He rubbed his thumb across the words she’d put there in her own looping, slightly messy script, as he had done most nights since he’d first discovered it abandoned in the library seven years ago. Just after Beatrice and Selena had left. He knew the last time she’d touched it, could see her carrying it as she entered the library. They’d agreed to meet there; she had agreed to begin his education in reading Spanish. He’d hoped to sneak a touch of her hand, but she’d entered the room pale and trembling, clutching the book at her chest…
“Beatrice?” Took three steps to get to her. “What’s happened?”
Her eyes lifted slowly, her head tilting back so he could see her face—pale and drawn and pinched. “Have you not heard?”
“Heard what?” The catch in her voice alarmed him, and he took her hands, drew her across the room, and sat her near the crackling fire.
“Mr. Fisher has left. And he has told Selena that she will not hear from him again.”
Richard nodded. “Yes, well, I’m sure your cousin has other concerns at the moment.” Like Daniel. “You should tell her to be careful. As I told Martin.”
Like a firecracker popping to life in the sky, her gaze flared, sparked. “You told Martin? What does that mean?”
He couldn’t tell her everything. He’d promised not to speak of secrets that weren’t his own. And despite his parentage, he possessed a gentleman’s soul. He wouldn’t gossip and ruin a lady, no matter how guilty she was. “That is between he and I.” This meeting was not going as planned. He should redirect it. “Come, let us look at the book you’ve brought.”
“No.” She snapped it to the table as she stood. “Tell me about Martin and Selena. Did you advise him to leave here, to abandon my cousin?”
“They were not yet wed. And nothing is final until they sign a registry.”
“They are in love, you brick head!”
He snorted.
“What does that mean?”
“It’s a sound. It means nothing.”
“I am not an imbecile. What does it mean?”
“Fine!” His arms exploded outward. “I suppose it means that if your cousin is in love, she has odd ways of showing it.”
Her mouth dropped open. “You insult her?”
“She insults herself.”
Impossibly, her mouth’s shocked O widened.
He snapped it closed. Two fingers beneath her chin, kissing her soft, warm skin for a single blessed moment.
She batted his hand away.
Frustration, deep and sharp as lightning, ripped through him. “It is for the best. For Martin and for Selena. They are young. And likely it is not love so much as?—”
“Who are you to say if it is love? Do you have so many more years than them? Are you Romeo or Tristan, so deeply in love with some poor woman you would die for her?”
“No.” The word sounded like a growl and felt like a lie, but her sneer cut him to the bone, made him hide the truth to protect himself. “And you know better than I? Have you ever been in love then?”
A flutter of her lashes, the sneer disappearing. She swallowed, and her slender throat bobbed, and something inside him cracked in two.
“Beatrice, can we be done with this argument? The matter between Selena and Martin is not about us. Has nothing to do with us.” He ventured a step forward. “Please. Let us sit and lose ourselves in study.” In each other.
“She is like a sister to me.” Her eyes glistened. “My only real family.”
Oh hell. “And Martin like a brother to me. As you wish for what is best for your cousin, so I wish for what is best for him.” He held out a hand. “Come, Beatrice. Sit with me and let us make a pleasant afternoon.”
She shook her head, closed her eyes. When she opened them again, the tears were gone. “You have no idea how many hearts you break, Mr. Clark.” And then she was gone, leaving him with a book he could not read and a single certainty.
He knew exactly how many hearts he’d broken. One. His own.
