Page 41 of The Gentlewoman Companion (The Gentlewoman #4)

Chapter Nineteen

L ouisa clutched at her dressing gown, trying to root herself to the reality of what she had heard.

Had he truly confessed his admiration for her?

And had she expressed very nearly the same regard in return?

Lord Halverton—James—was beside her, his heartbeat visible in the pulsing of his neck.

Louisa thrummed. She had been kissed by another, who had promised feelings of love for her, but never had she truly felt loved.

She craved to press her lips to his to prove how superior the experience would be simply because she would be kissing him .

James, the dear friend who made her consider that her worth was not a sum of all her bad decisions.

Who made her feel clever and valuable by listening to her ideas, though she was a nobody, an ignorant, silly girl.

With him, she felt accepted, worthwhile, even special. To be esteemed by such a man!

The moment could not be wasted. She lifted her chin to him.

They were a breath, a heartbeat away. He did not move, though he looked at her lips often enough.

Kiss me. Kiss me. But he was frozen. Was she too forward?

Not bold enough? Had she misread him? Perhaps he valued her as a brother loves his sister.

Her head bowed. She outlined the embossed design of the leather book in her lap. Tension tied her to his side. But it did not seem he wanted her. She would leave.

After counting to three.

One.

Two.

Three.

Her slippered feet pushed into the floor, legs contracting as she lifted herself to standing.

He stood abruptly. His hand, hot and gentle, pressed against her cheek until she found his eyes and read in them an adoration and a yearning that stopped her breath.

The pressure of his palm scorched her hip, slid to the small of her back, pulled her to him. The book crashed to the floor.

He was so much taller than she. Between heartbeats, her breath shuddered. He was too far away, even as he bent toward her. Too slow. Not close enough. She rested a hand on his shoulder, the other on the back of his neck and pushed herself onto her toes, guiding his head to hers.

Soft, achingly tender, her lips met his.

A quiet moan, a gentle sigh. A calm force bid her alight, stay, rest. Heat rushed and pooled inside her chest, melting into her middle.

His lips questioned. Hers answered, telling him everything she could not articulate.

It was overwhelming. It was insufficient.

Her fingers explored the softness of his hair, the roughness of his cheek. His body against hers, so right, so easy. She opened to him, returned his desire with her own, divulged her secrets and accepted his.

Crying erupted from up the stairs. They pulled apart. James wore a timid smile, and Louisa felt as defenseless and exposed as he looked. He kissed her forehead, a gesture sweeter than any other. She leaned against his chest until footsteps sounded down the hall.

Nellie appeared holding Susan, whose pink face was streaked with tears, her breath catching sharply on the inhale. Nellie’s eyes were hollow and unfocused, her shoulders slumped as if she could barely maintain Susan’s weight.

“What’s this?” James asked Susan.

The girl broke into sobs.

“She calls for Tom,” Nellie said. “Hasn’t slept a wink and is likely not used to sleeping without him. I saw light coming from the study and hoped for help.” She looked between them.

Conscious of what Nellie might see, Louisa touched her pleasantly stinging mouth, then took the baby from her arms. “Get some sleep.”

Nellie shuffled out the door and up the stairs.

“Well, here you are then, James.” A little thrill pinched her heart at using his given name. She placed the child in his arms, swooped down to retrieve the book before turning to the door.

“You call me James so sweetly and then abandon me?” He smiled. It was delightful to be understood, even when she was teasing. He sat down, took her wrist, and pulled her beside him.

Susan sat up and put her hands on James’s cheeks. He drew out a handkerchief and dried her eyes, cleaned her nose. “There,” he said. “Tell us, little Sue, about Tom.”

At the mention of her brother’s name, Susan’s chin quivered, and she began to sniffle. James glanced at Louisa helplessly.

Louisa nodded at him to try again.

“How old are you?” Susan continued to cry.

“What do you like to eat?” No response. “Do you know any games?” Despite James’s efforts, Susan continued to wail.

He showed her around the room. A painting of a ship at sea, a stack of books, a round paper weight.

“Look! A globe.” He spun the sphere, then stopped it with his finger.

Susan quieted, reached down, and tried to do the same, her clumsy efforts finally resulting in a solid whirl.

She laughed and did it again. And again.

