or gifted expensive jewelry, or granted his affections—He was a grown man, for heaven’s sake! An army officer and a peer. A war hero. Women would be no novelty to a man like him, including courtesans.
But blast it, she did care. Because in a secret part of her heart, he still belonged to her. And always would.
Yet her conversation with Madame Noir proved that she needed to find a way to purge him from her thoughts. And completely from her life, because she couldn’t risk that he might agree with Frederick to petition for the trust. After all, what aristocrat would decline the opportunity to increase his wealth and influence?
Pearce had said that she could trust him, that he wanted to help her and keep her safe. But Aaron had said the same thing, even pledged so in front of a priest, only to take her money and abandon her. How could she be certain that Pearce wouldn’t also betray her? After all, she’d thought she’d known Aaron, thought he’d loved her, too, the way Pearce had…
A soft sob tore from her throat. She’d already lost so much to men who had claimed to love and protect her. She couldn’t bear to lose what little she had left.
And Pearce could never, ever find out about Aaron. The humiliation would simply end her.
Damnable heart! The mess her life had become was all its fault. Because it had made her want to be loved—
The door jerked open wide.
With a leap, Pearce swung into the compartment and landed on the bench across from her with a simple “Hello, Amelia.” He settled casually back against the squabs. His eyes glinted as they swept over her. “Or should I say…Lady Scarlet?”
Then he banged a fist against the side wall, and the carriage started forward.
Six
Her eyes widened, and for one fleeting moment, Pearce would have sworn he saw her old affection for him in their green depths. But then they narrowed in anger…and with something else he couldn’t quite identify.
“Stop this carriage.” Beneath her icy request, the temperature inside the compartment surely dropped twenty degrees. “Please be a gentleman and go away.”
“I can’t do that, Amelia.”
“Then I’ll leave.” She pounded her tiny fist against the side of the carriage to signal to the driver to stop, her gaze never leaving his. As if she didn’t trust him not to vanish into thin air. Or pounce. From the mix of emotions swirling across her face, he couldn’t have said which.
Damnation. He’d known from the way she’d fled last night that she wouldn’t be happy to see him today. What had happened on her sixteenth birthday had certainly humiliated her, and she’d probably blamed him for it ever since. She wouldn’t be wrong. After all, he’d certainly blamed himself for being so careless that her father caught them together, for not having the control to keep himself away from her.
But her anger bothered him. More than he wanted to admit. A part of him had stupidly hoped that she’d be happy to see him again. God knew he was thrilled to see her. At that moment, he wanted nothing more than to pull her into his arms and hold her close, to prove she was real and not merely fantasy.
Apparently, though, all Amelia wanted was to flee. She put her head out the window and called up to the jarvey. “Please stop!”
“He won’t listen to you,” Pearce told her calmly as the team drove on.
Ignoring him, she pounded her fist once more against the compartment wall, harder than before.
“You’re going to hurt yourself.” Biting down an aggravated curse that she wanted to be away from him so badly, he gently took her by the wrist. “And what a damned shame it would be to bruise such tender flesh.”
She gaped at him, stunned.
He shamelessly took advantage of her breathless reaction by raising her hand to his lips so he could place a lingering kiss on the backs of her fingers. After so many years of not seeing her, of not knowing what had happened to her, he simply couldn’t resist even this small taste of her.
That caused her mouth to fall open in an O as round as her big eyes. In that reaction, Pearce glimpsed the girl he remembered, the one who had never been good at hiding her emotions. He nearly grinned. The Amelia he’d known still lurked beneath the facade of the beautiful woman she’d become. Thank God.
He could barely believe that she was here. But