Page 56 of Miss Ashbury and the Anatomy of Mending a Heart

“I can’t forget what you did that easily.”

He nodded. “I don’t expect you to, but will you please—at the very least—give the same weight to my actions now that you do to those in the past?”

Vera thought about it. Could she do that? She thought that she at least owed him the courtesy of trying. She nodded.

“Good.” His relief was evident in his voice. “Then can we please move forward as friends?”

Vera eyed the hand that he offered her, her lips pressed together. He kept it out, waiting.

Finally, she shook it. “Yes. Friends.”

His answering grin startled her. He had straight white teeth. It was an honest smile, a nice smile.

“Good.”

* * *

Vera went to sleep feeling more settled and secure than she had in a long time.

The feeling didn’t last long.

She woke up the next morning, dressed in a simple blue cotton day dress, and went down to breakfast. As had become usual over the past couple of weeks, she and Stephen were the first ones downstairs. His back was to her; he was loading his plate from the covered servers on the sideboard.

“Good morning, Stephen,” she said, smiling.

Vera felt lighter, felt as if their conversation the night before had cleared the last of the acrimony she’d felt from her mind. She felt as if they truly could be friends.

“Good morning, Vera.” He turned, smiling, plate still in hand.

Vera’s smile froze upon her face. “You…you shaved.”

His wild, dark beard that only yesterday rested upon his chest had been replaced by a closely-trimmed goatee and mustache. The planes of his face were fully visible; Vera no longer had to wonder what the woolly mass was hiding.

In the earliest days of their acquaintance, Vera had uncharitably imagined the curling bramble hid some terrible or disgusting deformity—a jagged scar, perhaps, or a mole with a beard of its own.

The truth was far more difficult to bear. The beard had hidden a handsome face and a strong chin, with sculpted cheekbones that stood in masculine relief to the hollowed planes of cheeks below.

“Indeed.” He smiled. “I just feel lucky you recognized me and didn’t make a run for the nearest fire poker.”

Vera felt she was in danger of some rash action, but it had nothing to do with impromptu weaponry. She could do little more than gawk as she retrieved a plate and began to move through the line next to him.

It wasn’t that he looked like a completely different person; he possessed the same dark eyes, the same tidy eyebrows that were ready to wing into a sarcastic angle at any moment. No—the problem was that for the first time, he looked as he should. He was now the picture of an educated, cultured nobleman who’d run off to India to help the populace.

She’d privately hated that beard. She’d partially blamed it for the calamity that was the start of her and Stephen’s relationship.

If he’d looked like this when he’d entered his familial estate and bellowed at her, she would still have been confused and affronted, but she wouldn’t have tried to murder him with a poker. If he’d looked like this those weeks ago, she would have shown considerable more respect.

If he’d looked like this weeks ago, she would have fled to Candace’s doorstep and begged to be taken in. For Vera would have known then what she knew now—that it was going to be nigh on impossible not to stare at the man like some kind of mute imbecile.

He was too handsome—a mind-muddling, slack-jawed kind of handsome. A kind of handsome that made a shiver of fear—it absolutely was fear, there was no possibility it was some other emotion—run up her back.

Worse yet, now she knew the man well enough to respect him. With attraction and respect, and friendship on top of it, how far would that mental scale have to tilt until she bore far more uncomfortable feelings?

Not far. Not far at all.

“Is something wrong with the bacon?”

He jerked a nod down at her hand, which limply held tongs over the platter.