The spark that ignited under his kiss flamed as she watched James, patient and determined to soothe his young charge. Louisa thought she might have given up by now and passed the girl on to a maid.

James returned to sit beside Louisa. “When you’re sad, how does Tom cheer you?”

Susan rubbed her eyes and blinked, her little shoulders sagging mournfully. Louisa’s eyes pricked for the poor girl drawn from all that was familiar, however terrible her previous circumstances must have been. James, too, seemed affected, his jaw tight.

“Oh, Susan, Susan, wuvy dear,” the little girl was singing! “My dows a’ever you a’main.”

James smiled down at Susan, who confused the words to the folksong “ Oh, Susan, Susan, lovely dear/ My vows forever true remain .” The girl could carry a tune, else they’d never have known what she said.

Louisa opened her mouth, her voice met by James’s soft baritone.

Let me kiss off that falling tear,

We only part to meet again.

Change, as ye list, ye winds;

my heart shall be

The faithful compass that still points to thee.

By the end of the verse, Susan rested her head on James’s shoulder, her thumb in her mouth. James rubbed her tiny back as he and Louisa finished the remaining four verses, singing into the quiet night against the sound of a crackling fire.

The boatswain gave the dreadful word,

The sails their swelling bosom spread,

No longer must she stay aboard;

They kiss’d, she sigh’d, he hung his head.

Her less’ning boat, unwilling rows to land:

“Adieu,” she cries! And wav’d her lily hand.

Their voices fell away, leaving cool foreboding in Louisa’s chest. Tomorrow—no, it was two in the morning—later that day, she would speak with Charles.

Why did it feel like the first step onto the ship that would take her away from James?

From Lady Halverton? From a place where she’d grown and learned so much? She would not allow that to happen.

“Is she asleep?” James whispered over Susan’s head.

“Not quite.” In fact, the little girl’s eyes were wide open, though she was blinking slowly.

“What book do you have?” he asked.

“ The Female Quixote . Shall I read you to sleep, Susan?”

“You’ll do the voices?” James asked.

“Is there another way to read aloud?”

James’s smile reached her heart. “What’s the premise?” He settled deeper into the settee.

“It is about Arabella, a young woman whose mother is long dead. She educates herself with French chivalric romances, and upon the death of her father, she becomes heiress to his estate. But she will lose part of her inheritance should she choose not to marry her cousin! However, she is looking for true love under the misguided notion that the novels she grew up reading are historically accurate. Arabella is waiting for knights to fight for her and misconstrues every interaction with men.” Louisa looked down at the little girl.

“Susan, this is a very silly story about a na?ve girl who becomes quite boring once her misconceptions are brought to right. You must always hold fast to your eccentricities so as not to become tedious.”

James laughed. “Now that you know not to speed through Hyde Park, will you become dull?”

“Unlikely. There is no end to my foibles.”

“Good. I like you as you are.”

She began to read, somewhat lively at first, then subdued her theatrics until the stillness beside her drew her attention from the page.

James’s leg relaxed against hers. Susan’s perfect little hand clutched his neck cloth, his chin resting on her downy head, his palm on her back securing her to his chest. A wet circle on his shirt haloed her mouth.

Oh, that she could remain in this serene nest. But she could not be found asleep beside James, so she pulled herself up and took herself to bed.

W ith a pit in her stomach, Louisa pinned her most humble gown onto a matching stomacher in gray dawn light.

From below, the distant murmur of servants only vaguely disrupted the silence.

She scribbled a note to Nellie: “Please make my excuses to Lady Halverton. Inform her”—she decided to take a chance—“that my brother Charles is leaving town, and I went to see him. I may not return before the evening meal.” Into her reticule, she placed every farthing she owned.

She pressed the clasp of her diamond brooch, opening it to the plaited coil of her mother’s hair wrapped around charred blue silk.

Smooth and lustrous to her hand, she tucked the braid and fabric inside a drawer.

After surrendering the brooch to its box, she dropped it—the only thing she owned of real value—into her reticule.

Enclosed in a brown hooded cape, she descended the stairs, passing the study without daring to see if James still slept there.

She slipped out the front door, walked a block, and hailed a hackney.

After giving the driver the address to Charles’s inn, she sat back.

Please, Mama, help me find a solution for this.