His gut clenched, and he left off buttoning her blouse to touch her cheek, thumbing away the single tear that escaped before she could look away.
“And nothing.” She started to turn, but he stopped her, one hand on her shoulder, the other still on her cheek.
“Don’t run away,” he said. “You’re angry. I want to know why. What did I say out there that upset you so?”
Her chin quivered; the lines of her neck were ridged with tension as she stared at the tree line as though contemplating whether to make for a run for it. Then, with a sharp inhalation, she faced him and met his gaze.
“You said, ‘Thank you.’”
He nodded, frowning. “That was wrong?”
Her cheeks sucked inward, like she was fighting to withhold a response she believed inappropriate. He swallowed a rough spur of guilt.
He’d come to appreciate her honesty and willingness to say what she thought and how she felt—what she wanted. Her hesitance now, besides inspiring guilt, sickened him, because he was the reason she was prevaricating. Yet he had no idea why, or how to relieve her mind and heart—to revive the vivacious and direct woman he was coming to know and love.
Love?
He had no time to ponder that startling prospect because she lifted her gaze to his.
“I’m not a whore, Mr. Banner,” she said softly. “Despite whatever impression you may have gained from our recent interactions, today was as new for me as it was for you. I’m not trying to curry your favour or impress you or bewitch you. I’m—or I thought I was—fulfilling a need. Woman, man...”
“I’m sorry,” he said with conviction to match hers. “I didn’t mean to demean you or insinuate any impropriety. I was...surprised by your boldness. Then shocked. And then...” He slid his fingertips along her jaw. “Happy. Happy in a way I haven’t been in a long time, and you’re the reason. I said thank you to show you how much I appreciate you. Not as an insult. You must believe me.”
Tears glimmered in her eyes.
“I do believe you,” she rasped. “Thank you for...explaining. And now, I really must go.”
“Must you?” He grasped her fingertips. “You haven’t touched the contents of that basket. It’s your lunch, isn’t it? Aren’t you hungry? I know I am.” His hold on her was light. She could pull free with the slightest tug.
She didn’t, but stood, turned partially away, her fingers stiff in his, her jaw tense, and her spine a solid spear of indecision. After a heart-pounding moment, she nodded and murmured, “I am hungry, yes.”
Chapter 24
That Way Madness Lies
SHE FROWNED WHEN HE lifted the bottle of wine from the basket.
“I never asked Miss Alma to pack that.”
“One rarely has to ask her for anything.” Joe worked the cork with his thumbs. “She always seems to know what someone needs, or wants, before they do.”
“She is irreplaceable, isn’t she?”
“That she is.” Angling his head, he gripped the cork with his teeth and pulled. It came free with a brisk popping sound. Dropping it in the basket, he picked up the wine glasses Mrs. Sweeney had pulled from the basket along with two wrapped sandwiches.
It was almost as if Miss Alma had known she was off to meet someone, which was impossible. Until he and Big Ray had shovelled the last of the debris in the hole and raked fresh dirt over it, he’d not spared a thought for taking a dip, while the old pond had been Mrs. Sweeney’s planned destination.
To the untutored, the path from the manor to the pond looked unused, overgrown. Definitely uninviting. It wasn’t a route someone intent on an afternoon picnic would naturally choose unless one had a heart for rugged adventure. Or a specific destination in mind.
He had an idea what had compelled her to venture out here.
This had been George’s place to seek seclusion and relief, a haven where he could escape his father’s foul temper. He must have shared the knowledge with her, perhaps described the path and route to take. Or maybe she’d asked Miss Alma. Regardless, his bumping into her here had not been orchestrated. Though it had resulted in some rather sweet music.
He finished filling the glasses and handed Mrs. Sweeney hers before lifting his in a toast.
“To good health, and good food.”
“And good company,” she added with a smile.
