If only he knew that until today, she had felt more like herself in his presence, had been more true in her actions around him than with any other man.
She became aware of how close he still stood, how his chest rose and fell with every breath he took. How awfully right it felt to be close. How right it would feel to just bury her face against his competent shoulder and feel his arms around her.
“I believe we are finished here,” she said.
“You and I should talk,” he replied.
“Perhaps you would be so kind to set out your recommendations for us in a letter,” she said, and squeezed past him to reach her reticule.
“Annabelle.” His hand closed over hers, warm and certain.
She glanced up and met his eyes, clear and deep like a glacial lake, and God help her she wanted to fall in and sink to the bottom.
She swallowed. “There’s nothing to say about you and me, Your Grace.”
“That is what I thought,” he said, “but then you unexpectedly showed up in my office.”
Her heart began beating unpleasantly fast again. “I was sent here in an official capacity.”
“You could have declined.”
“I assure you, I tried.”
“Who would know if you hadn’t followed through with the meeting,” he challenged, “had you gone to a café instead of coming here?”
“Are you suggesting I should have lied to my friends?” she asked, incredulous, and damned if she hadn’t considered doing exactly that. Somehow, she had still ended up in his office. “Lies have a tendency of getting exposed,” she informed him.
Annoyance and amusement warred behind his eyes, and the fact that it showed so plainly meant that he wasn’t half as unmoved as his calm voice made him out to be.
She realized he was still holding her hand. His thumb had begun stroking back and forth over her palm, the friction creating a warm, tingling sensation that made her head swim.
And of course, he noticed. His eyes heated. “Annabelle,” he said softly. “How have you been?”
She pulled her hand away, grasping for the tattered remnants of her resolve to be indifferent.
“I’m well, thank you.” She began stowing her notebook and her pen in her reticule.
“Good,” she heard him say. “I admit, I am not. You are constantly on my mind.”
Her gaze flew to his face.
There was his sincerity again, etched in every feature.
She hadn’t expected him to speak about feelings. She hadn’t been sure he had any feelings.
Her throat tightened with an overwhelming emotion. Of course she’d known, somewhere deep down. She’d been lying to herself. It had been easier to ignore the whole sorry affair as long as she could pretend he cared nothing for her. Now he was taking even that away from her.
“Such sentiments pass,” she said tightly.
He tilted his head. “Perhaps. But unlikely. Once in place, my inclinations are rather persistent.”
Indeed, they would be. He did nothing half-measure, so the object of his inclination had better be prepared for a long and thorough stint of his attention.
Her shoulders sagged. “How could you,” she said. “How could you believe that I . . .” Her voice frayed. The scorching, frantic intimacy they had shared in his library flashed before her eyes and derailed anything she had ever learned about rhetoric.
“How could I believe what,” he coaxed gently.
“In the library. How could you think that I would negotiate terms,” she said, “and at such a moment.”
Understanding dawned in his eyes, surprisingly slowly for a man known as one of the country’s sharpest strategists.
“I see,” he said. “The timing did take me by surprise, but it was never a question that we would talk terms, Annabelle. A man takes care of the woman in his life.”
His life. Not his bed. She was trained to pay attention to the choice and nuances of words for her academic work, and this was a glaring, significant choice of one word over the other.
She felt hot and weak, too weak to move away when he raised his hand to her face. His fingertip stroked lightly over her bottom lip, and the tender contact unleashed a shower of sparks through her body.
Unthinking, she turned away and started toward the nearest window.
His study was on an upper floor, granting him an unobstructed view of Westminster Abbey. The steep spires and turrets were pointing like arrows toward the clear sky.
Footfalls approached and he halted next to her, his hands clasped behind his back, and so they stood side by side, wordlessly, acutely