She was touching him now, but she wasn’t really. Her hands were upon him, but she had yet to reach him where it counted. A barrier stood between them, and she couldn’t bring herself to risk the crossing.
He had built it. He would have to be the one to bring it down.
“What do you want?” he asked again.
“I want—” She turned her head away, staring up at the underside of Trick’s red silk canopy. Not hers. No matter how many times he insisted that what was his was hers as well, she didn’t feel that way in her heart. Not while he kept the most important thing of all from her.
Himself.
“I want to go to sleep,” she whispered.
He trailed his fingers lightly across her cheek. “One more kiss?”
“I think…no,” she said on a sigh. Another kiss would only make her more sad, and the lump in her throat was hard to bear already. She rolled away from him, turning her back. “Good night,” she whispered.
The words seemed to hover in the heavy air of the still room.
After a moment he settled against her, snug and solid. “Do you think you might miss me?”
The shiver that went through her body was its own answer, and he went to sleep with a smile on his face.
She knew because after his breathing evened out in the pattern of slumber, she turned and gazed upon him, filling herself with the sight of him to hold her through the weeks ahead.
It took her longer than ever to drift off that night, and when she awakened, he was gone.
TWENTY-SIX
“MRS. KENDRA?”
“Yes, Thomas?” Kneeling in the grass by little Susanna, Kendra squinted up at the impish towhead.
“We’re athletes in the Olympic games, am I right?”
“That’s the idea.”
“Well, then…” A gleam came into his sparkling blue eyes as his hands went to the fabric draped over his shoulder. “Shouldn’t we be naked?”
“Leave that on, you rapscallion!” She was hard put not to laugh at his pout. “I never said we were strictly authentic.”
“Aw, all right.” With a mischievous grin, he ran off.
“Stand still, Susanna.” Kendra tucked the girl’s “toga” more tightly, smiling to herself. Luckily her lessons hadn’t covered fashion, so her students were ignorant of the fact that the Greeks had worn solid colors, not brightly flowered calico. “There you go.”
“My thanks, Mrs. Kendra.”
“You’re very welcome.” She patted Susanna’s blond curls and stood, knowing as she sent her off that the girl would be back in a few minutes to be tucked in again.
She’d learned that togas weren’t the ideal clothing for young children.
That was her only miscalculation, though—the rest of the party had gone brilliantly. The children’s retelling of their favorite myths had been riotous. Now they were participating in Olympic “games,” and the victory wreaths she had woven from laurel leaves might as well have been solid gold crowns considering how much they were cherished. Fortunately, she’d brought enough for everyone, and she was not above fixing the contests to see that each child came out a winner.
The party was a wild success, and they hadn’t even feasted yet. Nor had she distributed the favors. Her baskets of goodies were still hiding beneath a blanket in the caleche, and she couldn’t wait to see the children’s faces when they received them.
Wrapped in stately blue stripes, young Andrew tugged on her toga. “Who are you, Mrs. Kendra?”
“Why, Hera, of course.” She looked down into adoring dark eyes—his crush had not abated over the weeks. “Do you remember who she was?”
“Zeus’s wife,” he said proudly. “And the protector of marriage.”
“Very good,” she returned, although, for her, the job description seemed an ill fit at best.
Rather than protecting her marriage, she’d sent her husband off alone. She should have argued until he agreed to let her go with him. Surely if she’d put up a fight, he would have relented—her brothers almost always did. But she hadn’t really tried.
Andrew shifted on his feet, looking shy. “I memorized one of the poems about her.”
“Did you?”
He nodded and began to quote.
“Golden-throned Hera, among immortals the queen,
Chief among them in beauty, the glorious lady
All the blessed in high Olympus revere,
Honor even as Zeus, the lord of the thunder.”
He finished with an awkward bow that should have brought a smile to Kendra’s lips. But in contrast to the Hera of the poem, she was feeling anything but glorious at the moment.
“Mrs. Kendra? Are you all right?”
“I’m fine, Andrew.” Amazed at the young man’s perception, she forced a smile. “Mrs. Jackson is organizing a chariot race,” she said brightly, glancing over to where the buxom woman was lining up four wheelbarrows. “I imagine a tall, strong boy like you, with little Susanna in his chariot, could come out a winner. Run along now—I’m fine.”
But despite how well the party was going, she wasn’t fine at all.
Trick should have been here. He was supposed to have been Zeus.
He’d made this happen, repeatedly risking his life to feed and shelter these boys and girls. Her gaze followed Andrew as he joined the other laughing children. None of them, herself included, would be here today without Trick.
Hera had always been zealously covetous of Zeus, and heaven help her, she missed her husband.
WHEN KENDRA arrived home, she stopped only long enough to switch her toga for a riding habit and grab a key from Trick’s desk drawer. Then she ran to the stables, mounted Pandora, and fairly flew over the Downs to the cottage.
Once inside, she could almost smell him. Since this morning when she’d awakened in his home, something—his vibrancy—had been missing. Instead of feeling free, she’d felt bereft.
But here in the cottage, she could feel his presence. Unlike
