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A fter Shay’s quick apology and agreement to end the farce of an engagement, he’d practically ran from her, off into the rain without looking back. She didn’t think he was angry. She’d seen no sign of it in his eyes as he’d smiled at her and placed a soft kiss to her knuckles before a heartfelt goodnight.

But there had been something between them. Some heat despite the chill from the storm. Some sweetness despite the coppery scent of the rain.

They kissed.

The way his gaze had lingered on her lips, she thought he might kiss her and she wanted it. Not for research, and not because she expected Shay to give way to his plans of bachelorhood, but because she just wanted to enjoy such pleasure and she’d only wanted to enjoy it with him.

She shook her head and shifted to her other side in the bed. And then back.

Thea found herself in much the same state as she had nights ago, when she couldn’t sleep for thinking of things that weren’t to be. As before, she gave up and went to the drawing room to find her scene of the couple in the ballroom. She had details she could add now.

Not about the ball, for she preferred it the way it was with just the two of them alone. But now she could add what it felt like when a man stared intently at a woman’s lips with need in his eyes. She didn’t think she had misread Shay’s desire to kiss her this evening.

She would have welcomed it without hesitation.

But he hadn’t kissed her, instead he’d cleared his throat, stood, and wished her a goodnight before rushing off into the rain. She’d not even had the chance to offer that he wait out the storm inside. He’d fled. That was the only way to describe it.

“Where is it?” Thea picked up another stack of paper and flipped through them looking for the story from the other night. She knew the two pages would stand out from the rest because she’d not attempted to keep her writing restricted in size as she did normally to conserve paper. She hadn’t been thinking of the cost of paper at all when she’d written her steamy tale.

Another stack and another, and then she looked toward the empty hearth. Perhaps she’d tossed it in the fire with the rest of her wasted pages. It looked as if Frannie had lit it at some point for it was nothing but ashes. Even on warm days, Frannie would light a fire occasionally to help dry Thea’s pages faster.

Thea felt a great loss that the pages were gone. She debated whether or not to try to recreate the story, but decided against it. There was no use. One thing she’d realized this evening was that wanting something—even something she hadn’t realized she still wished for—didn’t mean it would ever come to fruition.

Writing such a story, while freeing in the moment, wouldn’t get her any closer to the independence she required. So rather than spend any more time on a story that had no hope of coming true she pulled out a blank page and picked up where she was with The Case of the Golden Feather.

She hoped much of this story didn’t come to fruition either, specifically the part about the murder, but this book would be for everyone, while that other story had been for her alone.

They kissed…

She shook her head. No, they never would.

*

Shay folded up the two pages and tucked them away in the table next to his bed where they were sure to be safe from his valet. He’d read it a few times that evening. The last time while he managed himself with the other hand, thinking of the couple in the story as himself with Thea. He’d mentally added on a few scenes her story was lacking which had him finish himself with a groan.

He shouldn’t have taken it. At the time, he liked to think he’d done it so she wouldn’t be embarrassed to know he had read it, or even so that no one else could read something so personal to her. Though that excuse lacked reason for the only other person in the cottage was Frannie and while she knew her letters and could read, she would not dare be so disrespectful to Thea.

Not like him.

He considered how he might sneak it back to the cottage and tuck it into a pile of her pages, but cast that option aside when he remembered how tattered the papers had become from his folding and unfolding them so often over the last few days. How could he explain such a thing?

Rather than have to face her after their awkward parting the night before and his guilt of using her story in such a foul way, he stayed at the castle that morning after breaking his fast. He spent the earlier part of the day standing by the window looking down at the dower cottage.

“Oh, my lord. I didn’t realize you were in here. I was about to take care of the dusting.” Mrs. Murray paused and tilted her head to the side. “Why are ye here instead of the cottage?” She glanced toward the window.

“I don’t need to explain myself to my servants.”

Of course there was no apology from the woman. She simply cocked a brow at him. “I’ll pretend you did not just snap at me, my lord, for you were raised better than that.”

A new wave of guilt washed over him. It seemed he couldn’t do right by any of the women in his life at the moment.

“I’m not the marrying type,” he decided to answer instead.

“Aye. So I’ve heard many times. Unless you’ve done something to compromise the lady, I don’t see as why that matters.”

“It matters because she does want to marry and doesn’t think she ever will. And when I’m with her I find myself wanting to do anything to make her happy, so you see the danger.”

Mrs. Murray pressed her lips into a line in an attempt to keep from smiling. After a few seconds she gave up.

“Do ye worry you’ll propose to the woman by accident?”

“We’re in Scotland, where it’s much too easy to be married. I’m sure accidents have happened.”

“I see. I shall have a noon meal prepared here and I’ll see to the dusting another time. Unless you’re off on your accidental honeymoon by then.”

When his insolent housekeeper left him alone again, Shay went back to looking down at the cottage. He pictured Thea the way he knew he’d find her if he went down there. With her hair in a messy bun and ink smudges on her beautiful face. How long would he stand there before she noticed him?

