or anyone else could ever come between them.
He knew something else, too. It was a look that described exactly what he was feeling for another.
“Very well, Caro,” he said with a nod. “I only ask that you travel safely, be careful, and when you return to England, be sure to visit.”
He surprised her by closing the distance between them, crushing her into an embrace and then shaking a shocked Thatcher’s hand. He grinned at them, and then turned and all but sprinted toward the stairs.
Joanna wondered if she would ever be warm again.
The fire blazed before her as she sat, covered in every threadbare blanket the room had to offer. Unfortunately, her own pelisse and cloak were not exactly made for the harshest weather, and even bundled in it all she shivered. She took a sip of the strong coffee she had requested to be brought up to her room. Caroline had urged her to dine with them, but Joanna could sense that the two of them required time alone, and so she had given it to them. She would return downstairs later on and wish them farewell.
A tear pricked her eye at the thought of her friend leaving. She might be back, true, but she also might not. Caroline and Thatcher could end up anywhere — wherever the two of them might find work and a place to live. Joanna sighed at the thought, hoping that they might consider making London their home.
That idea, at least, cheered her.
She was so lost in her musings that she jumped at the quick rap on the door, trying to hurry toward it but getting caught up in all of the blankets that covered her.
“One moment!” she called out, but then the door opened of its own accord.
In stepped Elijah.
“You should lock your door,” he said, standing there in the entrance, looking down at her with some strange expression on his face that she couldn’t quite place.
“I wasn’t expecting anyone to let themselves in.”
“You never know what a man might do.”
“No, I suppose I don’t.”
As they bantered, she was attempting to extricate herself from all of the material enveloping her, but then finally Elijah either noticed or took pity on her — she couldn’t be entirely sure which — and crossed over to her.
“Here,” he muttered, “let me help you.”
Finally she stood unrestricted before him, and his eyes raked over her.
“Why are you wearing your outerwear?” he asked.
“Because,” she said with a small shiver, “I’m cold.”
“Oh, Joanna,” he said, the tension seemingly draining from him as he closed his eyes for a moment. “Thank goodness.”
“Thank goodness?”
“I was so worried,” he said, rubbing at his temple. “We didn’t know where you were. I searched everywhere, trying to find you. I—”
He stopped talking then, crossing to her and then crushing her in his embrace. She closed her eyes and allowed him to hold her, to take away all of the worry, all of the guilt that she herself had been feeling.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” he murmured into the crook of her neck. “I would have come. I would have helped. I would have—”
“I’m sorry,” she said, breathing in the scent of the winter air mixed with his own masculine musk. “After what you said about Thatcher, I thought you might try to stop Caroline. She was so adamant that no one in her family know until after the marriage occurred, and while I knew I was betraying you, to tell you would betray her trust in me. Maybe… maybe if you hadn’t seemed so against a marriage to someone below your class, it would have been different.”
He tensed at that, and she understood he might be somewhat insulted, but she had to tell him how she felt. And it was the truth.
He stepped back from her, although he kept his hands on her shoulders as he looked deeply into her eyes.
“I know I said that, Joanna. I did. And I’m sorry. I never meant it like that.”
She raised an eyebrow.
“Well, maybe I did, but what most concerned me was the thought of Caroline, a woman who has never known hard work, married to a servant of our house. She will face a life unlike anything she has ever known before. I was worried that she wouldn’t understand, that she wasn’t ready for it. But I was wrong.”
Joanna searched his face, trying to determine if he truly meant the words, or if he was just saying them to right his previous wrong.
“Do you know how