“Take anything else off, and I won’t be held responsible.”
Lorrie’s eyes snapped to his face. Nothing had changed in it, but when she looked very closely it appeared his jaw might have tensed, slightly. She was sorely tempted to remove another item of clothing—a boot perhaps—just to see what he would do. To catch a glimpse of Ewan Mostyn acting irresponsibly. But she was too much of a coward. And she’d remembered why she’d come.
“You haven’t been to the library,” she said.
He looked at her, arms still crossed, jaw tightening as though he was clenching it and releasing.
“What about your father’s predicament?”
“I was hired to protect you. On my own time, I needn’t entertain you.”
That was a slap in the face. Had he really thought that was how she saw him? As entertainment? “I wanted to help you.”
“Why?” His eyes narrowed.
“Because I know you want to help your father, and it would make your life better if some of what happened in the past was made right.”
“You don’t care about my life.”
Lorrie stared at him. “Yes, I do.”
“No. I am a diversion for you. Like a flower show or a home for ruined women is for other upper-class women. I give you something to do until you can either gain your father’s permission to marry my cousin or until you find a way to elope with him. And if there’s the chance I might kiss you, that adds the element of danger. I don’t blame you for seeking out a thrill here and there. Your life must be tedious if all you ever do is look pretty and chat about the weather.”
Lorrie stared at him for a long, long moment. She hadn’t expected him to speak to her so. She hadn’t expected him to say such awful things.
“And that is what you think of me?” she whispered when she could speak past the lump in her throat. “That I use people—that I used you—to stave off boredom?”
He met her gaze, his eyes very blue in their intensity.
She looked away, unfortunately toward the bed. Seeing her discarded clothing, she snatched it up again. “I came here to be honest with you, and before I leave I’ll say what I came to.” She struggled to position one of her gloves so she might pull it over her shaking fingers. “If I am brutally honest, as you have been”—she glanced up at him—“I admit there is some truth in what you say. Perhaps reading to you did begin as a diversion.” She dropped the glove and had to bend over to retrieve it. “But reading to you, spending time with you, has become all I look forward to all day and all night. I think about you all the time. That is no mere diversion.” Tears stung her eyes, and she couldn’t see the damn glove.
“And each time I learn something new about you, I am more and more impressed not only with your bravery, but with your intelligence and your wit.”
He tilted his head as though he thought this a trick.
“Yes, wit! You can be amusing in your own way. You make me smile. I know I talk too much.” She was talking too much at the moment. She couldn’t seem to talk and pull her gloves on. “But you always listen to me. No one listens to me. No one cares what I have to say, but you make me feel important.”
“What are you saying?”
She shook her head. “I don’t know. I only know I have to say it to you because—because I saw your face at the Dewhursts’. When Francis kissed me. I saw the way you looked, and I couldn’t stand knowing that I had hurt you.”
He lunged toward her, and she almost scurried back. “You did not hurt me,” he barked. He bent, swiped the veil she had dropped, and held it out to her.
“But your face—”
“Kiss whomever you like. It’s nothing to me.”
“I see.” She’d ceased trying to don the gloves and now passed them from hand to hand. “I confess that was not what I was hoping to hear. You see, I realized something at the Dewhursts’ ball that night. It was when Francis kissed me.”
She glanced at him, but he didn’t give any of his thoughts away.
“I don’t love him. You were right. You told me that weeks ago, but I didn’t listen. And he doesn’t love me either. I don’t know if he has deluded himself as I had or if he just wants my dowry, but if he loved me there would be more between us.”
“More?”
She nodded, still passing the gloves from hand to hand. “He’s never shared anything of himself with me. Never opened up. Never written me a letter telling me his feelings for me. Never made himself vulnerable. And when he kissed me, all of that became quite clear to me.”
“If you had time to think all that, he was not doing it correctly.”
Her hands stilled, the gloves clenched between them. “That was the other thing. When he kissed me, I didn’t feel anything. Not like…not like when you kiss me.”
There. She’d said what she’d wanted to say and what she’d feared saying as well.
Ewan didn’t speak—which was nothing new—and what did she think he would say, anyway? I told you so?
He held out his hand to her, and she looked down at the gloves she clenched. Slowly, she placed them in his hand. Now he’d help her pull them on and send her on her way.
And she should be on her way. Before she said too much.
“There’s more,” she whispered. Oh, why did she not shut up?
He nodded at her as though he knew she had not finished. He probably thought she never finished speaking.
“I came to another realization.”
“When you were kissing my cousin.”
She shook her head. “Before that.” She cleared her throat. It was too tight, too dry. How she wished she had a glass of water. “I’m in love with you.”
His eyes widened.
Lorrie held up a hand, surprised to see it shook slightly. “Don’t tell me I don’t know what I’m talking about. This time I do. You see, I love you despite my every intention of not loving you. I know we aren’t suited. You are silent, and I speak all the time. You’re a younger son with no fortune or title, and I’m the daughter of a duke. You are a brave war hero, and I’ve never done anything of any note. But I cannot seem to help how I feel when we are together. I don’t want you to come to the library because you are a diversion. I want you to come to the library because you are the only true thing in my life. Don’t you see? It’s everything else that’s a diversion.”
“Lorraine.”
“I know what you will say—”
“Stubble it,” he said quietly.
She closed her mouth. No one had ever told her to shut up before. She’d said too much. He would send her away and tell her father he could not work for him any longer. She’d never see him again. Perhaps she should have just taken the little bit of him he offered. She could have gone on loving him in silence.
Oh, very well. Perhaps not in silence but without telling him everything she felt.
“If you don’t want me to kiss you, leave now.”
Lorrie stared at him. Now she must be imagining things. But, no. He moved toward her, reached for her.
“But you said, in the library, you would not kiss me.”
“I said I would not kiss you under your father’s roof.”