Then he thought to a day when she wouldn’t be living in his cottage. When she would move on. She planned to buy her own home, but perhaps now that her dreams for a family were reawakened she might look to find a husband. Someone she could trust with her secret.

He tried to think of her with a husband and children and felt that same discomfort in his chest. One that made him hurry for the door. He didn’t slow until he was knocking at the cottage door and Frannie had let him in.

“Ah, my lord. I was beginning to worry something had happened to you on your travels down from the castle.”

“Nay, I was delayed with other things.” He was glad Frannie wouldn’t think to question him as to what he’d been doing the way Mrs. Murray would have. Frannie was content to show him into the drawing room where Shay found Thea exactly as he’d pictured her.

Today’s smudge was on the side of her perfect chin and he found himself smiling to see it. To see her.

“You will need to pick up your pace, my lord. I am quite ahead of you again,” she said without looking up. “I have been at it since early this morning.”

The way she shook her head made him think she was too embarrassed to tell him exactly how early she had started. He wouldn’t pressure her into saying. He simply took a pile of dried pages and settled in his place on the settee.

This was where he belonged. This felt… right.

*

Thea had done her best not to meet Shay’s eyes when he’d arrived. She’d spent most of the morning worrying over whether he’d not come because he was angry she had put an end to their false engagement. While she’d also been glad he had not come that morning so she might get control of her silly emotions for the man.

Now that he was lying out on her settee once again, she tried for anything to put all the pieces back where they had been before her desires had grown to such huge proportions. If they could just go back to how they’d been before all this confusion of her senses.

Oh, how she wished he would ask her a question about the story so they might be set back on the proper path of friendship. But instead, he simply moved page by page through the story. She knew he’d read approximately eight pages so far, for she’d yet to pick up her quill and do anything other than stare at the man.

Minutes later Frannie entered with a tray for their noon meal.

“Oh, good. I was near to starving,” Shay said as he practically hopped up to set upon the food. Looking over his large form she knew Lord Flemming was not in danger of such a thing.

Thea was not hungry, but she grasped onto the distraction of fixing a plate with meat cheese and bread. They had hardly spoken and it was growing tedious. She looked over to see the marquess stacking the meat and cheese on top a slice of bread and then rolling it in on itself before shoving the end in his mouth. She’d seen sandwiches served at meals. Small triangles of bread and beef eaten with a fork and knife, but this…

“Whatever are you doing?” she asked.

He finished chewing before smiling and holding up the part he hadn’t eaten for her inspection.

“When I was a boy on the streets, we didn’t have cutlery. If we were lucky enough to get bread, meat, and cheese, we divided it out amongst us. We’d hold the slice of bread in our hands and then pass around the meat and cheese or what else we had on top. We were generally so hungry the food didn’t last long. It was easier to roll it up to shove it all in our mouths at once. All the flavors mixing together are the perfect treat. You should try it,” he suggested.

“My mother would surely come up from her grave to see me eating with my hands.”

“Come now, Thea. We are in Scotland. Be a little barbaric. Call it research.”

She laughed and layered the food the way he had, with some pointers from him to keep everything within the confines of the bread. She smiled as she began rolling everything together and then held it, deciding if she could really just put it in her mouth to take a bite.

Shay’s roll was near to gone so she opened her mouth and shoved the end in. Tearing through the clump with her teeth gave some deep form of satisfaction. As he’d said, the flavors combined and became their own new flavor.

“Oh, that is well done,” she said with her mouth still full. If she were going to embrace her barbarianism, she might as well go all the way.

She expected he would be delighted and looked up at him. The first time she’d met his gaze all day. But he wasn’t laughing or even smiling. He was staring at her lips again as she chewed.

Surely he didn’t plan to kiss her when her mouth was full.

But then he lifted his hand slowly, and touched the edge of her bottom lip. The contact made the sensitive skin zing with warmth.

She blinked owlishly up at him and leaned in closer.

“A bit of cheese,” he explained. When he blinked, the connection was cut and she pulled back.

A bit of cheese. She’d thought the man was about to kiss her and here it had only been hygienic. She couldn’t help but laugh at herself. How ridiculous she’d become. Lord Flemming was not going to kiss her.

She thought about it as they finished their uncivilized meal. Perhaps if she were to kiss him, the mystery would be solved and they could go back to the way things had been before. Thea was curious by nature and enjoyed learning new things. Maybe it was that gray void in her story that had precipitated all of this thinking of kissing the marquess.

Shaking her head, she stretched her fingers and picked up the quill to write. Soon enough she was pulled back into the mystery and solving the case. She’d introduced Frannie’s crocodile, smiling when she knew how it would eventually fit into the gruesome ending for the villain.

Unfortunately, she wouldn’t be able to name the villain after her brother for the thief was actually a woman. Something she had never done before and knew her readers would not see it coming.

As she wrote, she came up with an interesting twist, but one she wasn’t certain would work. Mostly because she didn’t have the information needed. The same information she’d been contemplating earlier.

Specifically, about kissing. Perhaps now was her chance.