Simon halted. He shrugged out of his coat and swirled it around her, draping it over her shoulders. She smiled, grateful, even in the balminess of the night, for the caress of heat—his heat—lingering in the silk lining. Holding the coat closed, she met his eyes. “Thank you.”
He humphed. “It’ll do for the moment.”
He retook her hand. She went to walk on but he didn’t move, held her back. The others were well ahead.
She glanced at him, brows rising.
Looking at the others, he drew in a breath. “What happened on the terrace—what I said. I apologize. I didn’t mean . . .” He waved, as if to wipe the scene from their minds, glanced fleetingly at her, then away.
She stepped across him, raised her free hand to his face, and turned it to hers.
Reluctantly, he let her.
Until, in the fading light, she could read his eyes, until she could sense, as if it were stated, the vulnerability he sought, as always, to hide. To excuse.
She understood that much at least. At last. And was touched beyond measure.
“It won’t ever happen. Believe me.” She would never take from him, then turn from him, never love, then leave him.
His face, hard, set, didn’t soften. “Is it possible to promise such a thing?”
She held his gaze. “Between you and me—yes.”
He read her eyes in turn, saw her sincerity; his chest swelled. She felt the change i
n the tension holding him, the swift return of his possessiveness, the sinking of his protectiveness.
His arm locked around her; he drew her close.
“Wait.” She pressed a hand to his chest. “Don’t rush.”
His brows rose—she could hear the incredulous “Rush?” in his mind.
She eased back in his arms. “We need to end what we’ve started—we need to hear what truly happened and put Ambrose and the murders behind us. Then we can talk about”—she drew breath, finally said the crucial word—”us.”
He held her gaze, then grimaced and released her. “Very well. Let’s get this over with.”
He took her hand; together, they climbed the lawns to the house.
It was as grim a scene as he’d foreseen; there was relief but no triumph. In rescuing the Glossups, and to some extent the Archers in that Desmond had been invited at their behest, they’d shifted the weight of opprobium to the Calvins. To the continuing distress of everyone.
Simon ushered Portia into the library through the terrace doors. The scene that met their eyes was, very likely, Stokes’s worst nightmare; they exchanged glances, but knew it was beyond their ability to remedy.
The ladies had rebelled. They’d realized something was going on and had come sweeping into the library; now they’d been told the bare facts—that it was Ambrose who had killed Kitty—they’d all slumped into chairs and sofas, and refused to depart.
Literally everyone was there, even two footmen. The only one with any connection to the drama not present was Arturo; studying the shocked and, in some instances, disbelieving faces, imagining the angst to come, Simon suspected the gypsy would be eternally grateful to have been spared the ordeal.
So would he. He glanced at Portia, from the set of her features accepted that she would not consent to go upstairs and change before she’d learned the answers she didn’t yet know. Fetching the admiral’s chair from behind the big desk, he wheeled it down the room, set it beside the end of the chaise where Lady O sat, and handed Portia into it.
Lady O cast a glance at her sodden attire. “No doubt that, too, will be explained?”
There was a note in her old voice, a flicker in her black eyes, that told them both she’d been seriously alarmed.
Portia put out a hand and gripped one ancient claw. “I was never in any danger.”
“Humph!” Lady O cast a warning glance up at him, as if to put him on notice that she would disapprove mightily if he fell short of her expectations in any way.
Apropos of which . . . glancing at Stokes, absorbed calming Lady Calvin, assuring her he would explain if she would permit it, Simon stepped back and beckoned one of the footmen; when he came, he rattled off a string of orders. The footman bowed and departed, very likely glad of an opportunity to carry the latest news back to the servants’ hall.