She was seated, half-turned to face him on the blanket he’d spread on the grass in the shade of an oak—the blanket another thoughtful addition to the picnic basket by Miss Alma—and had her slender legs and small feet tucked to the side, hidden beneath the folds of her skirt. Her half boots were propped on the grass close by, and her hat sat on the bench where she’d left it. In the shadows, her upswept hair looked almost brown but for the fine coppery strands clinging damply to her nape.
He swallowed a mouthful of wine then carefully set the glass in the grass beside the blanket, using the seconds it took to gather his oddly conflicted feelings and smooth their rough edges so when he looked at her, he could match her smile.
“Yes,” he said. “Very good company.”
She unwrapped a sandwich and held it out to him on the wax-paper wrapper.
“Thank you.” He took a bite and, chewing, watched her while she unwrapped the second sandwich and set it, in its wrapper, on the blanket beside her to take up one half. She held it aloft, inspecting the contents between the thick slabs of dark rye.
“Chicken,” she said. “And cucumber. My favourite.”
He immediately tucked the knowledge away and, as quickly, wondered why. Was he planning to start making her lunch?
For some reason, the thought appealed to him. Which was ridiculous.
He hadn’t spent more than ten minutes cobbling together his own hastily prepared sandwiches since he’d been a boy too young to help on his father’s boat and his mother had drafted him into her kitchen to help her peel vegetables and chop herbs.
“Is there something wrong with your sandwich?”
“Hmm?”
She raised her brows. “You were staring at your sandwich but not eating it. Is there something in it? A hair, or bug perhaps?”
“No.” Taking a healthy bite, he offered a closed-mouth smile that earned him a faintly befuddled one from her before she nipped off a dainty corner of her sandwich. She looked at the pond, chewing slowly, her profile a study in quiet contemplation, as though all the world’s secrets were rising like mist off the water’s surface.
He shifted so he faced the water too, but his mind was on her, on the graceful line of her jaw, the fine slope of her nose, the exquisite delicacy of her movements so incongruent with the forceful personality she worked so hard to assert.
Forthright, no-nonsense, bold, and independent...with a heart steeped in incredible sadness.
She hid it well. Too well in his opinion, because if not for the brief glimpses she’d allowed him of the inner emotions she kept hidden behind a wall of bravado and intellectual steeliness, he might take her reserve at face value—he might believe her the misanthropic shrew she seemed content to allow many in town to believe she was and hand in his resignation. Only he had seen behind the façade. Or rather, she’d willingly let it drop. She’d laid herself bare, physically and emotionally, and he’d...run.
He forced down a rise of self-loathing along with a bite of sandwich.
He might have run from her again today if he hadn’t been struck by a sudden and perverse desire to test her, provoke her, see how far she was willing to go. He needed to know how strong was her desire to prove herself indomitable—impregnable to society’s expectations of widows in particular and women in general, especially when those values found root in male ego.
His ego.
His next bite of sandwich went down with even less relish.
He hadn’t been trying to provoke her. It was his own courage he’d been testing. His own ego he’d been stroking.
The knowledge stuck in his chest, making it hurt to force down his last morsel of san
dwich.
He’d eaten without conscious thought, wolfing down his food while his mind preyed on the woman next to him, looping around their recent interactions and at the same time loping ahead to scout new titillating territory. Would she entice him to join her in her room tonight, or should he venture out to the terrace, in hopes she’d be in the study working late, where he could contrive to attract her attention and lure her out—or inveigle an invitation in?
No. He was a bachelor. His reputation would survive such impulsive interludes, potentially earn him a few congratulatory back slaps and knowing winks. But hers...She’d be dragged through the mud. And then there was Maisie.
Maisie had worries enough without his adding a nasty side dish of gossip to her life, especially about Mrs. Sweeney, whom he knew she was beginning to adore.
Needing something to cleanse his palate, he reached for the wine bottle but stalled. He glanced around, as though he might find the source of Mrs. Sweeney’s anguish lurking in the shadows, even as his mind acknowledged that the tears shimmering in her eyes welled from a deep, inner spring.
