Blackmoore(62)

“Bland? Oh, I see. You object to her because she is not stubborn and willful and outspoken like you. Is that it?”

I pressed my lips together, cursing my loose tongue. But I did not retreat. “Yes. I suppose that is it.”

He spoke lightly. “Some men prefer quiet women.”

“You do not prefer quiet women, though,” I said, lifting my chin.

“Do you?” It was pride that made me ask that. Pride asking if he disapproved of me. I had never considered it before—I had never considered that Henry might not approve of me. But now I had to know.

He considered me for a moment in silence, a faint smile lingering on his lips, then he spoke softly. “I think you have misjudged Miss St. Claire.

She is intelligent and refined.”

I disliked her even more after hearing his praise of her. “Well, if that 187



J u l i a n n e D o n a l D s o n is all you are looking for in a wife, then I suppose you will be very happy with your intelligent and refined Miss St. Claire.” I could not help muttering, “Even though she didn’t know the difference between Phaeton and Icarus.”

His lip quivered.

“What? What are you smiling about?”

“You are jealous,” he said with a laugh.

“I am not,” I scoffed.

He smiled, as if everything I had said gave him real pleasure. “Do you want to know my secret or not?” he asked in a low voice.

I took a deep breath. He was standing too close. “Yes.”

He shifted his weight, moving even closer to me, so that I felt off balance, as if the world had tilted and if I did not hold onto something, I would fall. My heart quickened its pace, and so did my breathing. I felt his arms on either side of me, anchoring me or trapping me—I could not decide which.

A long moment stretched between us, the silence so taut that I thought something would surely snap. He was looking at me as if contemplating a whole host of secrets he could share, and my curiosity mixed with dread.

“Your eyebrows,” he finally said.

My eyes opened wide with surprise. “My eyebrows? What about them?”

“I love them,” he stated as if it were a fact. A truth.

I laughed again, breathlessly now, and shook my head. “They are too dark. Too thick.”

“No. They give your face character. And there is something so very . . .

graceful about them.” His voice dropped to almost a whisper. “Perhaps it is their curve. They look like the wing of a bird in flight.”

I felt extraordinarily self-conscious, and I was grateful for the dark-ness hiding my blush. Henry shifted again and lifted his hand to my face.

I held perfectly still, trapped with surprise, my heart in my throat. He 188



touched my face as gently and carefully as he had touched the caged bird.

His fingertips brushed lightly along the curve of my left eyebrow, trac-ing the line, his eyes following the path of his fingers. A tremor shook through me and my heart raced. He stroked my cheek with the back of his fingers, lightly, a graze, a burning left it in its path before his hand fell off the edge of my jaw.

“I can never look at a bird without thinking of you,” he said. “I wonder what you will do with your wings once you have found them. I wonder how far away they will take you. And I fear them, for my sake, at the same time that I hope for them, for yours.”

I drew in a breath, feeling the air shudder into my lungs but could not find any words to speak. He had never touched me like this. He had never looked at me like this. He had never spoken to me like this. My hand crept up my throat, and I felt my burning cheek, sure that some fundamental change had occurred where he had touched it.

“Now,” he said, his voice low and husky, and he was gazing into my eyes without flinching, “are we even? Have I made myself vulnerable enough to suit you?”

I could have leaned into him and kissed him. He was that close to me.

My heart pounded, and I found myself staring at his mouth. I gripped the stone wall behind me, telling myself not to reach for him, not to lift my lips to touch his, not to hold him tightly and tell him that I did not want to fly away from him.

We were fragile, the two of us, breathing the same air, caught in this taut moment of secrets and half-truths. I could sense how everything could go wrong with one misstep, one misspoken word. So I nodded and did not say a word, terrified to speak and ruin this thing we were trying to balance between ourselves—this fragile and deep and flammable friendship.

“Good,” Henry whispered, standing upright and backing up a step. I shivered in the sudden cold without the warmth of his nearness.

“Do you want to go inside?” he asked, noticing my chill.

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J u l i a n n e D o n a l D s o n “No. Let’s—let’s finish this here.” Awkwardness made me feel tongue-tied now. “You want to know why I object to marriage.”

“Actually, I’ve changed my mind. What I really want to know is why you’re afraid of love.”

My breath came sharply. I tried to laugh but couldn’t. He was not supposed to ask me that. He was not supposed to even know to ask me that. He crossed his arms and leaned against the wall, as if telling me that he would wait all night if he had to.

I crossed my arms too, wanting to protect myself, and took a deep breath, “My love is as a fever . . .”