the scales, but there was also a part of him that wanted her to know him a little more. To feel a little closer.
“My mother had died a few months before,” he said, feeling out the pain that still accompanied that statement, even all these many years later. “I fear I was a bit rudderless. He was kind to offer me the job when I had no experience. And trained me patiently, kept me on for five years while I settled into the man I would be.”
“I’m sorry about your mother,” she said. “Were you close?”
“Very,” he declared with a smile. She had been gone so long now and the grief never fully faded, but it had softened so that he could recall all the wonderful things about her, not just the heartbreak of her loss. “My father was a vagabond at heart. He’d just bought a commission into the army when my mother came up with child…with me. He was forced to marry her and then he went on with his life almost as if we didn’t exist. I wasn’t close to him—he died when I was sixteen. But she was…remarkable. She made the best of the worst situation.”
“Then I suppose that gives me hope that I can do the same,” Celeste said with another of those faint smiles. “I’m sorry I could not have met her.”
He met her gaze and held there, drawn in by gray-blue seas. “So am I.”
Those words seemed to draw all the air from the carriage and they stared at each other as time ticked by, perhaps a moment, perhaps a lifetime, it was hard to say. What wasn’t hard to say was that he wanted to kiss her. It was a desire that rolled through him like a tidal wave, almost overpowering even if he knew it was so very wrong.
But there it was.
And from the way she held herself, held his gaze, he had to wonder if she wished for the same. If she would shudder if he touched her. If she would sigh if he claimed her lips.
But before he could do something so foolish, her maid started awake beside her and the spell was broken. “Oh, Mr. Gregory,” Mabel said, rubbing her eyes as she stared at him. “I didn’t realize you had joined us. I must have dozed.”
Celeste met his eyes with a conspiratorial arch of a brow even as she said, “Yes, indeed. If dozed means fell into the sleep of the dead.”
Mabel huffed out a little breath, but Owen could see that the two women were friends. Sometimes women of a certain station didn’t lower themselves as such. His mother had been a seamstress when the money his father sporadically sent had been sorely lacking, and there were only handful of women she serviced who treated her as anything better than furniture in the room. Lady Livingston being among those who saw her as a human, not a means to an end. It looked as though Celeste was like that lady, one he respected a great deal.
“Well, you two must catch me up on everything I missed so that I might join in the fun,” Mabel said.
Celeste cast him another glance, this one a little more furtive. As if she didn’t want to share what they’d been discussing, even with a friend.
“We were talking about museums in London,” Celeste said.
Mabel arched a brow as if she didn’t fully believe that. “Were you now? Well, then let us continue the topic so that I might know what to look forward to when Miss Celeste and I make our rounds.”
Owen stifled a chuckle. At least she had chosen a topic where he was well versed and might actually help her enjoy her time in the city. So as they began to discuss the much more benign topic, the tension between them faded a fraction, replaced by ease and laughter.
And for that he was both pleased…and disappointed. But he would have to put the latter reaction away because he could not involve himself with Celeste Montgomery. There was absolutely no way.
Chapter 5
The inn Owen had chosen for the night was exceptional, and as Celeste had come down for supper, she marveled as she took in the beautiful dining hall where travelers were gathered around tables, eating what smelled and looked like luscious food and talking softly among themselves.
She scanned the room and found Owen at a table set for three. He waved when she met his eye, and she crossed