‘Of course I want you to come with us and you agreed to become Juno’s companion for at least a month, so do not use this.’ He stopped and looked helpless and driven and even a little bit hurt for a moment before he stamped Lord Stratford back on his face and manner and his gaze went stony.
He even imposed rigid control on his sensitive mouth and that was what made her stop and think because his mouth was so warm, provocative, so intimate and right on hers only a few seconds ago and now she was treating him as an enemy. Brought up short by his withdrawal of all warmth from her, she realised where her stupid temper and frustrated maternal instincts had taken her and was ashamed.
She had invented most of this painful scene by deciding his motives and intentions towards her without knowing what they really were. Temper put up a wall between them and she had no idea how to tear it down again. Her fury at an improper offer he had never even begun to make had led her to break something precious. Alaric looked so hurt before he shut her out that she felt more alone than she ever had before as they stood so close and so distant in this musty old book room and listened to one another breathe.
‘This altercation,’ he went on stonily as if that was all it had ever been and never mind the odd kiss or two, ‘of ours cannot be allowed to disappoint Juno so deeply when we have both promised to try and make her a better future.’
‘I will not renege,’ she said with a little bit too much dignity as well. This was her fault, she decided as she stared down at the one small pile of books she had managed to rescue from the dusty chaos all around them. Her insecurities were too ready to come to the fore and prod her into a defensive temper. Because she was so afraid she felt too much for him, she walked on briars when they were together, as if that was all she deserved.
This time she was stiff and defensive and far too sensitive to hurts he probably never meant her to feel and what a hopeless pair they were. It was probably just as well she had scuppered any chance he might be stubborn and reckless enough to ask her to marry him, whatever it was he felt for her. She wondered if either of them were quite sure what that was and bit back a regretful sigh.
‘I will have to hurry up if I am to be ready to leave tomorrow,’ she said as she looked down at that pile of books as if she was fascinated when she could not have said what they were or who wrote them if her life depended on it.
‘I shall not inflict myself on you once you are living under my roof,’ he said.
‘I kissed you,’ she argued stiffly.
‘Whatever we did, I should not have let it happen.’
‘We kissed one another because we could not help it and now we can, so that should not be a problem for us any more, should it?’ Suddenly she wanted to go with him so badly the idea of staying here looked faded and blank. Was there ever a more contrary female than Marianne Turner, née Yelverton? she asked herself as she traced the tooled leather cover of one of Great-Uncle Hubert’s most prized volumes and still had no idea what it said.
‘Will you come to Stratford Park with us and keep your word to Juno, then?’
‘Stop making everything in your life about her, Alaric,’ she told him earnestly, because at least she could argue with his overdeveloped sense of guilt even if she could not take back what she had said and make this distance between them vanish. ‘Juno is too young and confused to take the weight of your guilt on her shoulders. You told me to stop being ruled by the past and start living again so I will if you will.’
‘Maybe I lack your courage.’
She shook her head and refused to meet his not-quite-as-chilly look. ‘No, I am a coward,’ she said sadly and opened the door and made herself walk away from him. She felt his gaze on her back and still made herself keep doing it. She did not want to carry the image of Alaric staring after her as she went all the way up the stairs and branched off to her room at the front of the house a floor further up in the attics because she told herself she had always liked the view and nobody else ever came up here. Except of course a picture of him before she managed to turn her back and leave did stay with her and she could not see the mellow afternoon countryside for the blur of yet more tears she blinked back furiously.
He looked so bleak and alone against the world again and it was lonely and stark up here as well, view or not. So much of her wanted to run back downstairs to tell him he could have anything he wanted of her; she would do for him what she had for Daniel and risk everything for love. Except this time she would have to cast every last caution to the four winds if she truly loved him. If she did that, she could not shackle him to a barren woman even if she insisted love was enough and would she have the courage to face the world as Viscount Stratford’s mistress and not his wife?
It would be even more of a transgression than loving Daniel seemed to the wider world, but she had never regretted that one so maybe it would not be as empty and echoing as the word ‘mistress’ looked from outside. Yet what if he discovered love was not enough? What if he
