Page 58 of A Convenient Fiction

A life with Laura would be too honest. Too real. She had the uncanny ability to strip away his defenses. To see right through him. He was bound to disappoint her in the end. To hurt her, or to be hurt in turn.

And he’d been hurt enough in his life.

“My brother is waiting upstairs,” she said. “If you wouldn’t mind helping him to the carriage? Yardley will carry out his chair.”

Alex gazed down at her. Was that a faint blush in her cheeks? Or merely a product of the excessive heat? The former, he suspected.

Which meant that she was thinking of him just as he was thinking of her.

The realization should have pleased him. He didn’t want to be easily dismissed or forgotten. Not by her. But he didn’t want her to suffer, either. To be uncomfortable or embarrassed because of something he’d done.

“Of course,” he said.

He left the ladies talking in the hall. Upstairs, Teddy was seated by the window in his wheeled chair. John Yardley, the Hayeses’ grizzled old manservant, stood nearby

“You’re here,” Teddy remarked as Alex entered his room. “I wondered if you’d keep your word.”

“That’s not a very flattering admission.”

“Why? Do you always keep your promises?”

“No,” Alex said. “But I mean to keep this one.” He looked about Teddy’s room. “Is there anything else you require? Paint pots? Brushes? An easel and canvas? A cat?”

“Magpie is in the kitchen with Mrs. Crabtree. She’s going to look after him while we’re gone. As for the rest, it’s already packed.” Teddy gestured in the direction of his bed. Two large bundles lay atop it. “Yardley is going to carry them down.”

Alex’s mouth quirked. “I wasn’t serious.”

“I am. Laura said I may sit on the shore and paint. She said you promised to stay with me in case I needed help, which I won’t. But if the tide should come in and my chair gets stuck—”

“I’ll remain beside you, whatever happens. Unless,” Alex added gravely, “you begin to bore me.”

“I’m only going for Laura’s sake.”

“As am I. If you’re quite ready?” Alex bent down to him.

Teddy put his arm around Alex’s neck, his hand gripping tight to Alex’s shoulder. “Go ahead.”

Alex lifted him easily out of his chair, and with one arm around his waist, helped him down the stairs and out to the closed carriage that waited behind the barouche.

Mrs. Bainbridge was already inside. Alex assisted Teddy into the velvet-cushioned seat across from her. “Put this over your legs, my dear,” she said, draping him with a carriage blanket.

“It’s baking hot,” Teddy protested.

Laura came up behind Alex. She held out her gloved hand. “Would you mind very much?”

“Not at all.” He helped her into the carriage, trying not to inhale the intoxicating scent of her. Roses, and lavender, and freshly pressed linen. Trying not to think of how wonderfully her hand fit into his, or to feel the feminine swirl of her skirts against his legs.

She was halfway inside before Henrietta cried out in objection.

“You’re riding in the barouche with us, Laura!”

Laura glanced back. “I’m riding with my family, Hen. It’s only to the rail station.”

Henrietta’s face tightened, but she didn’t argue. Only when she and Alex had resumed their seats in the barouche did she voice her irritation. “It was a mistake to invite Laura’s family.”

“Rubbish,” Squire Talbot said. “It will do the boy good.”

“Much that I care,” Henrietta retorted under her breath. “Laura is supposed to be keeping company with me. Now she’ll give all her spare time to her brother and her aunt. It’s excessively tedious, and much of the reason we don’t socialize any longer.”