“There is very little difference, darling. And there will be none in a few short months when you are my wife.”
She sashayed a step nearer to him too, charm coming off her in waves as her eyes went from slitted to hooded and her lips quirked. Her fingers walked up his chest. “And until then, darling…she stays.”
His growl didn’t scare her off. She didn’t pull away when he slid an arm around her waist. “It is a foolish move, one you will soon regret. And Mother didn’t like her when your brother introduced them.”
Her head tilted, scarlet curls cascading. “Nor did she like me. But she gets on well enough pretending. I’m sure she can do the same with Barbara.”
Slade pressed his lips together against a laugh and slid to his left to remain out of sight when Hughes jerked away a step. “Whatever are you talking about, Mari?”
She sent her eyes heavenward. “Do you think me such a fool I cannot tell when another woman dislikes me?”
“Hmm.” Apparently seeing no reason to continue the charade, he slid close again. “Yet you have never been less than kind to her.”
“She is my mother-in-law.” Her voice changed as she said that. Went from insistent, even seductive to…warm. Sincere. As if that bond were enough for her, enough to create what affection had not.
A testament, in Slade’s mind, to the family from which she came, to have given her such respect for the institution.
As Hughes pulled her to him, she wrapped her arms around him. And then settled her gaze on Slade with such calm that he retreated a step. She had obviously been aware of his presence the whole time. And now she looked at him, not with censure for eavesdropping, but with warning. The kind that seemed sympathetic rather than threatening.
A flick of her fingers, a darting of her eyes toward the library, and over Hughes’s shoulder she mouthed the word Go.
Good advice. Hughes didn’t seem likely to strike her at this point, but he would have no compunction about leveling a fist at Slade’s nose if he caught him there. A fate she wished him spared? Or did she just not want him watching anymore?
Either way, the twist of his gut as he watched Hughes hold her tight convinced him to obey. He turned and crept to the library. Then hissed out a breath at his own stupidity. What was he doing? His gut had no business twisting, not over them. Over her. She was nothing to him. Nothing but Hughes’s puppet, his future bride.
So what if she had helped him once or twice? Probably just to keep her darling Dev happy like a good little woman. Keep him from finding out something that would upset him and thereby spoil their evening.
He rubbed a hand over his face and realized he still wore his bowler. Sweeping it off, he slung it toward his usual chair and paced to the table beside it. He had no business liking her, not when he disliked Hughes so much, and they were so obviously similar. In love. Marietta Arnaud Hughes might recognize that her beau was a monster, but it never stopped her from falling happily into his arms.
He scooped up the book sitting out on the table. So he found her beautiful. He was a healthy man. That ranked as “obviously.” Maybe her peculiar wit made him smile. Also no great surprise. That didn’t mean he had to let a simple attraction have any effect on him. He would do what he could to make sure Hughes didn’t hurt her, but when his business here was done, she would have to answer to her own allegiances.
And they were poor ones, so she had better steel herself for the consequences.
His gaze fell to the book in his hands. And his lips pulled up. The Confessions of Saint Augustine. Nice. As if she knew well he was judging her and was trying to tell him anyone could change.
More likely, just a book she had spotted that fit with the others she had seen him reading.
Seeing a slip of paper sticking out, he opened it to the marked page. A passage was underlined in faint pencil. By Marietta or her brother? He scanned it and sighed. Augustine’s conversion. He shifted the book, moving the spine enough that the slip of paper tilted to the other side, revealing three words written upon it, in a script undeniably feminine. Under the cushion.
First his eyes went back to the page. A note on the text?
No. He looked instead at the chair in which he always sat. The very one he had been in the other day when she burst in upon him and hadn’t even seen him through her tears.
Surely not. Surely this was just some note randomly placed here years before. A reminder of…to…what? No answers sprang to mind. But it couldn’t be for him.
Still, what was he to do but lower the book and reach for the cushion?
When he spotted the key to the desk drawer, he forgot to breathe. A measure of peace settled upon him as he picked it up and put the cushion back. But why would she give it to him?
“Have you read that one yet, Mr. Osborne?”