of the risks—love and respectability.” Mrs. Martin rose. “You needn’t give me an answer immediately. If you’d like to speak to Mr. Martin, you can reach him at the house in London. I will show myself out.”
Helena stopped before Hastings’s study. The door was ajar. He was at his desk, an unlit tobacco pipe by his elbow.
“Would you like to come in?” he said without looking up.
Her heart flipped. It was another few seconds before she could cross the threshold.
As she approached the desk, she saw that he was working on the revisions she’d requested in one of the Old Toad Pond tales, changing an instance of Mrs. Bunny to Mrs. Porcupine, to avoid having the same character being sunny in one story and sullen in another.
Now he did glance up and smiled faintly. “I am ashamed to admit this, but until you’d pointed it out, I’d had no idea I’d called two different characters by the same name.”
She didn’t know whether she wanted to throw him out of the window or yank him to her by his hair. She tilted her chin at the tobacco pipe. “Is that Tobias’s?”
“I suppose it is. The pipe belonged to my father. I don’t much care for pipe smoking, but I like to pack it with fresh tobacco from time to time.”
So that was why his clothes sometimes smelled of pipe tobacco. She was suddenly possessed by the desire to roll in a pile of his country tweeds, perhaps naked.
He clasped his hands together on the desk. “I understand Mrs. Martin was here.”
The sensation of being suspended above a void returned with a vengeance. “She wants me to marry Mr. Martin.”
He came out of his chair. “What?”
He’d been so composed, so serene—it almost comforted her to see a stronger reaction. “She wants a divorce and he hesitates. She hopes the thought of marrying me will make him more cooperative.”
He said nothing for a long time; her heart began to beat to the rhythm of his agitated breaths. “You still want to marry him?”
“I only stopped wanting to marry him when I could no longer remember who he was.”
He shook his head and went on shaking it. “No. No. Stop this madness.”
A part of her nodded vigorously in agreement. She tried not to pay any attention. “You can’t ask me to change one of my most deeply held wishes simply because we’ve spent a few weeks together.”
He rounded the table and set his hands on her arms. “I can and I do. Don’t make this mistake, Helena. Don’t confuse what you once wanted with what you now need.”
The warmth of his hands through her sleeves—she stepped back. “I’m going to see Mr. Martin.”
“Yes,” he said slowly. “I suppose you’ll need to do that. Would you like me to hold dinner until you return?”
No, what she wanted was…histrionics. She wanted him to throw his inkwell across the room, then overturn his entire desk. To not let her go so easily, so gallantly. “If I decide to marry him, then I will not return. The longer I live with you, the bigger the scandal will be.”
“You will return to at least say a proper good-bye to Bea. She asked about you just now. Do you know how seldom she asks about people?”
At least his beautiful voice rose a little. She supposed she’d have to satisfy herself with that. “I’d better go now.”
He yanked her to him and kissed her, a hard, brief kiss that left her short of breath and light of head.
“Go,” he said brusquely. “I’ll order your carriage.”
She lifted her hand and grazed her lips with her knuckles. He watched her. After a moment, his gaze softened. “Remember Lake Sahara, my dear.”
CHAPTER 17
Hastings’s day only went downhill. One of his grooms broke his arm while exercising a horse. The roof of the mushroom house fell in. And then the coup de grâce: Sir Hardshell gave up the ghost.
By the time Hastings learned the news, Bea was already in her trunk, so upset that when he tried to give her a biscuit and a cup of milk tea, she kept pushing the little tray back out the door at the bottom of the trunk.
After a while he gave up, ate the biscuit himself, and sat down with his back against Bea’s trunk, wishing he had a trunk of his own for sanctuary, where he could remain until the world changed.
He didn’t know how long he sat there, staring at the wall; he was startled out