Phoebe ground the heel of her hand against her eyes because she suddenly felt too painfully frustrated, too. She didn’t know howto make him feel safe—to make him stop worrying that there were enemies around every corner. She couldn’t do that if he didn’t trust her, and she didn’t blame him for not trusting her, at least not yet… But they could never build that trust if he kept her—and everyone else around them—from ever truly knowing him.
It was a problem that led back to its own origin. And she was no skilled manipulator. She was just a curious bluestocking who had gotten in over her head with this man.
“Fine,” she said. “Let’s go inside.”
“Fine,” he said.
They gathered their damaged clothing in silence. Aaron handed her down from the carriage—the driver had, fortunately, long since fled—but he dropped her hand the moment her feet were securely on the ground. They went inside in silence.
Phoebe glanced up at the angry set of his jaw in the moment they spent waiting on the stoop while the servant inside stood to open the door. When she got to the top of the stairs on the way back to her bedchamber, she glanced back down at where Aaron still waited in the foyer.
She found that he didn’t look angry any longer.
She looked away before she could see anything else.
CHAPTER 20
He almost made it out of the house without being stopped.
“Where are you going?”
Phoebe.
Aaron paused, his hat in his hand, and turned to face his wife.
She had been everywhere in the few days since they had pleasured one another and subsequently argued in the carriage, which had put him on edge even though she hadn’t brought up anything about himopening upto people since that night.
She had been scrupulously polite. It had been unnerving.
She was clearly still annoyed—that was the only thing that stopped Aaron from devolving into outright bafflement. But shewasn’t doing any of the things he had come to expect from an irritated Phoebe. She wasn’t fighting or arguing or even making any pointed comments.
She was justthere. Acting suspiciously sweet.
Even worse than the way Phoebe was acting, however, was the way thatAaronwas acting, at least inwardly.
Because he wasn’t angry with her.
Indeed, his anger had evaporated in moments. He’d been annoyed at her poking and prodding—because she didn’t truly understand danger, and he didn’t want her to. He didn’t want her to know the horrors that mankind could manage. He didn’t want her to see those things in her nightmares.
But he hadn’t stayed mad. Not nearly as long as he should have when she kept insisting on stirring up things that she should just leave alone.
So, really, it made sense in the greater scheme of things that she was asking him probing questions—that she was there, right when he was trying to slip away.
Aaron was tempted to answer brusquely, but even he had his limits, and he had to allow that it would be dishonorable and unkind to continue to push her away when they kept allowing themselves to be drawn together in great collisions of carnal longing.
He forced himself to keep his tone even.
“I am attending one of my ducal duties,” he said.
Phoebe arched an eyebrow at him, and his stupid, traitorous face wanted to curve into a smile. This was the most attitude he’d seen from her in days, and he felt strangely heartened at its return.
“Surely,” she said, “you could not have expected to put me off.”
This time, his smile could not be suppressed.
“I didn’t, not really, but this is a duty better handled alone.”
She put a hand on him in a confrontational sort of way, but this time, he was not pleased with the show of defiance because he suspected that it was designed to hide a flicker of genuine hurt.
