She smiled at the sky. The bench creaked beside her.
She knew who it was, even before he spoke.
“Courage failed you, Juliet?” Sebastian asked softly. No accusation or recrimination.
And yet she knew he understood. “Yes. And good sense rushed at last to my rescue.”
“Are you sending me away, Juliet? Again?”
Was she? She considered. “No. As I did thirty years ago, I am staying away. Though fromthis, not necessarily from you. Ours was never a public affair, Sebastian. Whatever it is between us now, it should remain private.”
He had always possessed the kind of gaze that burned away thelayers of protection. She felt it turned on her now and realized she was not afraid.
“Friendship, you mean?” he asked.
“Yes. If it survives.”
“And more than friendship?”
She smiled and turned to meet his gaze. “Seriously, Seb?”
Although she was affectionately amused and inviting him to share the joke, he didn’t laugh. His eyes were unexpectedly serious. And steady. She felt her own smile falter.
He lifted his hand to her cheek, startling her by the tenderness of the caress. No one had caressed Juliet for a very long time. Solomon kissed her cheek. Occasionally, Connie hugged her. But they were notlovers. She did not think she could bear Sebastian’s touch. She did, though it deprived her of breath.
“Juliet,” he murmured. “Our years are never wasted.”
“What do you mean by that?” she demanded.Too aggressive—hiding the unsteadiness of her voice.
“I mean… Your son-in-law taught me a lesson.”
Juliet blinked. “He did?”
“He told me to stop playing games. They have become so much my nature over the years that I play them without thought. As soon as I found you, I should have walked into your shop and made myself known. I didn’t. I had to do it subtly, giving myself—and you—an easy way out. How can I be an honest man if I have forgotten honesty? A trustworthy man if I have forgotten trust?”
“You were never a bad man. And believe me, I’ve learned to spot them.”
The hand at her cheek slid to her shoulder and gripped. “I know the broad gist of your thirty years, Juliet. I daresay you can guess mine. We need not be ashamed of the details, not with each other. Never despise yourself for surviving. I must live with what I have done too. But can’t we look forward?”
“I am contented. I have a life and an honest business that is working for me. You have an important position in the Foreign Office, where I do not fit.”
There, she had said it, without sounding over-humble, too.I do not fit.NotI would ruin you.Though they meant the same thing.
“And so you offer me a private friendship? That might become something more?”
“In private. If you can ever see past this raddled old body.”
“Stop it,” he said fiercely. “Isawyou as soon as you walked into your daughter’s dining room. It has always been you, my Juliet.”
Quite how it happened she didn’t know, but both his arms were around her and his mouth was on hers in the first kiss of thirty years. A sob rose into her mouth and was swallowed in a wash of agonizing sweetness and regret.
“Now,” he said unsteadily, “I will tell youmyterms. No more hiding. I have had enough of that in my life, and I won’t do it with you again. If you are my friend, we are friends in public. If I am your lover, we own up to it. If we marry, you are my wife, my hostess, of whom I am proud. Whom I have always loved.”
Her jaw dropped. “Wife?Are you insane?Hostess?”
“You’re a natural. You always were. Whom do you think your Constance learned it from? We need do nothing, of course, that makes you uncomfortable. I have enough money to retire tomorrow, if it’s what we choose. All that is for future discussion. For tonight, may we just start the way I would like to go on? In honesty?”
He stood up, and for a bewildered moment, she thought he was going to storm off. But he held his hand down to her.
