She lowered her head, hid her face beneath her bonnet’s brim. “Perhaps.”
“Hm. A horrid word. I despise it.”
“A word with optimism. Hope.”
“Not enough surety in it for me, I’m afraid. I prefer, oh, how about words like yes, certainly, and nothing could keep me away.”
“I cannot leave the girls too often.”
That he understood. He wished … no. No wishing. He wouldn’t let the wishes of the man intrude into the dreams of the lover. He’d keep the two bits separate in order to keep her in his bed.
She peered up to the sky, squinting as a sunbeam fell across her face. “Nora told me this morning that she and Max are hosting a dinner party tomorrow evening. I assume you are among the guests.”
“I am. Do you wish me there?” A bead of sweat dripped between his skin and his cravat, but not because of the day’s light heat. He found himself … anxious for her answer. He did not want her to be made uncomfortable by his presence tomorrow, but he wanted to see her someplace other than his bedroom as well, to watch how she glittered, how others admired her, and to know only he got to see the real jewel beneath.
Wasn’t he doing that now in the park? Yes, but … he wanted more of it.
Dangerous. The tightwire he walked was not tight enough to hold the weight of his growing heart with any tension. He’d lose balance. A bad idea to take her as his lover, to teach her children every week in the park, to hold her hand beneath a dinner table as he now longed to do.
He’d only break her heart, along with his neck, when he finally fell.
“I’ll be there, then. But you must mind your manners, Freddy darling. Or dear Maxy will find us out.”
“You do not have to worry about that. No one will notice. No one will even suspect a man like you would look twice at a woman like me.”
He stopped, his feet frozen blocks of useless ice on the spring-warming ground. “What do you mean by that?”
“You know exactly my meaning, Mr. Webster. Let us not pretend we are other than we are.”
“And what is that? A peer’s by-blow and a viscountess?”
She stopped then, swung around with the precision of a blade, and stomped right up to him, her spine an elegant and steely line of truth, her tipped-up chin challenging him, offering a lecture. He’d never been lectured by a silent chin before, but he could tell … it meant business.
She meant business.
“That is not what I mean at all.” Each word a swift, sharp snare.
“It is the truth. How do you see the two of us, then?”
She blinked, long, burnished lashes fluttering against the shadows resting beneath her eyes. Her gaze dropped. Her chin wavered. “Quite differently.”
He tipped that chin back up. He liked it with a lecture at its very tip. “How so?”
She nodded at him. “A bright star burning across the night sky, impossible to ignore. And”—she lowered her chin to her own shoulder, shuttered her gaze—“a … oh, I don’t know … a blade of grass in the nighttime. Indistinguishable from all the rest, hidden, invisible, and—”
“No. Not that at all. What the hell has made you think so?” He itched to take up a sword against it.
“My life, I suppose.” She turned with a sigh and continued a slow amble up the path toward her daughters. The groom had joined them, and he swung Bridget down from the saddle, took the horse’s reins, and both girls ran off through the trees. Still in sight. Good.
He strode to catch up with Freddy. He needed more. They met in the dark of night or in the afternoon shadows of his bedroom. He wanted to light a gas lamp between them, to know her better, to know the outlines of her joys and sorrows. What had caused her to see herself so ill? In his experience, one person—one man—had that much power over her confidence—her husband.
He steadied his stride to hers when he came beside her, cleared his throat. “I am about to make a request of you. Do you mind?”
She shook her head. “I do not know if I mind until you make it.”
He chuckled. “A sensible answer.” He inhaled sharp and deep. “Well, then, here I go. Tell me about your marriage.” Why he wanted to know more when what she’d already told him had rankled, he couldn’t say, but he wanted to peer into every hidden place she had to offer, to know every bit of her, even the bits that made her sad, that drove him to a mad rage.
She snapped him a look, mouth open, brown eyes wide.
