Page 19 of A Second Chance for Love

It had been so long since she’d heard the name spoken out loud—so very long since she’d even allowed herself to think it—that it took her breath away for a moment. She’d been foolish to have even begun telling him a story that held nothing but pain for her. Well, not just pain, there was Katie, of course. She bit her lip. This had been a mistake.

Make something up, the cool voice in her head ordered. You taught English composition, surely you can spin a creditable yarn?

Lie? Could she really just—

“Oona?”

The single word scattered her thoughts like a cat tossed among pigeons. Lord. Had her name ever sounded as good as it did on his tongue?

“I left to accept a position with a school friend.” She paused. “Let me retrace my steps a bit.” So that I might lie more effectively. “I’d attended a girls’ school in Oxford that was run by a friend of my father’s. After my father died they offered to allow me to spend my final year with them even though I didn’t have the tuition. I refused because I knew I would need to work and I might as well face my future sooner rather than later. My school friend was a year younger than me and in the same position. She’d taken a position at a newly opened academy which needed an English instructor and the position paid well.”

“So you simply pulled stumps and went to . . . ?”

“Bath, a town already blessed with its share of girls’ schools.”

“I take it by the fact you are in London the school did not prosper.”

“No. It closed two years ago after the owner died suddenly and her niece, who inherited the school, shut it down without even finishing out the term. So then I was without a reference, except for Lord Venable’s, which was too old to be of any use to most employers.” It was a tangle of lies, but there was nothing she could do to make it any better at this point.

“I see.”

Oona knew what he was thinking—he was wondering about what she’d so foolishly told him in a fit of confusion and anger: that she was a fallen woman with no references. Why had she ever said that?

Because your tender feminine wits were scrambled by his distracting masculinity.

Oona scowled at the taunting voice.

“Ah, our luck has run out, it seems.”

She looked up from her mental chaos to see that he was staring out the window.

“Snow,” she said foolishly.

He nodded, the corners of his full lips turned down.

Oona took the rare opportunity to study his face without having to bear the brunt of his burning gaze. He was unfairly handsome. Even the wrinkles and lines and few gray hairs served to make him more attractive—distinguished, even. Something she never would have believed he could look when she thought back to him as a younger man. Oh, he’d been handsome, but there’d been nothing distinguished about it. It had been raw sensuality that he’d emanated a decade earlier.

He turned and caught her staring and the grim set of his jaw softened into his mocking half-smile.

“What will we do?” she asked in a breathy voice when it seemed he was contented to stare at her.

He pulled out a gold pocket watch. “It is barely three o’clock. We shall press on for a while and see how things are.” He looked at her and smiled. “Was the job you had with LeMonde your first in London?”

Oona frowned at the change in subject but could see by his expression he’d not be diverted.

“No. I had a teaching position in a household where the master and mistress were willing to believe my tale of woe about the school and pleased to have me because I’d taught for a peer, no matter how many years ago.” That, at least, was the truth.

“Ah. A Cit, I take it?”

“That is not a word I would use.”

He grinned at her chastising tone. “Go on.”

“To make a long, dull, story shorter,” she said, paraphrasing his words, “the lady of the house came to believe I had designs on her husband. And her son.”

His face hardened into an expression of disgust that gutted her and Oona dropped her gaze to his feet, her face burning. Why had she thought he would look any different?

“Let me guess,” he said, “They both chased you around their vulgar Cit house and became angry when you rebuffed their advances?”