“Best to sleep on it.”
She nodded, and in tacit agreement they put at least two feet of space between them as they slowly sauntered back into the inn, gazing at each other baffled the whole time and not saying a single word. Even when they paused at the foot of the stairs they were both obviously still so confused, they stared at each other for a few moments more.
With a perplexed frown and an utterly beguiling blush she shuffled from foot to foot. “I shall bid you a good night then, Galahad.”
“Good night, Venus. Maybe I’ll see you at breakfast? When hopefully we will have figured this all out.”
“Maybe.” Although she didn’t look convinced.
He sympathized.
He currently did not know which way was up, either, or what the hell to do about it, or even if he should do anything beyond run, so he left her to climb the stairs alone. Partly because he didn’t trust himself not to haul her into his arms again the moment they reached her bedchamber and partly because he needed time to digest his own feelings and their ramifications. If he ignored all of his reservations and fears about letting someone in when he knew it safer to keep them out, and if he put to one side how anxious and afraid being so emotionally vulnerable in front of someone else made him,heandsheandright nowwasn’t exactly the best timing. Not when he had so much to do and was about to move his business right next to her beloved orphanage.
Tonight, as his first priority, rather than try to analyze what was happening in his hardened heart, he needed to find the right words to explain all those long-laid plans the very second she returned from the solicitor’s tomorrow, because the wrong ones would shoot whatever this was dead in the paddock.
He also needed to rethink things. Rejig all those meticulous plans, because the best plans were always the most adaptable. Maybe factor in how to weave her into them…
What the hell!
As that train of thought made him dizzy again, and because the floor or perhaps the world had suddenly tilted beneath his feet, he grabbed the banister. Hard.
She turned at the thud, quizzical. “Are you all right, Galahad?”
“Never better.” And bizarrely, despite the shifting floor and shifting parameters and his flimsy control over what happened next, that was true. As his grandpa had always said, when opportunity knocked on your front door, only a fool didn’t fling it open in welcome. And this—she—felt like an opportunity.
Or fate.
Or both.
Either way, he already knew he wasn’t strong enough to run away from it tonight. Didn’t even want to.
What the hell!
“Venus, I was wondering…” He stopped himself before he finished that sentence, because frankly he wasn’t entirely sure how he intended ending it but knew, as sure as eggs were eggs, that whatever his suddenly needy heart was proposing changed everything, and that already scared the hell out of him. Instead he scrambled. Hastily regrouped and offered her his most wolfish grin to bring things between them back onto a surer footing, one he understood. “… back there… beneath the moonlight…” He motioned to the door, enjoying how the flush on the apples of her cheeks instantly blossomed into a ferocious blush. “… I can’t help wonderin’ how my kissin’ measured up against Dorchester’s?”
Her beautiful blue eyes narrowed behind her spectacles, but with little enthusiasm.
“Aqualitygentleman like Lord Dorchester would have the good manners never to ask such a thing, Galahad Sinclair, nor would he try to hide his gross impertinence behind that false drawl you employ whenever you try—and fail—to be charming.” She summoned every bit of the haughty disdain she’d always summoned when he went out of his way to rile her, but it fell widely shy of the mark. “Something mybig ol’ brainwill be sure to factor in when I consider the fate of our conundrum tomorrow.”
Chapter Eleven
Hugh keeps gazing at Minerva as if he adores her, and Minerva keeps gazing at him as if she adores him right back. I feel like a bad sister for being envious that she might have foundthe onebefore me…
—from the diary of Miss Venus Merriwell, aged 17
“Is there a particular reason why you are currently sporting a scowl that could curdle milk?” The reverend’s terse whisper shocked her out of her reverie. “Only Mr. Pendle’s clerk is now glaring at me as if I am the cause of it.” He gestured to the little mouse of a man behind the most enormous desk, guarding the solicitor’s office beyond, who was indeed staring at them both warily. “And at you—in case you are indeed as unhinged as you appear and decide, for whatever bizarre reason, to lash out at him in anger. Which, for the record, you look poised to do at any moment.”
“Forgive me, I was woolgathering.” She forced herself to smooth the wrinkle between her brows and pasted on a smile for the clerk’s sake to assure him all her hinges were precisely where they should be.
Although the Reverend Smythe and the clerk were right. Vee was angry. For some inexplicable reason, she was furious at the weather.
She had floated off to bed convinced she would be trapped at The Mermaid for days thanks to the relentless snow that had plagued thecountry for weeks, and had woken to the grand thaw instead. Enough of a thaw that it ensured there was absolutely no excuse not to leave Brighton for London as soon as the meeting with the solicitor was concluded. Which gave her no excuse to linger in Galahad’s company while they worked out what to do about that kiss.
That out-of-the-blue but totally earth-shattering kiss.
Which she was beyond keen to try again. And again. And again ad infinitum.
She caught herself about to sigh aloud as her body and soul relived it for the umpteenth time, and thus by default also confirming to the poor clerk that she had indeed taken leave of her wits, so she clamped her jaws shut.