She looked at him, auburn lashes dark with moisture.
“He never told me about this place,” she said. “Never told me anything of importance about himself.”
SHE DIDN’T KNOW WHAT it was about Mr. Banner that weakened her reserve. Or maybe it was this place, knowing it had been George’s sanctuary, a private confessional where he poured out his heart and fears to Mr. Lyons. Or maybe it was the wine. Whatever had triggered the melancholia, she was drowning in it, her loss of control exacerbated by the compassion shining in Mr. Banner’s gaze.
Her throat squeezed as he shifted to put an arm around her shoulders, though he offered no answer to her question. He just gave of his solidness and warmth, which, considering the chill sweeping through her and turning her bones to brittle icicles, was more than enough.
“I learned of this place from Mr. Lyons,” she rasped. “I learned the reason behind George’s aversion to seafood from Miss Alma. I learned of the archive from you. But why?” She swiped at her eyes. “Why must I rely on everyone else to tell me things that he should have told me himself? I was his wife. If anyone should have been privy to his likes and dislikes and his childhood hurts and wants, you’d think it would be me.”
Mr. Banner nodded—whether in agreement or simply in acknowledgement of her frustration, she couldn’t tell, and it didn’t matter. The only thing that mattered was releasing some of the toxic disappointment and disillusion burbling up inside her, as black and foul as oil from an uncapped well.
“He told me little of his father, nothing of his mother or grandparents. He said not a word of his sister’s vitriol or of his great-aunt’s...Rose. He said nothing about poor little Rose. He never spoke of his fears or heartaches, only ever of his love. His love of his work, his love for me. But how could he claim to love me when he kept so much of himself from me? When you love someone, you share. You invite them into your private life. But he kept me outside of his.” She gestured at the pond. “Did he tell you about this place, what it meant to him? Did you know how much he hated his father, or that he suspected his father had killed his mother?”
He was good at hiding his emotions behind a wall of indifference or a flash of anger. But he was equally skilled at shielding his thoughts with simple stillness and an opaque gaze, like now. Eventually, however, he eased out a breath and nodded.
“I knew this spot was special to George. Not because he told me but because he used to come here a lot. I did know there was not a lot of love lost between him and his father, but I had no idea he suspected him of murdering his mother. And I can’t say why he didn’t share more about his family or boyhood with you, except to say he wasn’t much of a talker. He drew more than he talked.”
She nodded. “I know. I used to stand at his shoulder and watch him sketch, so I could pretend we were together. But we weren’t. Not really. I feel I know you better after two months than I ever knew, or will ever know, him. We were a pair of mirrors turned to face each other—a repeating reflection of what he wanted to see and wanted me to see. And what he wanted us to see, I realise now, was not who or what either of us was, but who and how he wished we were. But you...”
Her heart tripped as she stared into his eyes, feeling a connection between them. “I’ve glimpsed many facets of you,” she whispered. “I’ve seen you angry, scared, vulnerable...” Naked.
She looked down, stricken by an odd shyness, and focussed on his hand linked with hers, the calluses and roughened skin testament to his long hours, and longer days and years, eking another man’s good life out of the land for the price of a roof over his and his daughter’s heads. Her hands, in contrast, were pale, smooth, and soft.
Suppressing a surge of self-reproach, she looked into his steady, penetrating, wolf-like gaze.
“Why is it, Mr. Banner, that I should feel closer to you after such a short time than I ever did to either of my husbands in all the years I shared with each?”
HIS PULSE THUNDERED in his ears. He thought he might pass out from the effort of restraining himself as he gazed into her beautiful, clear green eyes and inhaled her jasmine scent, twitching with every sensual caress of her thumb over his knuckles.
She didn’t want him to weigh in on her relationships with her former husbands. He knew nothing about the first one and so could offer no insight. And she’d already answered her question with regard to George.
