Page 141 of A Modest Independence

Tom didn’t flinch. He’d spent decades dealing with high-handed men who sought to dictate terms to him. “And I consider that you abdicated that responsibility.”

“When I failed to return home?”

“No,” Tom said. “When you took advantage of her.”

Giles went still. “She told you about that, did she?” He downed a swallow of port. “A youthful impulse. There was no harm done.”

“I’ve read the letter of apology you sent. Clearly you knew you’d crossed a line.”

“Are you always so puritanical, Finchley? One would think you’d never stolen a kiss from a pretty girl before. Not every embrace ends at the altar, you know. If it did, the lot of us would be wed at a much younger age—and to females of far less desirable pedigree.”

“She was your sister’s companion. An employee in your household.”

Giles exhaled. “It was a long time ago. And it isn’t as if Miss Holloway holds a grudge. If she did, she’d hardly have come all this way to find me, would she?”

“What she’s done, she’s done for Lady Helena, not for you.”

“I see. You’ve appointed yourself her protector. Very admirable of you, I’m sure, but if you’re intending to seek some manner of satisfaction on her behalf—to challenge me to fisticuffs or a duel over her honor—you’re well out of luck. Unless, that is, you’d stoop to fight a one-armed man.”

“Don’t be ridiculous. I’ve no intention of fighting you.” The very idea was ludicrous, as well as completely lacking in imagination. Tom had never been one to rely on brute physical strength to achieve his ends. “But I do expect that there will be no repeat of your misconduct with Miss Holloway. No more affectionate familiarities. No more casual disrespect.”

“Or else?”

Tom said nothing. He didn’t have to.

“Ah.” Giles set his glass back on the table. “In other words, if I meddle with Miss Holloway, you’ll treat me to a taste of the hell you visited on the Earl of Warren.” He gave a sudden laugh. “And here I thought I was the one who was going to be issuing you a warning.”

“There’s no need,” Tom said. “Miss Holloway has nothing to fear from me.”

Giles reached for the bottle of port. “Doesn’t she?”

Cairo, Egypt

May, 1860

“Shepheard’s Hotel looks different than I remember,” Jenny remarked as she crossed through the arched lobby at Giles’s side.

It was a now familiar refrain. She must have uttered a similar sentiment dozens of times during the course of their journey from Darjeeling to Cairo. The bullock train was different. The dak carts were different. The three-week steamship voyage from Calcutta to Suez was different.

And it had been different, in the most acutely painful way. There’d been no romance. No hand-holding or stolen kisses. There were none of the private talks she’d had with Tom during the journey to India. No moonlit walks on the spar deck or shared confidences in her cabin.

During the past four weeks they’d had no privacy. Indeed, Jenny didn’t think she’d spent a single moment alone with Tom. How could she with Giles there? It wasn’t so much that she cared what Giles thought of her conduct, but that he made her visible in a way she hadn’t been before. Everything about him and about the party with whom he traveled was worthy of notice. Details of how they looked, what they said, and what they did would no doubt be related in London for the next year or more.

The 6th Earl of Castleton had returned from the dead.

It was an extraordinary event. Even those who had never known him—those on the ship with only a peripheral connection to the aristocracy—had feted him like a conquering hero.

And Jenny was all at once no longer Tom’s make-believe half sister. She was Giles’s cousin. Not his sister’s companion. Not an employee in his household. But a family member worthy of respect.

“My cousin, Miss Holloway,” as he’d taken to introducing her.

It had had the desired effect.

As for Tom, he’d still been there to look at and to talk to, as dear to her as ever, but the intimacy between them was gone. It had ended that day in the clearing on Senchal Ridge. They’d left it behind in the mist and fog. After four weeks, the memory of it seemed so much a dream.

Did Tom feel the same?

Jenny couldn’t tell. He walked along at her side, clad in a plain gray suit, his hands clasped behind his back. She hadn’t taken his arm in a very long while. It was Giles who escorted her now. Everything right and proper and stifling to her very soul.