Thea wasn’t quite sure how Mr. Taft arranged it, but he’d managed to depart—alone. Without her!
Oh, he’d clasped his hands to both of hers, eyes twinkling, as he expressed his delight in seeing her again (“and with you looking so radiant!”), and he’d more reservedly shaken Lord Tremayne’s hand and glowed over the shared challenge—and its successful outcome…
But then he’d rendered her speechless when he’d secured Lord Tremayne’s escort downstairs so he could take his leave after giving Thea a silent but emphatic command to stay put and see things made right, this expressed through the most regretful, and thoughtful, of looks.
Well, surprise her to Southampton and back, but she was starting to think the orrery expert was something of a magician as well. How else to explain her presence—after midnight—in the home of her beloved if bullheaded protector?
“That… Wasn’t…” Lord Tremayne came through the open doorway already speaking. “Wasn’t…” He stopped far away from where she tinkered with another beautiful specimen, this one more of a fantasy, showing comets and nebulae and all sorts of celestial wonders orbiting their double suns, with nary a planet in sight. Straightening, she faced him and waited.
His breath heaved from him like lava bursting from a volcano. “Find…out.”
His jaw was granite, eyes like steel. His hands kept flexing into fists at his sides.
He stood there holding her gaze—the self-loathing so evident in his, she thought her heart would crack.
Despite the heaviness centered in her stomach, the fear he’d push her away now that she knew, now that they were alone, her feet suddenly sprouted wings. She rushed to him and only stopped when he put a hand out as though warding her off.
“Just say it, please,” she implored, “without taxing yourself so. Whatever you think to express.”
Daniel closed his eyes against the appeal in hers. “I…can…not.”
“But you can with me! The difficulty you have doesn’t diminish you in my eyes.” Her voice grew softer even as it strengthened. She touched his arm. “Don’t you see by now? Nothing could.”
At that, his eyelids flew open. “I…”
Her fingers tightened on his wrist. “Except perhaps if you persist in fighting to the point your face looks like a field of wildflowers.”
She sounded so like Ellie, he tried to smile. “Thea. I… I—” Tension clawed up his neck and sank talons into his throat.
Penry’s morning call, the afternoon speech, utter surprise at his late-evening visitors. Talking with Taft the last hour. Exposing his affliction to Thea, unable to hide or avoid speaking…
He was hurting now, every bit as much as after Everson’s yesterday. Mayhap more. Scraped raw, swollen, ravaged by invisible arrows—Cupid’s damn arrow—he knew not which. Likely everything.
The pain was so great, if it hadn’t been for all those years inuring himself against his brother’s taunts, his father’s beatings, Daniel would’ve broken down and wept.
Not an option!
He swore and broke away from Thea, marched to the first solid surface he saw—the side of a bookcase, and slammed his hand against it.
He needed distance. Needed to escape.
But he didn’t want to.
His stinging palm hit the bookcase again as he willed his throat and neck to stop clenching. Stop punishing him.
“Stop.” Thea echoed his thoughts, feathering her fingers over his jaw, his cheeks. “Stop. You’ve done enough for one day. I can see the strain in your neck, the fatigue in your eyes. Tomorrow is soon enough. You can explain then, all you want, and I’ll gladly listen. Or later still, next week. Next month, even; I care not which. You need to rest.”
She wrapped her hands around his abused one and started tugging him toward the door. “Now, Buttons is here and could take me home or you could take me to your bedchamber— Ah-ah,” she admonished when he started to say something. She was making this too easy for him. “Tonight, I talk for the both of us. Personally, I would just as soon stay here. In your bed, of course. But I’m fully aware how vastly inappropriate—”
“There’s nn-no mirror,” exploded unbidden.
Color mantled her cheeks when she smiled. “Silly man,” she spoke to his nicked finger, softly touching the injured spot. “I don’t need a mirror to love you.”
He couldn’t contemplate whether she meant it literally, not now. Not when he needed to hold her so damn bad. Needed to bury his lips against the sweet skin of her neck and forget what a buffoon he’d made of himself the last hour.
With a growl loud enough to be heard in the kitchens, Daniel swung her into his arms and barreled through the doorway.
One look and a hovering Buttons was nodding—his bit-upon lips unable to stifle his grin—and running down the stairs, in the opposite direction, saying, “Aye, milord, you have it. I’ll see the team gets stabled for the night and get word to Sam and his missus so they don’t worry none about Miss Thea. See you in the morning an’ not before!”
“How grand,” Thea enthused, tucking her face in the crook of his neck as he turned toward the stairs. Up close, his divine scent could have sent her to her knees. Good thing he carried her.
Warming her lips against his fragrant skin, she said, “It appears as though we get to be inappropriate together.” She caressed the thick hair at his nape, threading her fingers through the cool, silken strands. She couldn’t help but notice the muscles of his neck beneath. “And look, you’re so strong, I don’t even need to hold on.”
Joyfully, she kicked her feet and waved her arms as he ascended the steps. He didn’t make so much as a perceptible pause. “No doubt I could roll over and try my hand at archery and you’d still hold tight.”
He muttered something that sounded suspiciously like, “God save me.”
“Nuh-uh, my lord,” she chided gently when he reached the bedroom—not breathing a speck harder than usual—and swung her to her feet. If she entertained him sufficiently by rattling her
