She could not have known what she had incited within him, or why his hand was now around her wrist. Her eyes flitted down to his fingers, as if uncertain of how they had gotten there.
“You should unhand me,” she said in a quiet voice, laced with warning. “We are in a park, in full view of countless people, and I shall not end up in the scandal sheets because of?—”
Her sentence ended in a blood-curdling scream, her gaze no longer on his hand, but lower still, to her shoe. She grasped at Hugo as if she were drowning and he was driftwood, her fingernails raking at his lapels, her eyes wide in terror as her breaths sawed in and out of her in panicked gasps.
At first, Hugo did not understand what was happening; he was only aware of her grip, tugging and pulling at him, not at all the behavior of someone who wanted to be far away from him.
Then, he noticed it…
A lumpy, brownish-green toad was crawling up the length of Evelyn’s shoe, apparently trying to find some shade beneath the hem of her skirts. And though Evelyn’s upper half frantically clawed at him, that particular foot remained completely frozen, as if she did not dare to move it, lest it encourage the toad to jump or crawl higher.
Hugo had seen ladies react badly to spiders and bees, and he doubted there were many who favored toads, but he had never seen such visceral fear upon someone’s face before. And as her hand gripped his arm, he would not have been surprised to find faint bruises later.
Instinctively, he held her to him, some sudden impulse to protect her taking over, even though he knew it was just a little toad.
“Get rid of it,” she whispered frantically, her eyes scrunching shut. “Please, get rid of it.”
With a frown, Hugo gently swiped the toad with the side of his boot, Evelyn breathing hard as the creature hopped off, leaping into the longer grass that eventually led down to the Serpentine.
The ‘danger’ had passed, yet he found he could not let go of her. She was shaking, her face drained of color, her hands still gripping him tightly, as if she meant to stay there indefinitely, protected by his arm and his body. And for a fleeting moment, he found that he did not mind, for she felt rather… nice in his embrace.
CHAPTER SIX
Oh, why did it have to be a toad? Why?
Evelyn knew she ought to step away from the situation and that the entirety of Hyde Park must be staring in astonishment, but the fear was so all-consuming that she could not even open her eyes. Her skin crawled as if the toad were slinking across it, prickly chills racing down the back of her neck, her stomach roiling at the thought of that slimy creature on her. Holding onto Hugo was the only thing preventing her from making an even bigger scene, the solidity of his chest and the muscle of his arms providing an anchor for her sanity.
He smelled rather good, too, of fresh linens that had just come in from the line and something deeper, richer. Bergamot, perhaps, or cedar.
I am too close, if I can smell his perfume. Oh goodness, what will people say? Come on, Evie, step away!
It was Hugo who released her, with surprising care. His arm, which had, for a moment, encircled her waist, slowly relinquished his hold. And his hands took hold of hers, gently prizing them away from his upper arms, until it looked as if he were physically keeping her at a distance.
“What was all that about?” he asked quietly.
Blinking into sunlight that now seemed too bright, Evelyn swallowed thickly. “I… cannot stand toads.”
“I do not think many people are fond of them, Lady Evelyn, but that was not mere dislike,” he said, his blue eyes searching her face. “You were terrified.”
She drew in a shaky breath. “I have… bad memories of them.”
“How so?”
She did not want to explain to him, but after what he had just seen, she felt she probably owed him some enlightenment. If nothing else, she did not want him to think that she was a madwoman and that Selina might be mad by association.
“I have been… um… afraid of them since I was a child,” she said shakily, her nerves not yet settled, her eyes darting this way and that, seeing fresh toads in every movement of the grass though there were none there.
“My brothers,” she gasped, continuing. “They… Well, one of them… he… he played a rather cruel trick upon me when I was young. A trick he… had learned at Eton. He f-filled my… bed with them and told me that he had left a… gift in my chambers.”
Just remembering brought a new flood of panic to her veins, a shudder running through her, her mind yearning for a hot bath so she might wash away the unpleasant feeling of slimy things on her skin.
“I had nightmares for… months, years,” she added breathlessly. “Thinking they were in my… bed still, under my pillow, straining to get out. My brothers did not care. Instead, they brought more toads when I least expected it… to try and get me to… recover from my fear. So… I am not at all fond of toads, Your Grace.”
She braced for the jibes and the mockery, expecting Hugo to respond in the same way that her brothers had when they heard of her nightmares. Telling her to stop being such a coward, telling her that she was overreacting, telling her that it was just a harmless trick, telling her that there were far worse tricks that could have been played upon her.
Mostly, Matthew was the one leading the ridicule, but even Luke had joined in after a while, letting her know that her nightmares were unseemly and that she ought to ‘get over this madness'. Apparently, back then, her nightly screams had kept everyone awake, but no amount of explanation that she could not help what dreams came when she closed her eyes made the slightest bit of difference or gained her any sympathy at all.
So it was a shock when she heard softness in Hugo’s voice.
