Howard.
Julia.
Aimée’s throat tightened. She really could not bear it if Lucien married Julia now.
She swallowed painfully and took a step back, away from temptation. “No. I will go.”
He raised one eyebrow. “You wanted to talk.”
“I need to speak with you alone, yes. But . . .”
“Martin was just leaving,” Lucien said, without taking his eyes from her. “Weren’t you, Martin?”
“If you say so, sir.”
Aimée glanced at Lucien’s valet, a slim, handsome youth with an expressionless face and dark, knowing eyes. She had no doubt the servant would make himself scarce if ordered to do so. And then what? Would he report in the kitchen on the goings-on upstairs?
What would happen then? Aimée’s reputation would be ruined. The chance to help Finch would be lost.
“No,” she said again, proud of the firmness of her voice. “I find I have miscalculated entirely the danger of being alone with a man in his bedchamber.”
Lucien frowned. “Then you can both stay.”
He truly did not understand. She shook her head.
“You can trust Martin,” he said. “Trust me.”
Did he realize how persuasive she found him? Almost she would agree to anything he suggested. It was very humiliating.
“Perhaps it is myself I do not trust,” she admitted.
Something shifted in his face, flared in his eyes. He took a step toward her. “Aimée.”
She felt a flutter of panic, a quiver of desire. She forced herself to gather her scattered thoughts and emotions, to form a plan. “Lady Basing has asked me to supervise the decorations for the house and ballroom.”
Lucien watched her carefully. “So?”
“So”—she exhaled—“tomorrow after breakfast I will go into the woods to collect what I need.”
It was considered bad luck to bring greenery into the house before Christmas Eve. But there were few flowers available in England in wintertime. She would need to store the boughs in the potting shed and bring them in to decorate the day before.
“You want me to find you in the woods.” Disbelief edged his voice.
In the cold, in the snow, where they could be private. Safe. Fully dressed.
She nodded. “There are a number of fine holly trees in the oak-wood beyond the orchard. Near the gamekeeper’s cottage,” she added, in case he needed further direction.
His gaze searched hers before he bowed curtly. “Until tomorrow, then.”
She moistened her lips. “Tomorrow.”
The word hung between them like a promise. She felt committed to far more than a mere meeting.
Which was pure spinster foolishness, concocted of nothing more than loneliness and imagination. Surely by tomorrow she would be herself again. She had too much sense—didn’t she?—to lose her head or her heart or her virtue to a man who was courting her cousin.
She met Lucien’s heavy-lidded gaze and flushed.
However much she might want to.