Love in the Afternoon (The Hathaways #5)(47)

Her frown deepened. “If you’re going to be sarcastic, I may as well go back inside.”

“Go, then.” He closed his eyes again, continuing to lean against the wall.

Beatrix was tempted to do just that. However, as she looked at his still, gleaming features, a wave of unaccountable tenderness swept through her.

He looked so large and invulnerable, with no sign of emotion save for that indentation between his brows. But she knew that he was overwrought. No man liked to lose control, especially a man whose very life had depended so often on his ability to govern himself.

Oh, how she wished she could tell him that their secret house was close by. Come with me, she would say, and I’ll take you to a lovely quiet place . . .

Instead she fished a handkerchief from a hidden pocket in her gown, and approached him. “Be still,” she said. Standing on her toes, she carefully blotted his face with a handkerchief.

And he let her.

He looked down at her when she was done, his mouth grim. “I have these moments of . . . madness,” he said gruffly. “In the middle of a conversation, or doing something perfectly ordinary, a vision appears in my head. And then there’s a moment of blankness, and I don’t know what I’ve just said or done.”

“What kind of vision?” Beatrix asked. “Things you saw in the war?”

His nod was nearly imperceptible.

“That’s not madness,” she said.

“Then what is it?”

“I’m not certain.”

A humorless laugh escaped him. “You have no damned idea what you’re talking about.”

“Oh, I don’t?” Beatrix stared at him intently, wondering how far she could trust him. The instinct of self-preservation struggled with her desire to help him, share with him. “Boldness be my friend!” she thought ruefully, summoning her favorite line from Shakespeare. It was practically the Hathaway family motto.

Very well. She would tell him the shameful secret she had never told anyone outside her family. If it helped him, the risk was worth it.

“I steal things,” she said bluntly.

That got his attention. “Pardon?”

“Little things. Snuffboxes, sealing wax, odds and ends. Never intentionally.”

“How do you steal things unintentionally?”

“Oh, it’s dreadful,” Beatrix said earnestly. “I’ll be in a shop, or someone’s home, and I’ll see a little object . . . it could be something as valuable as a jewel, or as insignificant as a piece of string . . . and the most terrible sensation comes over me. A sort of anxious, fidgety feeling . . . Have you ever had an itch so awful that you must scratch it or die? And yet you can’t?”

His lips twitched. “Yes. Usually in one’s army boot, while standing in knee-deep water in a trench. While people are shooting. That absolutely guarantees an unreachable itch.”

“My goodness. Well, I try to resist, but the feeling gets worse until I finally take the object and slip it into my pocket. And then later when I return home, I’m overcome with shame and embarrassment, and I have to find ways to return the things I took. My family helps me. And it’s so much more difficult to put something back than it is to steal it.” She grimaced. “Sometimes I’m not even fully aware of doing it. That’s why I was expelled from finishing school. I had a collection of hair ribbons, pencil stubs, books . . . and I tried to put everything back, but I couldn’t remember where it all went.” Beatrix glanced at him cautiously, wondering if she would find condemnation in his face.

But his mouth had gentled, and his eyes were warm. “When did it start?”

“After my parents died. My father went to bed one night with pains in his chest, and he never awoke. But it was even worse with my mother . . . she stopped talking, and hardly ate, and withdrew from everyone and everything. She died of grief a few months later. I was very young, and self-centered, I suppose—because I felt abandoned. I wondered why she hadn’t loved me enough to stay.”

“That doesn’t mean you were self-centered.” His voice was quiet and kind. “Any child would have reacted that way.”

“My brother and sisters took very good care of me,” Beatrix said. “But it wasn’t long after Mother was gone that my problem appeared. It’s much better than it used to be . . . when I feel peaceful and safe, I don’t steal anything at all. It’s only at difficult times, when I’m uncomfortable or anxious, that I find myself doing it.” She looked up at Christopher compassionately. “I think your problem will fade in time, as mine has. And then it might come back every once in a while, but only briefly. It won’t always be this bad.”

Torchlight flickered in Christopher’s eyes as he stared at her. He reached out and drew her close with slow, stunning tenderness. One of his hands cradled her jaw, his long fingers textured with calluses. To Beatrix’s bewilderment, he eased her head against his shoulder. His arms were around her, and nothing had ever felt so wonderful. She leaned against him in a daze of pleasure, feeling the even rise and fall of his chest. He toyed with the tiny wisps at the nape of her neck, the brush of his thumb on her skin sending a rapturous quiver down her spine.

“I have a silver cuff link of yours,” Beatrix said unsteadily, her cheek pressed to the smooth fabric of his coat. “And a shaving brush. I went to take back the shaving brush, and stole the cuff link instead. I’ve been afraid to try and return them, because I’m fairly certain I would only end up stealing something else.”