Even in the dim lighting, her eyes looked flawless as they darted back and forth between his. If he hadn’t heard her yelp in pain he might think she was using this as an excuse to get close to him.
Not thatthatthought made any sense.
“Yes, I’m sure.” There was nothing there.
Miss Shroud heaved a sigh. “That’s most likely because there wasn’t anything there to begin with.”
Matthew gritted his teeth. “Then why would you tell me there was?”
“I was plannin’ on scaring ye when you were right up next to me.”
Oh, she’d scared him. “Why would you do that?”
“Because you’ve been ignorin’ me ever since we left the Garvises’.” Miss Shroud put a hand on her hip. “I wouldn’t have had to make ye lookatmy eyes if you hadn’t been avoidin’ them so rigorously.”
“So you decided to scare the living daylights out of me?” After terrorizing him with her closeness before that?
She narrowed her perfectly-working eyes. “Aye.”
“I don’t think I deserved that.”
“Ye don’t? Are you tryin’ to tell me you weren’t avoidin’ me?”
Matthew opened his mouth to retort, but he had no answer. He had been avoiding her. As much as one could while sharing a cart, at any rate.
“Why?” she asked. “Ye were finally talking to me, and I thought we had a wonderful time with Mandy. But now ye’re back to pretendin’ I don’t exist. Is this how you live your life? Being friendly with someone one moment, then changin’ yer mind and ignorin’ them the next?”
“It isn’t.”
“Then how do ye live your life, Mr. Scarper?”
Matthew stepped forward, every muscle in his back and shoulders tight. “I don’t.” Matthew’s voice carried more force than he’d meant it to. He’d been uncomfortable around her since the Garvis home, and then she felt the need to play a trick on him. It wouldn’t have been the worst thing in the world, but her trick had included far too much closeness and physical contact. There was only so much one man could take. “I don’t live my life. I simply deliver items to people and shops. That’s it. That is all I want to do. I’m not comfortable speaking to people, and I’m definitely not comfortable having young women make up excuses so that I’ll look them in the eye.”
“Nay, most young ladies simply hire ye to deliver things to their homes or shops.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Ye haven’t noticed that most of your deliveries could be consolidated into one or two trips a week? Or that parcels small enough for a young lady to bring home on her own are delivered by ye instead? I’m the last young woman to make an excuse to spend time with ye, not the first. So don’t act as if my antics are a surprise to ye.”
“Are you saying the only reason I am busy every day is because the women of this town are going out of their way to make it so?”
“That is exactly what I’m sayin’.”
So, he wasn’t good at his job. She’d come here to observe him and make suggestions to her father, but what he’d shown her would do no good. “I suppose that means you’ve gotten what you’ve come for and you can go home.”
Her eyebrows furrowed as if she were debating whether or not he was right. Then, her hand to her hip, she narrowed her eyes at him. “Do ye expect me to go home and tell my father that the number one thing we can do to increase deliveries is to hire attractive young men with brilliant blue eyes who are just aloof enough to make all the women who see them swoon?”
“I’m quite certain I don’t make women swoon. That’s a gross exaggeration. You spend most of the day with me and haven’t succumbed to any fits of vapors.”
“I just professed to have a bug in my eye to get your attention.” Miss Shroud closed the little distance that was between them. “I’m not unaffected by ye.”
Matthew was breathing hard, his chest rising and falling in quick rhythm. He needed to turn around, walk away from Miss Shroud, unhitch Marge, and go home. If her father knew she was saying such things to a cart driver, the man would probably have Matthew run out of town.
Because Miss Shroudhadto be unaffected by him. Otherwise the whole business of them spending most of the day together became a very dangerous business. “Well, one of us has to be unaffected, or we can longer continue in each other’s company.”
“And that’s you, is it?”
“If I have to be.”
