“Let me show you something first,” he replied, sliding one hand down her arm to her hand.
She was surprised enough by the intimate touch, but as he splayed his own hand and interlaced his fingers with hers, she lost her ability to speak… or protest that she wished to know what she had saidnow, not later.
“This way,” he urged, leading her back the way she had come and down the hallway that stretched toward the rear of the house.
The morning sunlight proved to be a swift remedy to any lingering malaise, a graciously cool breeze caressing her cheeks, making her feel truly alive again. And the walk down sloping, emerald lawns toward woodland in the near distance was rather invigorating, too, her sleepy muscles awakening, her weary limbs shaking off their stiffness.
“Do you really think I have obscenely wide shoulders?” Albion asked as they passed a neat square of boxwoods that surrounded the fishpond.
Matilda stopped dead in her tracks. “Pardon?”
“Or that I’m a human tree?”
Dread sank like a rock in her stomach. “Is that what I said to you?”
“In fairness, you didn’t know you were saying it to me, and I likely shouldn’t have listened, but I was making sure you were safely in your bed at the time,” he replied, his expression blank. Deliberately so, she guessed, so as not to make her feel twice as mortified as she already did.
She took a breath and chose the only option available to her—to take her embarrassment on the chin. To make a joke of a joke. Anything less would reveal that she was not, perhaps, as impervious to opinion as she liked to make out.
“If it helps, you are akin to a grand, sentinel oak,” she said. “And your shoulders are not obscenely wide though they are the widest that I have ever seen. It is no wonder that Caro used to enjoy riding upon them when she was younger. Very… sturdy. You are the Shire horse of gentlemen.”
He laughed at that, a bright and endearing sound. “I think you ought to stop there with the comparisons before my amusement becomes offense.” He cast her a sideways glance. “I do favor a Shire horse, though. It’s near impossible to fluster one.”
“Ah, so you must not be like a Shire horse, then,” she replied, trying to turn the embarrassment on him. “I imagine you were quite flustered when I mentioned your broad shoulders, especially from my bed.”
He shrugged. “Not in the slightest. It is just a fact of my figure. And you were asleep, so the location is of little importance.”
“Have I ever made you flustered?” she challenged, secretly hoping she had.
He thought for a moment. “When I let go of you in the sea. I wasn’t as composed as I should’ve been when I knew you were perfectly safe.”
“No other occasions?”
“I can’t think of any.”
Matilda longed to insist on their rule of complete honesty, but worried that it might make him ask the question of why she was so interested. Meanwhile,shefought with the same question. What did it matter if she had never made him flustered?
Because he has flustered me a time or two, obviously,she realized, understanding that she wanted to make herself feel like they were on even footing.
“Is that all I said to you that night?” she asked as they reached the edge of the woods. A clear path, dusted with crushed seashells, wended through the silver birches and hawthorns.
He guided her onward, saying cryptically, “We are almost there.”
“It is fortunate that you have so many hawthorns,” she said to ease her growing nerves. “They are excellent for medicinal uses. The leaves, berries, and flowers are of tremendous benefit to the heart. There is a tonic you can make; I made a few bottles at my father’s manor. Splendid for inflammation too if you suffer injuries or a rash or some sort of reaction to something you have eaten or touched.”
Albion glanced around at the trees. “Which ones are the hawthorns?”
“The ones with the blossoms.” She pointed them out.
“Can they do anything for scars?”
She shook her head slowly. “Not after they are healed, I am afraid.”
They continued on down the path for a short distance as Matilda tried to think of what to say. Looking at him, she was just about to muster the courage to ask him about his scars when they broke through the trees and stepped out into a beautiful, mystical glade.
In the center stood a curious structure of golden sandstone, built in a Grecian style, as if it had once been an ancient temple. Pillars provided the support to the porticoed roof, but where it should have been open space between, floor to ceiling windows prevented the outside from truly creeping inside. A breathtaking display of old and new with a glittering fishpond just visible through the far set of windows, a fountain spraying crystalline water up into the air.
“The summer house,” Albion said, by way of explanation. “All spiders have been exiled.”
