Tempting the Bride - By Sherry Thomas Page 0,6

he’d chosen this particular route for a reason: a window that differed little from the two dozen others that looked out from the same building. His eyes, however, were always unerringly drawn to those particular panes of glass—their luster quite dulled this hour by the shadows of an approaching storm.

If he could rise some fifteen, twenty feet in the air, he’d be able to see Helena Fitzhugh, sitting with her back to the window. She would be wearing a white blouse tucked into a dark skirt, her flaming hair caught up in an elegant chignon at her nape. A pot of tea was likely to be found on her desk, brought in by her conscientious secretary in the morning, and largely ignored the rest of the day.

Much could happen in six months—and much had. Hastings had done what he’d promised to do, keeping Andrew Martin’s name out of any discussions. But he had not kept her actions a secret. In fact, the morning after their confrontation, he’d left at first light, traveled to her brother’s estate, and informed her family that she’d been out and about at night when she ought not to be.

Her family had immediately understood the implications. She was half coaxed, half ordered across the ocean to America, under the pretext of an article that needed writing concerning the ladies of Radcliffe College, a women’s college associated with Harvard University.

The events that took place on the campus of Harvard University had led to one of the more intriguing scandals of the current London Season, a scandal that involved Miss Fitzhugh’s elder sister and the Duke of Lexington, resulting in an unexpected wedding.

On the heels of that, her twin brother, Fitz, at last realized that he was—and had been for years—in love with his heiress wife, a woman he’d married under the most trying of circumstances and never believed could become the love of his life.

For Hastings, however, little had changed, other than that his beloved disfavored him more than ever. Their lives went on, occasionally intersecting in a burst of sparks. But like images produced by a magic lantern, the drama and movement were but illusions going round and round. Nothing of substance happened. They’d dealt with each other thus since they were children, and he was no closer to her heart than that pot of tea at her elbow, a fixture in her life yet utterly inconsequential.

And so he stared at her window in the light of the day, as he’d stared at her door in the dark of the night.

The window opened. She stood before it, looking out.

He knew she could not see him—could not, thanks to the carriage immediately adjacent, even make out the crest on his carriage. All the same his breath quickened, his heart constricting.

Then, after the quake of nerves, a familiar dejection. She did not even look down, but only gazed distantly toward the direction of Andrew Martin’s town residence.

Despite Hastings’s keeping to the letter—if not the spirit—of his promise, members of her family discovered on their own the identity of Miss Fitzhugh’s partner in crime. Hastings subsequently received a perhaps well-deserved punch to the face from Fitz for not having told the whole truth. Andrew Martin did not receive a just-as-well-deserved (if not more so) punch to the face, but Fitz made it clear that Martin was never to contact Miss Fitzhugh again.

She missed him. Hastings was but a shadow in the crowd, but Martin was her air, her sky.

He watched her until she closed the window and disappeared from sight. Then he got out of the brougham, instructed his coachman to head home as the logjam allowed, and walked away.

The window must not have latched properly, for Helena could once again hear the din of the impasse below.

She pressed a palm to the side of her head, the fingers of her other hand tapping restlessly against Andrew’s last letter to her. She’d gone over it countless times, but, inveterate reader that she was, she could not help scanning the words that had been set down before her.

My Dearest,

I am relieved to learn that you have returned safe and sound from America. I have missed you desperately during the long weeks of your absence. I need not tell you how delighted I am to receive your note requesting a meeting, and I need not tell you how dearly I’d like to see you.

But I’ve been giving the matter much thought. As wondrously euphoric as I’ve been of late, and as