“This was your mother’s house, Perry.” Shaldon should have told her. It should not have been left to a lusting retainer like him.
Her mouth firmed again, her eyes widening, assessing. “You’ve been here before?” she whispered shakily.
He firmed his grip. She’d made a leap that he must set straight. “You didn’t know about this cottage? No. Of courseyouwouldn’t be told.”
“Were you here…before?”
“Yes.”
“With my mother?” She choked out the question.
“Yes.” He shook his head. “Not in the way you’re thinking.” He stood, still grasping her hands. “Come. The rain has stopped.” He pulled a knitted wrap from the sofa, draped it around her shoulders, and opened the French door to the damp terrace beyond.
Perry tookbig gulps of the damp, sea-drenched air, struggling to keep the spinning at bay. Fox had trapped her hand again, skin to skin, and she shamefully held on. The shallow balcony’s rail was waist high for a short person. The two of them could topple over far more easily. His grip on her hand, the view down the rocks, and the news, the awful mention of him being here with Mama—she was reeling.
He shifted hands and put an arm around her, tugging her into his warmth. “I won’t let you fall.”
Her insides rattled as if a war had been torched within. She, who stood eye to eye with men, the awkward, towering Long Meg…next to Fox she felt womanly. Hadn’t his height always been one of his draws? Until he’d begun to tease her like an insufferable older brother, turning her feelings upside down. And then her mother’s treasured painting went missing the same time as Fox. If she clung to those unpleasant memories…
She closed her eyes and all of her senses went to the places where his body touched hers, sending delicious warmth through her, tingles, shivers and a feeling of perilous safety. One strong hand fitted with hers, the other cradled her shoulder. She struggled to breathe.
“Perpetua.” He gave her a gentle shake. “Perry.”
She opened her eyes. Only the closest family and friends called her Perry.
There was real concern in his gaze, the teasing absent. As it had been when they’d danced together at her brother’s ball.
In fact, other than a few lapses tonight, he’d been more serious than he’d been all those years ago at Cransdall.
But he’d never, ever touched her like this, not even when they were dancing, not even when as a girl, he’d helped her up after she’d fallen out of the tree right in front of him.
“I’m fine now,” she said, only she wasn’t. She’d never be fine again. “It’s the elevation, and all this wild crashing.” She made herself walk to the edge where the parapet hit her below her hips. He trailed along with her, still attached.
She forced her gaze to the wild waves below.
“Tell me…” She cleared her throat and spoke louder so he would hear over the tumult. “Tell me what you were doing here with my mother.”
“At her request I escorted her here.”
“At her request?”
He turned her to face him. “It wasnotwhat you’re thinking. She came here to meet your father.”
“My father?” She sounded stupid, even to her. She cleared the moisture from her throat again. “My father was in…Spain. Or France.” She gazed out over the water. “Or somewhere.” Always somewhere else, her father had been during those years of the war.
“Yes. She came here to meet him when he could get away. She was meeting him then.”
“But she brought you along.”
“She came here to meet your father. She asked me to escort her here, which I did. And then I left.”
She shook her head. “She would have asked Bakeley to bring her.”
“He wasn’t around.”
Of course, he was right, blast him. Bakeley had gone off to buy horses before Mother left, and Perry had been sent off to visit a distant cousin.
“Charley was there.”
