“Well, be sure you praise Rosie tomorrow on her skills as a teacher so that she lets me back in for my next lesson.” Her hands rubbed at the sore spot where neck met shoulders. “How was your trip? Did you discover what the congressman needed?”
One corner of his mouth tugged up. “Ought I be concerned that a British general’s daughter is trying to pry information from me?”
“Perhaps, were I the daughter of a different general, one who actually thought us enemies. Who did not just want this war to be over, as it never should have begun at all. Besides, were I to contact any of them, they would no doubt try to force me away from here. And we cannot have that.” He felt her lips press against the top of his head.
“None of that, now. There will be no more kissing until you court me properly.” He popped a grape into his mouth and then let his hand merely rest on the table, as it felt too heavy to lift again.
Gwyneth breathed a laugh and rested her head on his for a moment. “I missed you, Thad. I was so afraid you would never come home and that it would destroy me.”
“Ah, sweet.” Though it felt leaden, he lifted his hand and rested it over hers on his shoulder. “I was afraid too. That I would come home and find you but an echo again. But you are not. You seem…” Something. Something good. Something strong.
She spoke again, but it was too soft. Her voice seemed to billow around him like a spring breeze. Light and darkness merged into a shimmering twilight, one where time slowed and vision skipped ahead of itself. He floated there for a while, though he could not have said how long. A second, an hour, it hardly mattered.
Until the touch of her lips on his jolted him back to alertness. He blinked his eyes open and found her an inch away, smiling at him. “Wake up, Sleeping Beauty. I cannot carry you to your bed as you have done for me.”
He caught her hand before she could retreat any farther. “Gwyn, I…I love you.”
Her eyes gleamed with emotion and lamplight as her hand settled on his cheek, making him aware of the days it had been since a razor last touched it. “Then why did you not tell me the truth, Thad? About Peggy and Alain and Jack?”
“Because…” His eyes closed again, though it wasn’t the cloud of sleep that filled them. “Because I did not want you to see how I betrayed my brother.”
“You did not. You thought him dead. You could not have known otherwise.”
“I should have. Alain was right. I sense so many things…I should have sensed that. But I didn’t, and I ended up hurting him in a way…” Unable to find the right words, he shook his head.
Her thumb stroked over his cheekbone. “You are a good man, Thaddeus Lane, but you are not God, and you cannot know everything. You cannot do everything, but only what He allows. Do not blame yourself for that.”
She kissed his forehead, straightened, stepped away. “You need to rest. Then in the morning you can go to Washington City as I have no doubt you need to do, and when you return, we can pack a picnic and take a promenade or a ride somewhere. So long as we are back before dark. I have very protective guardians, you know.”
He smiled as she retreated toward the door. Smiled and knew to the depths of his soul that this was the Gwyneth who had been waiting these past two months to break free. “Confidence becomes you, sweet.”
The lamplight caught her smile in the moment before she disappeared into the hall. “Goodnight, beloved. Sleep well.”
He would. How could he not? She called him beloved.
“Another fortnight, you say?” Arthur stood beside Captain Yorrick and Gates. His legs, if not his stomach, were steady on deck. He didn’t know whether to rejoice or despair at the pronouncement of two more weeks at sea. It fit the projected arrival after the series of storms knocked them off course, but he had rather hoped they could make up some of the lost time.
But it seemed that time, once lost, could never be regained. He dared not consider what that might mean regarding Gwyneth. What had she been doing since she left in April? Had she thought of him as often as she consumed his thoughts? Even half as often would suffice.
Yorrick nodded and turned a bit to include Arthur in the conversation. “If the weather remains with us from here, yes. We will sail directly to Annapolis.”
Annapolis. He already had the direction memorized, courtesy of that letter from Mr. Lane that had been in the book on chemistry. As soon as his feet were on solid ground, he would ask someone where he might find King George Street. He would run to the dwelling if it was nearby, rent a horse if too far, and knock upon their door before the sun set upon his arrival. Explain that Gwyneth was his betrothed—