would never want to be near me again once he knew. The feelings that swirled around my heart reminded me just how wise I had been by avoiding him the last week. And how unwise it was to be with him now.
“I will leave you to it, Mr. Hill.” I offered a curtsy, backing away two steps before turning around.
I heard the scrape of his chair across the floor. “Stop. Please.” His exhale sounded like an exasperated sigh. “Where are you going?”
I paused, turning toward him slowly. In truth, I didn’t know where I had been going, simply that it was away from him. Words refused to come, so I stood there like a child who had been caught sneaking dough from the kitchen.
“Come, sit down.” He motioned at the chair across the table, his voice something of a grumble. I hadn’t known just how upset my absence would make him. “Perhaps you might explain why you have a sudden fascination with the library.” He raised one eyebrow. It wasn’t as playful as usual, as if he were attempting but failing to tease me through the true frustration he was feeling.
I swallowed. Why had I thought he wouldn’t notice? He always did. I crossed the room and sat in the chair he had selected for me. “I have always been fascinated by the library,” I said.
He eyed me with deep curiosity. “You are keeping the truth from me again. There is a reason you have been avoiding me, is there not?”
With his blue eyes boring into mine, I could hardly think up a lie that he might believe, and I certainly couldn’t deliver it in a plausible way. After several seconds of silence, the tension in my shoulders relaxed. I couldn’t tell him the entire truth, but I could tell him part of it. My stomach twisted, but I managed to nod my head. “Yes.”
He sat back in his chair, crossing his arms in front of him. I couldn’t look away from the hurt in his eyes. It shouldn’t have captivated me, but it did. Had he missed me as much as I had missed him?
“Why?”
There. The dreaded question. I searched my brain for a way to explain myself, but could think of nothing that wouldn’t reveal my true feelings or my secret. “I—er—I was worried.”
His eyebrows lifted. “Worried?”
“Concerned.”
“That is essentially what worried means.”
“You asked for clarification,” I said, my voice too defensive.
A smile flickered on his lips. “On your reasoning, not on the definition of the word.”
I sighed, resuming my search for a good explanation. There would be no way to avoid embarrassing myself. Heat was already creeping up my neck. “I was worried that…” That our courtship was becoming real? That he might have truly cared for me? There was no way to phrase it correctly.
“That I would try to kiss you again?”
My heart leaped, and my cheeks burned hotter. “Well, yes, I suppose.” That was certainly part of it, but not all of it. I tried to read his expression, but was afraid of what I might find. Had he felt the things I had that night in the drawing room? Did he feel what I felt now? What had become far too real to me might have still been entirely pretend to him. A kiss to him surely meant much less than it would to me. It might be pleasurable, diverting, sensational, even, but it would not leave his heart in complete disrepair like it would leave mine.
“Agreeing to not kiss you…” He gave a half smile, “that is a price I am willing to pay in exchange for your company.” He looked down at the table. “I have missed it.”
A thread of warmth pulled through my heart, and I tried to focus on the puncture of the needle instead: the pain, not the joy. “I-I think it may be best if we interact only when necessary.” My heart ached with the words, but they had to be said. “You should not desire my company,” I said in a quiet voice.
He met my eyes. “You may deny me anything I want, Miss Sedgwick, and I will concede. But that cannot stop me from wanting it.”
I felt tied to my chair, to his gaze, to the implications in his words. If I hadn’t turned him away, would he have kissed me that night? If I hadn’t told him how I never wished to marry, would he have abandoned his own convictions and proposed? I shushed my thoughts,