, as though aware that his attention followed the motion.
The wind caught her skirts and pushed the fabric against the shape of her legs before it fell away again. He let his gaze roam the shifting lines of her form, from ankle to waist, then higher still to the swell of her breasts.
He saw it, the moment she realized where his gaze had gone.
A flush rose to her cheeks, but she did not retreat. Instead, her chin lifted in quiet defiance.
Her gaze met his, the green of her eyes swallowed nearly whole by the dark of her pupils. There was no coyness, no fluttering retreat, no practiced wiles. Her tongue darted out and she wet her lips, the movement unconscious and unintentionally alluring.
A lick of heat bloomed low in his gut. Desire was inconvenient. It was also, he was finding, persistent.
He did not look away. Neither did she.
She watched him the way she had watched the dark smudge above the cobbles that day in the rain, directly, without flinching, though she must surely sense the danger.