Lydia swallowed through a parched throat, her eyes skimming the crowd. He was gone, his sculpted features obliterated by the crush of people heading for the adjoining room.
“Alexander, would you… would you bring me a glass of water, please? I feel a bit faint.”
He didn’t look as if he wanted to leave her. “Come with me.”
“I’m fine.” Lydia pressed her hand against the wall. “Please. Just… hurry.”
Alexander released her arm with reluctance and moved past her. As soon as he was gone, she looked toward the doors.
She had to get out. Even if she’d only imagined him, even if she’d seen something that wasn’t there… she had to get out. Now. Gathering in a breath, she turned and started through the lobby.
“Guten tag, Lydia.”
She fought down a scream.
“Bitte setzen Sie sich.” He drew a chair against the wall and gestured with a long, elegant hand.
She didn’t take the seat, not because her legs weren’t about to collapse underneath her but because she wanted nothing he offered. She didn’t look at him, her gaze fixed on some blurry point beyond his shoulder.
“What… what are you doing here?” Her voice sounded thin, vibrating with tension.
“Ich bin—”
“I don’t speak German.”
She felt rather than saw his smile; then he spoke in fluent English. “I came to hear the symposium, of course. I received notice last month.”
“Lydia.”
A choking combination of relief and terror rose in Lydia as Alexander crossed the lobby back to her. His gaze slanted to the other man, his expression hardening with a dislike that seemed instinctive rather than rational.
Alexander stopped beside Lydia and handed her a glass of water, then slipped his hand around her arm and pulled her quite deliberately to his side.
Lydia grasped the glass. “Thank you. I… Would you give us a moment, please, my lord?”
He frowned. “I’d rather not.”
“Please.”
“I am Viscount Northwood,” he told the other man, his voice flat and cold. “Miss Kellaway’s fiancé. You are?”
The man’s mouth twisted into a semblance of a smile. “I am Dr. Joseph Cole. Miss Kellaway and I are old friends.”
“Odd. She doesn’t appear to think of you as a friend.”
“I’m fine, Northwood.” Lydia infused a forceful note to her voice. “Please go.”
She willed him to hear the plea in her voice. He hesitated, then stepped back—barely. “I’ll wait over there.”
He jerked his head toward the other side of the lobby, not taking his eyes from the man beside her as he backed away.
Lydia sipped the water and placed the glass on the chair. She sought the courage she didn’t know she possessed, then turned her head to look at Dr. Cole.
Her heart thumped hard against her rigid corset. Her eyes narrowed as she studied him, the analytical part of her brain submerging the emotions threatening to wreak havoc upon her soul.
She assessed him with a clinical eye, noting the gray strands threading his thinning blond hair, the wrinkles furrowing his forehead and the sides of his mouth. Behind his spectacles, his eyes looked the same—a pale green like ocean ice, thick spiky lashes.
“What do you want?” She forced the question through numb lips. “Why are you here?”
He reached into his coat pocket and removed a folded, sealed letter that he pressed into her hand. “Do not open it now. At your convenience, please.”
She tried to push the paper back to him. “I don’t want to read anything you have to say. And I have nothing to say to you.”
“Yet you ask what I want. Do you not wish the answer?”
He moved a little closer, his presence seeming to thin the air around her. Lydia forced herself not to step away, to control the trembles rippling underneath her skin. No, she didn’t want to know the answer, terrified of what it might be.
She felt him assessing her with that razor-sharp perception he possessed, his own mind calculating, adding and subtracting the changes in her wrought by the years.
“You look well, Lydia.”
“I am well.”
A strange fog of memories began floating through her mind—things, people, events she hadn’t allowed herself to remember for years upon years.
And there, in the forefront, her mother, a dulled, pale figure in her stark room of the sanatorium, the nuns fluttering about like blackbirds. Her hair, once so long, shiny, and thick, now cropped close to her skull, her skin white and papery. And yet when Lydia saw her for the first time in two years, the first thing she noticed was her mother’s eyes.
The dark blue eyes so like her own had still contained