Her eyes flared wider as a rush of red flooded her cheeks. “Lord Strathcona—”
“Alec,” he corrected softly.
“It would be… a mistake to use such intimacies, sir.” She turned away, the twisting tendrils of the climbing vines obscuring her face. “And it seems we’ve both made enough of them in the past without adding any new ones.”
“Alec? Alec?” It was his sister’s voice, rising above the sounds of approaching footsteps.
Caro looked up.
“Come, let me give you a hand,” he muttered. “We had better hurry.”
Before he made the colossal error of spinning her around and trying to kiss the quiver of hurt from her voice.
Setting his hands on her hips, he lifted her within reach of the sturdiest handhold.
As for his own grip on the way forward…
“Alec?” Isobel’s call was getting closer.
Damnation. There seemed no clear path through the tangled shadows and looming obstacles up ahead. He could either take the coward’s way out and retreat.
Or decide to forge ahead despite the dangers.
Chapter Eighteen
“Why is it,” muttered Caro, “that men are the most impossibly confusing creatures on Earth?”
After adding a grimacing grumble, she admitted it was a rhetorical question. No doubt her sisters, with their infinitely greater wisdom and experience in such matters, would assure her that there was no rational answer for the workings of the male mind.
And yet, she couldn’t help being terribly confused. Alec had seemed so… different yesterday.
Of course he’s different, whispered a tiny voice in her head. So are you—the two of you are lovers, which changes everything.
And nothing.
Caro blew out a sigh as she sat down at her dressing table to finish arranging her hair for the evening outing to Sydney Gardens. The fact was, against all reason, against all rhyme, she loved him.
She loved his chiseled integrity, his impressive intellect, his protective caring for his sister, his poetic soul and impish humor—though he so rarely allowed either to peek through his stony reserve.
Ye gods, she even loved that enigmatic Sphinx-like expression he wore so often, the one that hinted at a myriad of mysteries swirling beneath the stone-faced mask.
“But it doesn’t matter what I feel,” she whispered into the looking glass. Despite the recent glimmer of whimsy in his mood, Alec was not going to fall in love with an English hellion. He was an intelligent man, and intelligent men did not make the same mistake twice.
That word again—mistake.
And I will not be merely a mistake, she vowed to her reflection.
After fastening the last few hairpins to hold her topknot—she had dismissed her maid, wishing to be alone—Caro glanced at the clock on the bookshelf. She need not rush. There was still time to linger in solitary thought before she had to don her mask and descend to the parlor to await Andover and Isobel.
Giving thanks that her mother had decided to attend a card party at Lady Greeley’s home rather than endure the noise and jostling of the outdoor fete and fireworks, she rose and wandered to the window by her writing desk. Her nerves were already stretched taut enough by the prospect of seeing Alec, so it was a relief that she wouldn’t also have to deal with a litany of the baroness’s querulous complaints.
Staring out at the darkening sky and the first faint twinkling of stars, Caro found herself blinking back tears. Oh, it was times like these that she missed her sisters fiercely—their counsel, their camaraderie, but most of all their laughter. No matter how dire or daunting a problem seemed, humor always seemed to make it less frightening.
She looked down at her desk, where the latest letter from her middle sibling lay open on the blotter. Smoothing a hand over the travelworn paper, she couldn’t help but quirk a smile.
Anna would likely cheer her up by making a jest of the current dilemma, weaving it into a wildly romantic adventure of…
Her fingers stilled.