“Matilda,” he began. It seemed safe and right—the only thing he was sure of, in the heady morning light.Matilda.
One corner of her mouth tilted up as she looked at him, and he could not keep from touching her there, where her lip curved. The visible evidence of her joy.
Then he heard a quick, light rap on the door of his bedchamber.
And then—to his absolute consternation—the sound of Beatrice’s voice. “Christian? Are you in there? I wanted to speak to you.”
He looked at the door. He looked at Matilda, whose smile had faded beneath his finger. Her eyes were wide and horrified.
He removed his finger from her lips, which flew immediately into motion.
“I can hide,” she whispered, almost soundlessly. “In your wardrobe?”
He scowled at her and sat up. “You’re not hiding, for God’s sake. I’m not ashamed of you.”
She was still staring at him in that wide-eyed, flabbergasted way as he hurtled to his feet and went in search of his dressing gown. Damn it,twodressing gowns. He did not even know if he owned two dressing gowns.
“Just a moment, Bea,” he said.
“Oh,” came his sister’s voice through the door, “all right. Were you stillabed?”
As he rummaged in his wardrobe, he looked at the angle of the sun through the small window. Then he looked harder. Was it almostmidday?
Good God. He needed to get Matilda some breakfast.
He thrust his arms into his dressing gown and wrapped it around himself. For Matilda, he managed to produce a thick flannel nightshirt he’d never once worn. It was plaid wool, and going to trail behind her with a train that would rival a court dress, but he supposed it was better than presenting her to his sister as naked as a babe or in her tissue-thin chemise.
“Coming,” he said to Bea. When Matilda was dressed in his nightshirt—pushing the sleeves up above her elbows and then grimacing as they fell back down again to cover her hands—he grabbed her and hauled her up against his side as he went to the door.
“Are you sure this is wise?” she whispered, shoving again at the sleeves. He felt a brief flare of absurd possessive pleasure: Matilda in his shirt. “Perhaps we ought to wait a few—er—months—”
He was not at all sure it was wise. He would rather have known where they stood—known if Matilda wanted what he did—when he told Bea about their relationship.
But it was too late for that now. He would sooner cut off his own arm than have Matilda hide herself in the wardrobe like a shameful secret. He knew all about feeling ashamed, and he could not stand for his own actions to make her feel that way.
He could explain himself to Bea. Apologize for the abruptness of this revelation. Somehow he would do it.
“Steady on,” he said, as much to himself as to her. He wrapped his arm tighter around Matilda and opened the door.
Bea had a streak of charcoal across her cheek and a stick of the stuff shoved into the knot of hair at the top of her head. Her dress and fingertips were flecked with blue paint.
As she took them in—Christian in his dressing gown, Matilda in his nightshirt—her lips parted. No words came out.
“Good morning, little bee,” he said. “What did you want to talk about?”
She blinked once, very slowly, like the sun dipping below the horizon.
“Bea,” Matilda murmured, “perhaps you’d like to speak to Christian alone. Let me go… dress…” Her voice trailed off as she realized what she’d said—at the attention she’d called to the fact that she’d been here with him all night. Her face paled.
“I thought—” Bea looked from Matilda to Christian and back again. “I thought—”
Her hazel eyes had gone wide and then wider as she stared, and then suddenly they were filled with tears. Christian’s heart gave a wrench. He had not foreseen—
Bea’s gaze was fixed on Matilda now. “I thought you were here for me,” she choked out. “I thought you stayed because—because ofme—I am such an idiot—”
Matilda pulled herself out of Christian’s grasp and leapt forward. “No,” she said, and she tried to catch Bea’s elbow in her hands. “No, of course you are not. Iwashere for you—Iamhere for you—”
Bea flung herself backward. “Don’t touch me!”
