“Ruby,” he said, and then seemed to grind his teeth. “LadyRuby.”
She quashed everything inside her. Ruthlessly stamped out any wild imaginings at the sound of her name in his mouth. “Yes?”
“I’m—sorry.” He was still tight-lipped, stiff, uncomfortable. “I should not have importuned you on the beach.”
She drew back, shocked into speech despite herself. “You did not... you did notimportuneme.”
“I did.”
“Of course you did not. How on earth could you think—” She knew she should stop talking, that she was poised to reveal too much. But as usual she could not stop her own reckless words. “How could you possibly believe that I did not share in your enthusiasm?”
“I importuned you,” he said again. His shoulders were tight, and he was not looking at her, his dark lashes shielding his eyes. “I took advantage. I should not have done so.”
With considerable effort, she strangled another protest.
She’d practically begged him to continue on. Her fingers had been in his hair, her mouth open beneath his.Don’t stop on my account, she’d said, as blunt and plain as day. He could not believe her indifferent. It was impossible.
Was this meant to be some sop to her dignity? Some misguided attempt to allow her to salvage her pride—to pretend she had not wished for his embrace?
He was still looking down—at his shoes, perhaps. At the crate of stockings at his feet. “It won’t happen again.”
It was easy to make sense of his words, to fit them into place in the story of her life. Of course he did not wish to kiss her again. She had dreamed herself once more into an impossible flight of fancy, as she so often did. And yet...
She’d never felt so right in her own skin as she had with him.
Astonishing, how much it hurt to have this new hope dashed: that this man might somehow want her exactly as she was.
Her nose burned. She plucked at a piece of straw on her glove. “You needn’t apologize. I had no expectations of you.”
“No,” he said flatly. “Of course you did not.”
The bit of straw had become entangled, somehow, in her glove’s lace trim. She wanted to yank at it. She wanted to tear it free. “I’ll compose a letter to my father. I am... I have made a great deal of progress in the house. It will be as ready for the princess’s arrival as I can make it.”
Ruby had thought, when she’d first entered society and been such a miserable failure, that she need only try harder. If she readThe Tatlerinstead ofThe Times, dressed in camelopard and wore her sleeves puffed, eventually she would take. She would be invited to dance; she would have a houseful of callers. Society would deem her acceptable. And so would her father.
But it had not worked. There had been no effort great enough to effect that sort of transformation.
And here at Pomeroy House—as she’d painted and cleaned, as she’d bantered with Archer and kissed him in the cove and tried to protect his crew—she’d begun to think that perhaps she need not change herself after all. Perhaps she, Ruby Ballimore, was already enough.
But. Well.
It seemed she’d been wrong.
“I have to go.” She looked down at the ground, away from the straw that still clung to her gloves. Away from Archer. “I will let you know when I hear from my father.”
Chapter 16
Archer did not intentionally seek her out again.
In fact, he did his best to avoid her, telling himself it was for her benefit, knowing he meant it for his own. It was not quite bearable to look at her—her face so transparent, like the finest new glazing, a thin shell of crystalline glass.
He’d hurt her feelings. He had known it was inevitable the moment he’d realized what his lie to Neri meant. He’d—
Hell. Some part of him had known he would hurt her from the moment he’d tugged off her pearl-buttoned glove. From the moment she’d stepped inside Pomeroy House.
But she would forget her hurt, and him. She would go home to London—perhaps her father would fetch her, despite what she thought—and return to her right world. Hang curtains and talk of statues and upend someone else’s life for a change. Worm her stubborn, impossible, interfering way into someone else’s heart.
He had hurt her. He’d known he would. And so he turned around when he saw her in a room and made excuses to be outside when she was in. He carted boxes down to the cove, and took Signor Neri to the public house, and tried, with little success, to separate Zenobia from Gerry.