“We were a pair of mirrors turned facing each other. A repeating reflection of what George wanted to see, and wanted me to see. And what he wanted us both to see, I realise now, was not who or what either of us was, but who and how he wished we were.”
In short, they’d lived a lie. One they’d each been content to live when George was alive—at least for the brief period they were together. Maybe they would have become more honest with each other over time had time not caught up with George first. But it had, and now she was looking to the past for perspective on her future. And like a mirror changed into a window, she was seeing past the reflection of what was to what might be, and wondering if there was a chance it might include him.
Yes, he wanted to howl. His erection swelled in the front of his breeches, and he desperately wanted to free it, lie her back on the blanket, and toss her skirts to her waist, responding to the plea in her gaze with the only answer that made sense anymore. The only answer he sensed would satisfy them both with regard to the question she was really asking. Because whatever she felt, he felt something, too. A hum, a buzz, an irrepressible urge to nuzzle and caress, to talk and share, to dream and make love. To lie naked, skin to skin. Heart to heart.
Soul to soul.
Clenching his teeth and ignoring twin stabs of pain in his jaw and groin, he heeded the silent wisdom echoing through the lust assailing him: That way lies madness.
If he succumbed to whatever sizzled and sparked between them and accepted what she offered—and what he so keenly wanted to accept—she, and what he felt for her, would haunt him the rest of his days, long after she grew tired of him and married up. And he’d rather carve out his heart with a rusty blade and store it in an icebox for eternity than let another woman slice it to ribbons for him.
Dragging in a deep breath, he eased his hand out of hers and gently levered himself away—not far, but far enough to break the tantalisingly warm connection between them.
Chapter 25
Foolish Pride
DISAPPOINTMENT KNIFED through her as he put distance between them.
Her first instinct was to resist the separation, do whatever necessary to remain touching, to keep the kinetic energy thrumming and the hurt at bay. But he was relentless, if gentle, in his determination to put a space between them.
She clung to her dignity, offering no hint of resistance or resentment. No shadow of disappointment. She even managed a smile as she pulled out her timepiece and glanced at it.
“Oh, dear, it’s late,” she said. “Almost thr
ee o’clock. I’d best get back before Miss Alma sends out the cavalry.”
Putting aside her empty wine glass, she rolled and pushed to her feet—and staggered like a windblown sailboat directly towards the pond.
“Whoa,” Mr. Banner blurted, lunging to his feet to grasp her by her wrist as his other hand scooped around her waist, stopping her before she tumbled into the water and reeds.
“Heaven,” she murmured, tipping her head back to gaze at him. “I feel...odd.”
Her head was heavy, canting on her shoulders like a ball bearing in a shallow saucer, while her body was as warm and pliant as soft risen dough, malleable and prone to sticking to the hands. At least she felt stuck to Mr. Banner’s hands, unable—or unwilling—to peel herself away from him.
He seemed in no rush to unstick himself from her either.
“I think it’s the wine,” he rasped as though he couldn’t take in enough air to power his lungs. “Combined with the sun and sudden movement.”
“Yes, it must be.” Her voice was afflicted by the same breathlessness impairing his.
The pressure of his hand on her lower back seemed to firm, drawing her hipbones tight to his groin. She could feel the firm length of him through their clothing, and she immediately wanted to drag him to the blanket and on top of her—
“Mrs. Sweeney? You out here? Miss Alma sent—”
“I’ll be right there,” she shouted, spinning away from Mr. Banner, half-propelled by self-preservation and half by his swift reaction in turning her away from him while simultaneously stepping back. “I—I’m...” She cast about for her boots. “I’m soaking my feet. Give me a moment to dry them and put on my shoes. I’ll be right there.”
“You want I should gather up your picnic things and carry ’em back for you?”
How did Rufus know she was picnicking?
She glanced behind her, certain she’d find him at the entrance to the narrow path back to the manor, but he was still out of sight, further along the path. She heaved a sigh of relief.
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