“You don’t seem to have a problem with ingenuity until you learn it’s anArtisanwho’s responsible. And you’re awfully superior for a man who is, by any reasonable measure, an Artisan himself.”
He sighed. “We ought to get you your own piano. I might even enjoy it if you scolded me in song.”
She looked at him with that flat expression of hers, one finger rising to the key entitledbastard. The sullen note rang out. But a grin broke through. A blush crept up her throat from beneath her collar, and he watched it. She looked away.
That was just as well.
“Why aren’t you resting?” he asked. “We’ve had a long journey.”
She shrugged. “I couldn’t sleep,” she said. “Polly was scratching away at her translations half the night. Your dad’s snoring was coming through the wall, and I couldn’t be in the living room.”
“Ah,” Patrick said. “Theodore.”
A small hesitation. “Yes.”
“Because you can’t stand him?” Patrick asked. “Or because you can’t stand the thought of him being hurt?”
She bit her lip, looked down into her lap. “Because I can’t stand knowing… that he would have died for me.”
Patrick sat on the bench beside her, his chest heavy. “More agonizin’ company I couldn’t imagine.”
Her eyes were wet with something unspent. “It was easier hating him,” she said. “That, I could reconcile with.”
Patrick nodded. In truth, he felt the same way. It was all made simpler before he was indebted to Theodore. But he’d saved Nina twice now.
“I know we should leave him here,” Nina said tightly. “But I can’t, Patrick. I wish I could.”
It sounded like she was saying something else. That she wished she didn’t care for him.
Patrick tasted metal and blood. He grimaced. “If you could be anywhere else,” he asked, needing desperately to change the subject, “even for just a day, where would you choose?”
Her fingers traced the keys. There was a rigidness to her posture now. “I don’t have an answer for that.”
He wished he could read her thoughts. “Try.”
“Won’t do much good.”
“Why?”
“There’s no place that’ll have me, Patrick,” she said. “Unless you count the House of Lords.”
And for all his troubles, he couldn’t imagine that cruelty. To have noplace of retreat. Nowhere that felt like home. But he wouldn’t let his pity show. He knew she would hate it. “What about Kenton Hill?”
She scoffed, the sound unexpectedly sad. “I suspect I outstayed my welcome there.” There was a shake to her hands. Enduring shell shock.
Patrick clasped one large hand over hers to still them. He counted to three and then removed it. “I only meant… did Kenton Hill mean somethin’ to you?”
Nina looked at him and sighed. “I’d rather not say.”
“Why?”
“Because I don’t think you’ll believe the answer,” she admitted. “And you have a certain way of looking at me when you don’t trust me.”
He watched gooseflesh rise along her collarbone, saw the way her legs crossed tighter. “How do I look at you?”
“Like we’ve never met,” she said. “Like you’re looking at a stranger.”
He pushed his molars together. “We don’t know each other in the ways that matter.”
