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“Mama will be thrilled. Not about your great-aunt. About you staying here.”
Both mother and sister would be thrilled by this turn of events.
Fake engagements were tricky things. They had a way of going awry and ruining reputations. Men usually survived unscathed but Mina might not be so lucky. But did she truly care? It was freedom she sought, after all.
“I’m so glad you’re here,” said Beatrice warmly, taking Mina by the hand. “We’ll have a wonderful time together. Mama will want us to attend balls and go shopping at the fashionable places—see and be seen—do other silly things like that, but we’ll revolt, won’t we?”
Revolutionwas Mina’s middle name.
“Absolutely. What would you like to do instead?” Mina asked.
“Show you my favorite bookshops. And introduce you to some of my new friends.”
“What new friends?” Drew asked, immediately suspicious. A new friend could be suspect.
“You wouldn’t know them. I joined the Mayfair Ladies Knitting League. It’s a charitable committee. We knit garments and blankets for foundling children.”
“Sounds like a worthy charity. I’d like to make a donation,” said Drew.
“That would be most welcome, brother. I can’t wait to bring you to meet them, Mina.”
Mina looked doubtful. “I do have to say that I’m not the best knitter in the world. I never learned any domestic arts, actually. Can’t embroider to save my life.”
“Yes, but you’re very good at picking locks and aiming pistols,” Drew said.
“Are you?” Beatrice asked Mina. “You don’t have to knit. We have very stimulating conversations.”
Drew crossed his arms. “Come to think of it, I’ve never known you to be an enthusiast for domestic arts, sister.”
“Go off to bed now, brother dear, and leave the ladies to plot their own kind of social season.”
Laughter in Mina’s eyes. She liked seeing him dismissed.
He cleared his throat. “I’ll leave you then.”
Walk away. Not nearly far enough away from those sparkling blue-gray eyes. He paused in the doorway. His sister and Mina sat at the table, heads bent together, two clever, powerful young ladies.
He turned his back, resolving to forget about Mina, if only for the space of a few hours of sleep. Dreamless sleep. Mina-less sleep.
“Thorndon?”
He met Mina’s gaze. “Yes?”
“Thank you.” A soft blanket of approval and gratitude in her smile.
“You’re welcome.” Gravelly voice. Cold heart.
Off to his lonely bed.
If he were a stretch of countryside, she would be the new railway track being laid.
He wouldn’t be able to sleep tonight, that much was clear. Mina was too close. He needed distance.
First close the door of his mother’s house. Next, walk the few steps to Rafe’s front door. There was the shrubbery where she’d crouched and watched him. That was the rosebush that had scratched her cheek.
There was the window she’d climbed through.
Christ.Maybe he should sleep on a bed of thorns tonight. Maybe he needed a painful reminder that he’d chosen a solitary life because the ability to love, to cherish, had been stolen from him.
