“Are you satisfied?” she snapped. “May I leave now?”
He slowly released her hand, but the tingle remained. She seized her opportunity, darting past him without another word, not stopping until she reached the sanctuary of her bedchamber. There, with her back to the closed door, she held tight to the hand he had touched, wondering why she could still feel the gentle graze of his fingertips.
* * *
Far below, still standing on the threshold of the dining room, his mind filled with knowledge he had never expected to know—namely, how soft Matilda’s skin was and how warm it had felt to the touch—Albion could not rid himself of the sight of her shining eyes. She had been battling tears; he had seen it.
She is not to blame for this.Understanding dawned like sunshine creeping over the lip of the cove he loved so much.
“Leave this house,” he said, fixing his darkest gaze upon his mother. “If you can’t treat my wife with respect and welcome, thenyouaren’t welcome here. It is hard enough for her to be away from everyone she loves without you making her feel worse. I won’t tolerate it. Go to the Dowager House. Stay there until you’ve mustered the courage and humility to apologize.”
Constance looked like she might faint. “You wantmeto leave my own residence?”
“It isn’t yours anymore. Not if you can’t behave,” he replied, an eerie sense of calm flooding him. “You shouldn’t be here for our honeymoon anyway,” he added as an afterthought with no notion of whether or not it was true.
Constance stalked past him, just as Matilda had done a moment ago. It was clear from her demeanor that she expected him to stop her as he had done with Matilda. But he did not. Without so much as looking at her, he let her go and did not exhale until he heard the front door slam, shaking the entire manor.
He had made an enemy of her without any promise of making an ally of Matilda, but as he gazed upon the empty dining room, that sense of calm did not abandon him. Instead, it grew, as if to tell him that he had done the right thing, even if the right things were not always the easiest.
Like silk…his mind whispered as he turned his attention to his scarred, callused, battle-worn hands—the exact opposite of hers.
CHAPTERTWELVE
“Lovely morning, isn’t it?” Albion asked, stepping through the white gate of the walled gardens.
Matilda, seated at a table in the shade of trellised archways, adorned with honeysuckle and roses, did not look up. Did not acknowledge him. The only response that told him he had been heard was her hurry to grab all of the papers in front of her, shoving them into a leather cover.
“I was on my way to the kitchens to see if they had any lemonade and thought you might like some,” he proceeded, undeterred.
He had known from the moment he went to bed last night that trying to make an ally out of Matilda would be one of the most difficult challenges of his life, but he had not instructed his mother to leave for nothing; he had to make it count.
Now, he had to shift his concentration to someone who needed him more becausehehad put Matilda in this situation. He understood that now. Had realized it the second he saw tears glinting in her eyes, and had been moved to take them away however he could.
Matilda clasped her leather dossier to her chest and slipped out of the wrought iron chair, walking away as if she had forgotten something important.
Albion followed at a polite distance, one of his strides almost twice one of hers. “What are you writing?” he called out. “Wouldn’t you be more comfortable on the terrace? I can have someone bring out a better chair and table for you.”
“Leave me alone,” she threw back over her shoulder.
So, sheisangry with me.He had anticipated that, remembering their parting words: “Are you satisfied?” It was not the first time he had been spoken to with such venom, but hers was a wounded spite, not one borne out of the pleasure of being spiteful. He could sense the difference, even if he had not witnessed the held-back tears in her eyes.
“Does lemonade count as one of our meals together?” he persevered. “It’s due to be a ferociously hot day.”
“Is there some seawater in your ears from your morning swim?” she retorted. “Leave me alone. I do not wish to speak with you or have lemonade with you. You are breaking one of my rules.”
He hesitated. “I am?”
“I am not to be disturbed while I am working,” she said. “You have disturbed me. Now, I must find a peaceful place to begin again.”
He continued to follow her. “What of exceptions?”
“Pardon?”
“What if I have good reason to disturb you,” he explained.
She halted halfway down one of the crushed seashell paths beneath a drapery of wisteria, the golden sunlight piercing the trellised archway, casting her in a heavenly halo. It took his breath away for a moment, making him forget why he was pursuing her through the gardens when she clearly did not wish to be pursued.
“What reason could you possibly have?” she asked curtly.
