It surprised her that he hadn’t tried to talk her into sharing the bed. He seemed somehow different from the man of the previous night, the roguish flirt whose smile and laughing eyes were a constant threat to her sense of propriety. Tonight he was much more restrained, almost serious. As if he, too, wanted to put some a distance between them.
Because she’d lost her temper with him? She didn’t think so. He wasn’t sulking. It was as though he needed to be more—cautious? restrained? serious?—around her. Why?
As if he could read her mind, he turned and looked at her. “Why aren’t you asleep?”
“I’m not sleepy,” she admitted.
His face was hidden in shadows. “I can’t help wondering about those sketches in the book. It’s you, isn’t it, the child in those pictures? Who was the artist?”
She hesitated. Part of her was still angry he’d pried into her past. “My mother.”
“Would you let me look at the pictures again, and tell me about them?”
There was no reason to hide them, she supposed. He’d already seen what there was to see. And her memories had been stirred up; part of her wanted to share them with him. “If you like,” she said, sitting up and tucking pillows behind her back.
He lit a candle and brought her Grand-mère’s small valise, then sat on the bed beside her, on top of the bedclothes but close, so she had to scoot over to make room for him. The bed that had felt so spacious a moment before now felt small.
His big, warm body pressed against the full length of her, shoulder to calf. She tried not to let it affect her as she took out the sketchbook.
He turned to a drawing of Maddy as a child. “This is you, isn’t it?”
Maddy was surprised he’d recognized her. “Yes.”
His gaze passed over her face like a touch, sending a barely perceptible shiver through her. “This is in France, is it not? And you were how old?”
“About ten. And yes, it’s France.”
“Not for a holiday, I think.”
“No, I lived there for ten years, with Grand-mère, until I was nineteen.”
He turned another page. “The old lady . . . your grandmother?”
She nodded. He placed a long finger on the picture of Grand-mère’s cottage. “And this was her home?”
Again she nodded.
“And what of this castle?”
She hesitated. Better to keep it simple. “It was burned during the Terror. The revolution. It was not far from our cottage. We went there for picnics. It’s beautiful, don’t you think?” No need to tell him the castle had one belonged to Grand-mère’s family. There was nothing worse than people who dwelt on past glories, lost possessions.
He gave her a searching look, as if he knew there was more to it than that, but all he said was, “So how did a young English girl come to be living in France for ten years?”
“It’s a long story.”
He smiled. “I’m not sleepy. Are you?”
She shivered. Far from it. With his big, warm, masculine body pressed against her, every bit of her was wide awake.
“My father met my mother in Paris just before his thirtieth birthday. She was seventeen and very beautiful and her family was rich.” She’d often wondered what had attracted Papa most.
“Papa was a good-looking man, and had inherited a moderate fortune. But he was English. My grandfather despised the English. He told Papa he would horsewhip him if he tried to see Mama again.” She sighed. “Papa was furious.”
“Any man would be.”
She nodded. “Papa was a man of great personal pride. It only made him more determined to have her.”
“Perfectly understandable.” He grinned. Clearly he saw it as a romance, and it was; at least it had started that way.
