A day at a time.
“I am not in love with her,” he said aloud.
The lie tasted worse than the brandy.
He drank anyway.
Chapter Twelve
“You’re doing it again, Miss Weston.”
Lorraine started, nearly dropping the book she had been pretending to read. Lord Julian Pierce stood in the library doorway, leaning against the frame with his arms crossed and a knowing smile that suggested he had been observing her for some time.
“Doing what, my lord?”
“Staring at that page without turning it. You’ve been fixed on the same passage for a quarter of an hour. Either the prose is remarkably engaging, or your thoughts are elsewhere.” He pushed away from the doorframe and strolled into the room with the easy assurance of a man who had never encountered a space he could not make his own. “I suspect the latter.”
Lorraine closed the book with as much composure as she could muster. Julian had been at Rovewood for three days, and in that short time, he had overturned the household’s careful equilibrium with the efficiency of a cheerful hurricane. The servants adored him. Thomas followed him about with unflagging devotion. Even Mrs Potter, who guarded routine like a general defending a fortress, had been seen smiling as Julian made himself at home in her domain.
And Dominic—
Dominic had withdrawn.
Since the dinner—since his abrupt departure and whatever had passed between him and Julian afterward—he had retreated into a coldness that made his earlier reserve seem almost mild. He appeared at meals, but spoke little, and only to Thomas or Julian. He visited the nursery, but only when Lorraine was otherwise engaged. He walked the grounds, but at altered hours, along altered paths, as though carefully avoiding the possibility of encountering her.
It was, Lorraine recognised with a dull ache, a pattern she understood too well. The retreat. The walls rebuilt. The ice restored over what had briefly begun to thaw.
And she could not wholly blame him, for she understood the impulse. The terror of wanting what one could not have. The instinct to withdraw before the wanting became unbearable. She had spent the last few years perfecting that very defence.
It did not lessen the hurt.
“Miss Weston.” Julian had taken the chair opposite—Dominic’s chair, she thought, with an unwelcome flicker of possessiveness—and was watching her with mild amusement. “May I speak plainly?”
“You strike me, my lord, as a man who does so whether permitted or not.”
“Well struck. I begin to understand why Dom finds you formidable.” He smiled, though something keener lay beneath it. “I wished to speak to you about our mutual friend.”
“His Grace isyourfriend, my lord. To me, he is my employer.”
“And I am the Prince Regent.” Julian crossed one ankle over the other and regarded her steadily. “Miss Weston, I have known Dominic Vane since we were thirteen. I have seen him through school, through war, and through four years of what can only be described as self-imposed exile. And in all that time, I have never seen him look at anyone as he looks at you.”
Lorraine kept her expression still, though her breath caught.
“He watches you,” Julian continued more quietly. “When you are unaware of it. When you read to the boy, when you cross a room, when you speak to Mrs Potter about the dinner. He watches you as a man watches something he believes himself denied—with longing enough to do him harm.”
“My lord—”
“I do not say this to embarrass you. Nor merely to meddle—though I confess I have a taste for it.” He leaned forward, the lightness falling away. “I say it because he will not. He will stand at a window and convince himself he does not deserve you—and be entirely wrong. And he will suffer for it. As, I think, will you.”
Lorraine pressed her hands flat against her skirts. “You do not know my circumstances, my lord. You do not know what—”
“I know enough. I know you are intelligent, capable, and have given that boy something no one else could. I know you have reached a man the physicians were content to leave to time and endurance. And whatever brought you here has not diminished you in the least.” He paused, then added lightly, “I also know you are in love with him, because you have been studying the same page for fifteen minutes—and the book is upside down.”
Lorraine glanced down.
It was.
“Oh—” she began, then stopped herself, colour rising.
