“Any decent man would’ve done the same.”
Apollo’s derisive laugh vibrated through the room. “We both know thatmostdecent men would have done nothing of the sort.”
“Then perhaps we should set higher standards for what we consider decent,” Evan said darkly as he headed for the door.
Twenty-One
“Are you certain it’s another woman?” Manuela asked Luz, who was standing by the bay window in her office, looking out onto Princes Street.
“How could it possibly be another entanglement if the man’s in your bed practically every night?” Aurora asked, not one to prevaricate.
“Perhaps it’s not another woman,” Luz sighed miserably. “But it issomethingbecause he’s different. He has barely looked me in the eye in the last few days. While at Braeburn Hall he felt...”Mine.Like they were at the beginning of something rare and precious, whereas now every interaction felt like an ending.
She’d collected her two best friends from Waverley Station in the Old Town an hour earlier, and they’d insisted she give them a tour of her new office. It was the building Adalyn had mentioned near Jenners. In the end she’d leased all three floors. The ground would be a storefront for Caña Brava and Aida’s Cordials. The second floor housed her office as well as Adalyn’s and that of the secretary they shared. The third floor was, at the moment, occupied by her newest employee, Mr. Grant. A gentleman she’d hired away from Evan—with his blessing—to assist her with the shipping side of things. But there would be more staff soon.
Her meeting with Seynabou Cisse-Kelly in Paris had yielded not only Le Bureau as a client, but the proprietor of the pleasure palace had referred other merchants in Luz’s direction. By the time she’d arrived in Edinburgh she had dozens of orders for Caña Brava from all over England and Europe. So many orders in fact that she was considering commissioning her own ship to make the transport of her products between Hispaniola and Europe easier.
In truth it was far more than mere progress: the gains she’d made exceeded what she’d thought possible in such a short time. And that was in no small part thanks to Evan. Evan who could barely look at her that morning. Evan who even when he made love to her seemed lost to her.
“Luz, you know I love you.” Aurora’s voice brought Luz’s attention back to the conversation.
“You love me, but?” Luz asked, expecting a reprimand of some kind.
“I love youandI have very little patience for all this blustering. Talk to the man.”
“Aurora, be kind!” Manuela cried, being the more tolerant of her two friends when it came to matters of the heart.
“What did I say?” Aurora asked innocently. “Besides, I thought she said she had no interest in keeping him.”
“Clearly that was a bald-faced lie,” Manuela retorted as she put her arm around Luz. “For what it’s worth, I think you’re wrong about him, Leona.” Luz shook her head at her friend’s certainty and again wished she could be as brave as Manu, who walked around with her heart wide open for the possibility of love, no matter how badly it was trampled. “Every time that man glances in your direction, he looks as if he’s just been struck by lightning.”
“He does not appear stunned to me,” Luz protested.
Manuela laughed at Luz like she was an adorable but utterly hopeless dolt. “Querida, lightning does not simplystun, it grips the whole of your body in a web of electric shocks so powerful they can incinerate you from within. Lightning does not merely stop a man in his tracks, Luz Alana, it changes his footprint.”
Luz’s pulse raced even as she struggled with the temptation of reaching for the spark of hope her friend’s words offered. “I don’t see it,” she said stubbornly. It was not as if Luz didn’t have the manner in which Evan stared at her sometimes branded in her mind. She felt short of breath from merely recalling the way that leonine regard roamed over her skin. Rapacious. Like he was cataloging how he would consume every inch of her.
Perhaps she had imagined it all.
“Then you’re missing what anyone can see, Leona.” This from her other best friend, who seemed to have turned a corner on opining in matters related to male-induced agitation.
“Then what is he keeping from me?” she asked no one in particular.
“Why don’t youaskhim?” Aurora insisted, this time a touch more gently.
The trouble was she didn’t know how.
She’d almost done it today when they’d stared miserably at each other outside Bruce’s office for what felt like hours. But asking would be breaking the rules they’d both set for this endeavor, and he had given her no indication that he wished to continue after their agreement was done.
She was convinced he was only allowing her the night at the ball before he told her he wanted a divorce.
“I just don’t—”
A knock on the door interrupted what she was about to say.
“Come in, Eliza,” Luz called, smiling despite her weariness as she saw Mr. Clark’s granddaughter at her door. When Luz had requested Evan’s help in finding an assistant for her office, he’d suggested his master blender’s granddaughter, who had recently finished a typist course and was looking for work. It was just like Evan to be aware of such a thing, but that was the kind of man he was...and it would do her a world of good to stop reciting his virtues at every opportunity.
“What is it, Eliza?” asked Luz when she noticed that Eliza’s usual pleasant smile was particularly radiant.
