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“You did not run into any trouble, did you?” she asked.
“No, no trouble,” he agreed, offering a tight smile.
Her stomach clenched. “What is it, Mac?” she asked softly.
Mabel detected a nearly imperceptible widening of his eyes before he focused, studying her. “Actually,” Mac said, “I spent a lot of time today considering your request.”
“Oh?”
“Yes.”
Mabel waited, holding her breath. Had he considered it so long because she had gone too far? Because she had given herself away? That had indeed been her objective, but the prospect of being discovered, of Mac knowing she had not been fooled, was now somewhat frightening. It meant she could no longer pretend to be indifferent to him. She would be vulnerable to anger, and no facade would sit in the way to stem the flow.
“You see, I cannot think Charles would believe such a wretched tale, that humming to fish would ease them toward the hook.” He took a step closer, and Mabel’s heart pounded harder in her chest. “In fact, I have a hard time believing anyone to be foolish enough to tell such a story.”
“Uh—”
“Present company excluded, naturally,” he said swiftly. “For you were merely relaying a tale.”
Mabel swallowed, her pulse racing. Had Mac grown since just that morning in the front drive? He seemed so much taller now, towering over her with an intelligent glint in his honey-hazel eyes.
“What are you proposing, then?” she asked.
His gaze flicked between her eyes, and she watched them shift back and forth, her breath coming in rapid spurts from how close the man stood to her, afraid too deep a breath would meet her buttons to his.
“I think, Miss Sheffield, there is something you are not telling me.”
She’d been caught. But she could not breathe in such proximity.
Stepping back, she bumped softly into the doorway to the nursery. “Oh?”
“Yes,” he said. Did he come closer, still? It felt as though he was growing nearer, regardless of her efforts to put space between them. “But what I cannot tell is why.”
She stilled. Whether or not Mac realized it, he was playing her game. Giggling floated through the door from three very young girls, and Mabel’s heart reached out to her former self, to the girl who wished to play with the boys but was told she could not. To the girl with the bundled lock of hair which was destined to remain lonely in its cherrywood box on her table. She was not going to stand idly by any longer.
She was not going to pretend.
“Do you mean,” she said, straightening her shoulders and clutching the folds of her gown at her sides, “that you didn’t tell Charles to hum to the fish in order to bring them closer?”
Shock registered momentarily in Mac’s eyes before he shuttered them again. Silence sat heavily upon them while Mac seemed to regain his bearings.
“Have you known from the first?” he asked, his voice dipping to the low timbre only a man could achieve.
The stripped bare tone squeezed Mabel’s heart, and she couldn’t help but smile. “As mortifying as it is to admit, I did not know that day in the corridor. You are very changed.”
“And you are very much the same.”
