A Kiss For Midwinter (Brothers Sinister #1.5)(33)
“You can’t walk away from me after this,” he said.
She looked up, and what he saw in her eyes brought him to a standstill. Her eyes were wide, the pupils shrunk to pinpoints.
She took a few steps back. “You’re very good,” she said. “Very good. I had no intention of… But you made me forget.” Her voice shook. “You made me forget what could happen.”
“Lydia. It doesn’t have to be that way.”
He took a step toward her. She flung an arm out at him, pointing, and he halted. “There,” she said. “You’re honest. You’re surprisingly sweet, when you wish to be. And…and I think you could tempt any woman you chose.” He’d thought her so sweet just moments before, but there was a bitterness to her voice now. “So I do see good in you. That was the wager, was it not?”
“Hang the wager,” he swore.
“You promised,” she said. “You promised that if I won, you would never talk to me again.”
He swallowed. “Only if that’s what you wanted. Lydia, you can’t mean to kiss me and then walk away.”
“I mean it.” Her voice was shaking, and he thought she was on the verge of tears. “I really mean it. I don’t want to talk to you ever again.”
He took a step toward her. “Lydia.”
She flinched back. “Your word,” she said. “You gave your word.”
But it wasn’t the promise he’d made that stopped his tongue. It was the look in her eyes—that black, dark look, that fear that only intensified as he came closer. He shut his mouth, pressing his lips together, searching for something to say…
There was nothing. He’d promised not to speak to her any longer.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I can’t. I simply can’t.”
She backed away from him. And when she was six feet away, she turned and ran, leaving him alone with the evergreen and the ornaments.
Chapter Eleven
THE FIRE IN HER FATHER’S STUDY WAS HOT, but Lydia could scarcely feel it against her skin. She wasn’t sure why she’d fled here—why she sat here fiddling with the holly on his desk. She felt empty and hollow, and she didn’t want to think. Not at all.
“So,” her father said, setting down his pen after she rearranged the ribbons for a fourth time, “am I going to have to have words with Grantham after all?”
She jumped back, stricken. “No! Why would you say that? I don’t want to talk about him.”
He smiled faintly. “I’ve made three errors in this last column, Lydia, and you haven’t caught a single one.”
“I have to get this holly right.” She didn’t look at him.
He didn’t say anything. He wasn’t the sort to say things, to cajole her into giving up her fears. He just…was.
“Why didn’t you put me away?” she asked.
His eyes widened.
“You should have. Parwine told you to do it. Anyone would have done it in your place. But you act as if nothing happened, as if I were the same person I would be if I’d never met Paggett.”
Her father took his glasses and rubbed the bridge of his nose, where the frame of his spectacles had left a pink indentation. But he didn’t say anything in response.
“Don’t you understand that I’m not your little girl anymore?” she demanded.
“No. You’ve grown older,” he said quietly.
“Grown older? Is that what you think I’ve done? That’s all you think happened to me? That I just grew older?”
He gave her a helpless shrug. “Well, yes. I do wish it hadn’t happened all at once, the way it did, but…” Another shrug. “I never really thought about putting you away. I suppose almost anyone else would say that was a mistake. But I didn’t want to.”
“You didn’t even give me new rules, no new strictures. You let me walk out with Grantham, knowing that I was the sort of woman who might…”
She didn’t finish the answer. She was the sort of woman who might fall prey to a man like that. A darkly handsome man, possessed of a particularly blunt style of speaking. She might let him touch her, kiss her. She might thrill when he did it and want more.
His eyebrows rose. “I ask again, am I going to have to have words with the man?”
“No!”
He gestured with his hand to his desk drawer. “Because if necessary, I could fetch my pistol and—”
“No!” she exclaimed, horrified. “No. But do you remember who he is?”
Her father frowned. “He’s a doctor. Is there something else I should know?”
“He was with Parwine. When…”
Her father’s face went white. He hadn’t known. Her parents had been so focused on her on that day that she didn’t think they had been aware of anyone else. Lydia had been the one staring across the room, glaring at that strange young man who watched her so silently.
Her father’s hand drifted towards his drawer once again. “Is Grantham using what he knows to cause you harm?” His voice was a whisper.
She shook her head. “He wouldn’t hurt me.” In fact, she was fairly certain she’d hurt him. “He only made me realize—”
He’d only made her realize how much she hurt.