“What are you doing here?” she breathed, half wondering if she hadn’t conjured him with her thoughts.
He took this question seriously—of course, he did, she thought, almost laughing again—and frowned at her.
“Your sister already told me that she revealed my… interference with her betrothal,” he said, a slight tension in his words as though he expected to face censure for this. “I would have preferred to tell you myself, but I suppose it was unfair of me to ask her to keep a secret from you.”
It was too late for Phoebe; when she heard the wordsI would have preferred to tell you myself, she lit up with hope. Maybe it would crush her later—probably it would crush her later—but maybe it was better to hope and lose than never hope at all.
“But Hannah said that the contract is already signed,” she said, shaking her head doubtfully. “The matter is done.”
Aaron shrugged a shoulder, and in a less self-possessed man, Phoebe would have called the gesture bashful. It reminded her, however, that his hands were still on her arms, and this emboldened her to step just a little bit closer to him.
“Well, I wanted to make sure that she was still happy with how things were progressing,” he said, as though it was the most obvious thing in the world. “Lady Loyd is… a strong character. I wanted to make certain that she wasn’t giving Hannah any trouble.”
Hannah, he called her. Not Miss Turner.Hannah, like she was his sister, too. And Hannah had called himAaron.
The light inside Phoebe grew.
“Really?” she asked.
Aaron shifted his feet like she had caught him in a lie.
“Imighthave also hoped that I would see you here,” he confessed. “When I arrived, your sister told me that you were outhere. I should have known you wouldn’t have dressed yourself warmly enough,” he added in a dark mutter.
Phoebe’s heart felt like it was going to thump out of her chest. She clutched his jacket more tightly around her, and perhaps Aaron didn’t know what to make of her silence in the same way that she didn’t know what to make of his presence here because he drew in a deep breath like he was preparing himself for something.
“Phoebe,” he said—and if they were not already married, his tone would make her wonder if he wasn’t about to propose to her. He dropped his hands from her arms and regarded her formally.
“I owe you an apology,” he said, tensed as though he expected this all to be thrown back in his face. “I have never been good with emotions, and while I have a good reason for it, it isn’t an excuse. Yet, I feel I must lay myself bare before you.”
He sounded wretched enough that Phoebe’s fingers practically itched with the desire to reach for him, but she knew neither of them would thank her if she stopped him from saying what he needed to say.
“I have long considered myself a man who got away from the war without scars,” he said. There was a stiffness to his words, but Phoebe didn’t take this to suggest that Aaron was lying. Instead, she thought he was telling the truth—a truth that was simply very hard to tell.
“But recently,” he said, clenching and unclenching his hands as he spoke, “I have come to believe that perhaps I have just been marked in other ways. And perhaps these marks have led me to… see danger when there is none.”
Phoebe was trembling with tension. They were on the cusp of something. She could sense that much. But she did not yet know which way the dice would fall. This would change them—but would it be enough?
“You were right to call me cold,” he went on, and even if he was commending the description, she cringed to think of her unkindness toward him. “I came by it honestly. Being cold meant safety in my household when I was a child, and it meant survival in the war.” He shook his head. “But safety and survival aren’t everything.”
Phoebe couldn’t hold back any longer. “What is?” she asked, her voice very small.
Aaron’s gaze had been darting around as he spoke, as though he couldn’t quite manage to look her in the eye and tell her his secrets at the same time. But now, hearing the anxiety in her tone, his eyes shot to hers, and he reached up and cupped her face. His fingers were freezing, but she leaned into the touch all the same.
“Christ, Phoebe,” he said. He huffed a little laugh, and it bloomed in a white puff between them. “It’syou. I’ve adapted to so many things. To my parents’ neglect. To Eton—which,frankly, was harder than adapting to the goddamn navy. I survived a war.”
He let out one more small puff of laughter. “And then you came along, and you filled my home with light and laughter and happiness. You took my ice and built a warm nest inside anyway. And I bloodypanicked.”
Aaron looked more and more unburdened with each word, but Phoebe still felt wound tight as a gentleman’s pocket watch in her uncertainty.
“And now?” she asked. “Are you still panicking?”
“Honestly? Yes,” he said, and her heart sank—and then he kept speaking. “I am frantic with the thought that I have caused you so much unhappiness. I am terrified that I have pushed you away irrevocably.”
He moved his hand on her cheek and used it to smooth back a strand of her hair, which he touched with the same reverence as he would use when caressing the finest silk.
“I am so sorry, Phoebe,” he said. “I merely wish for you to be happy. All you must do is tell me what that entails. I do not dare to hope for your forgiveness or your approval. If you want me to return to the countryside and leave you the house here, I shall. If you wish for something else, you need but name it. I know I have ruined any chance of being worthy of you, but I do most desperately hope that I can still do the right thing by you.”
Phoebe’s breath left her in a shudder that was practically a sob.
