My Merry Marquess (Wallflower's Christmas Wish #3) - Annabelle Anders Page 0,11

narrowed warily, as though he feared anything she had to say to him.

“You weren’t making a joke, were you?”

He tilted his head sideways.

“About my mother,” she added.

“Why would I joke about your mother?” He furrowed his brows, but more blue showed in his gaze now than a moment ago.

Eve glanced to her right and left, reluctant to be caught standing at the open door of a single gentleman’s chamber unchaperoned. “Can I come in?”

He sighed heavily, looking for all the world as though he was going to send her away.

Eve twisted her mouth into a half-smile. “Please?”

Finally, he stepped back and opened the door for her to pass. He wore only his stockings, breeches, and a long linen shirt, untucked. She flicked her gaze to the hearth, where his boots sat nearby drying and his waistcoat hung over the back of a chair. She couldn’t stay long.

She moved toward the fire and held her hands out for warmth.

Nicholas had crossed to the window where he turned, half sat against the sill, and folded his arms across his chest. Before he could spew any of his cynical nonsense from earlier, she blurted out the first thing that came to mind.

“Your hair is longer.”

Chapter 4

Nick grimaced. “I haven’t had it cut properly since my return to England.” He tilted his head. “Why are you here, Eve?”

“I changed my mind.”

He’d removed his cravat, unfastened the top buttons of his shirt, and looked even more handsome than he did in full evening wear. Staring at the sinewy tendons along his neck and then the tiny hairs at the top of his chest seemed inordinately intimate.

“You changed your mind?” he prompted her.

Ignoring the large bed in the middle of the room, she glanced at the table where a tray, steaming pot, cup, and saucer provided the perfect answer.

“About tea.” She inhaled sharply and then removed her coat and draped it on the bed. She was finding it difficult to think straight in his presence—in his bedchamber. “And talking.”

“But I’m heartless, remember?” He scrubbed one hand down his face and crossed to a desk near the hearth. A chest sat opened on the floor with a few papers scattered on the floor beside it.

The trunk was nearly filled with unopened envelopes.

She drifted closer, and her heart stuttered.

“I’m behind on my correspondence.” Shedding his defensiveness for the moment, he gestured at the pile sheepishly.

Eve’s gaze was caught and then fixed on one familiar-looking envelope. “It’s an awful lot of correspondence.” He hasn’t read it. He hadn’t even opened it. Was it possible he’d not read any of them?

She twisted her hands in front of her, unsure of what this meant. It would explain his assertion that she’d abandoned him. He couldn’t have known of her mother’s illness and death.

But anger bubbled inside her too. He hadn’t cared enough to open her letters? Every day for months, without fail, she’d checked the post for word from him. She’d hoped and waited and inevitably been disappointed when nothing arrived. If he’d cared for her at all, wouldn’t he have done the same? Isn’t that what people did?

“When I realized you’d left, I went ahead with the journey I’d planned.” Nick handed her the single cup and then sat in the opposite chair, stared toward the floor, and then frowned. “The journey I’d planned before we met.”

“So you went to France after all.” Why did that hurt? That he’d carried on as though nothing of magnitude had happened.

It had been one of the reasons she’d resisted his suit when he had first approached her. How could she give her heart to a man who’d be leaving the country for several months? After barely knowing her, though, he’d called the journey off. Why would he travel to France, he’d effused, when the one thing he’d ever wanted was in London?

Her.

“I figured that I might as well. Being in London was too—” His mouth turned down and then his gaze narrowed as he stared down at her feet. “You walked over here wearing slippers?” He lowered himself to his knees and untied the lace wrapped around her ankle. “These are soaked.” His warm hands embraced one foot and then the other.

Her heart cracked at his tender touch. “How long after my departure before you left?”

He lifted his head and held her gaze, revealing pain she’d not seen in his eyes before. “Two days.” His hand crept up her ankle, to her knee.

She would have asked him why he’d given up on her