Eyes narrowing fractionally, he studied her down the length of the table. In truth, he wasn’t at all sure she wasn’t every bit as adept at social pretense as he.
Later, by hook and by crook, he ensured that, as had previously occurred on several evenings, he and Caitlin were the last to go upstairs.
Side by side, they climbed, while behind them, Cromwell took the last lamp left burning in the front hall and vanished through the green-baize-covered door. The door swung shut, and the light behind them died.
Moonlight streamed through the windows in the cupola high above and lit their way. Deeper in the corridors, small wall sconces had been left burning low. One of the footmen would do the rounds at midnight, turning them off and plunging the house into Stygian darkness.
Deliberately, Gregory matched his pace to Caitlin’s.
His skin itched with the need to gather her in, with the need to see if…
Beside her, he stepped into the shadowy gallery, the space illuminated solely by diffuse moonlight.
She halted and swung to face him, and he sensed—clearly—that she drew breath and armored herself to meet his gaze.
Instinctively, he responded to the unvoiced challenge and, when he halted, was mere inches away. Close enough that she had to look up to meet his eyes, allowing the moonlight to bathe her face well enough for him to see…
An intense awareness that mirrored his own.
She tried to speak, cleared her throat, and tried again. “Good night.” Through huge, luminous eyes, she stared at him as she moistened her lips with the tip of her tongue.
Only the certain knowledge that she was an innocent and the teasing gesture entirely unintentional allowed him to keep his hands at his sides. Regardless, he fisted them against the welling urge to seize her and...
“And about what happened this afternoon, I wanted to thank you—again…for saving me from falling.”
I want you to fall a lot further, all the way into my arms.
The effort of holding back both words and associated deeds left him leaning—teetering—closer, and he heard her breath catch, saw desire widen her darkened eyes, saw one delicate hand rise as if to seize him as her gaze fastened on his lips.
She was every bit as captive to the desire that flashed between them as he was.
If he took one tiny step closer…what would happen?
He didn’t know the answer, and belatedly, experience raised its head and screamed at him—loudly enough for a mind nearly overwhelmed by lust to hear—to stop.
If he touched her now, if he drew her into his arms…he wouldn’t be in control.
Not tonight.
Not until he gained some perspective.
She was no lightskirt; he couldn’t take advantage of her innocence, and on top of all else, she was living under his roof, literally under his protection.
That was one line he would never cross.
Shackling his instincts and drawing back, easing back from the moonlit brink, was harder than he’d expected, but he clenched his jaw and shoved his unruly impulses deep. Then he drew in enough air to incline his head and, with passable composure, say, “That was, I assure you, entirely my pleasure.”
The flash of astonishment in her eyes that he glimpsed as he turned away assured him that she’d heard his true meaning.
“Good night,” he called and forced himself to walk toward his room, leaving her where she stood rather than taking her with him.
Sometime during the restless, near-sleepless night Gregory endured after he’d left Caitlin staring at him in stunned surprise in the gallery, he made up his mind to find some way to move forward with her, at least sufficiently to define what might or might not be.
Having decided on that, when he met her at the breakfast table, he took due note of her wary watchfulness and elected to advance slowly.
On Monday afternoon, rather than summoning her to the library—his domain—he tapped on the study door. When she bade him enter, he claimed the chair before her desk and, ignoring her surprise and the suspicion lurking behind it, proceeded to discuss the six pending projects, specifically to determine which she and, from his limited observations, he deemed most urgent.
With the steady expansion of orders for the Pooles’ basketry products plus the increased demand for the Edgars’ cider, they agreed that the proposed storehouse to be shared by those businesses should be the first project they got underway.
