towards the door. She grinned at the burly man, thanking him profusely, knowing she was overdoing it and sounding like a clown in a sideshow. She moved to pass him, to cross the threshold and escape.
‘Faith…’ A hand shot out and caught her wrist, but so lightly that she could pull away if she wanted to.
She wanted to.
Marcus’s words were left hanging in the air. She licked her lips and looked away, trying not to think about the feel of his mouth there, the soft promises he’d silently delivered. Promises that shouldn’t exist. Promises he couldn’t keep. She looked away.
‘I’ll see you at dinner,’ she muttered, sliding her wrist from his grasp. Then she placed his phone into his empty hand and ran up the spiral stone staircase to the ground floor.
DINNER was quiet. Faith had spent a lot of it looking in his direction without actually looking at him. She didn’t avoid his gaze entirely, but when she did meet his eyes her expression was blank, empty. Disconnected.
Marcus felt a tug of guilt deep down in his gut, even though in the moments before their lips had touched she’d tipped her head back and all but invited him to kiss her. He hadn’t meant to make her feel like this.
When instead of joining him and his grandfather in the drawing room after dinner she excused herself and headed upstairs, Marcus followed. His grandfather’s eyes glittered as he left the room. Sly old fox.
Marcus caught up with her on the wide stone staircase. ‘Faith!’ he called softly.
She stopped, but didn’t turn.
He closed the gap.
She started to move again, but he reached for her, hooking the ends of his curled fingers into hers, and that was all it took to stop her. She stared into the distance, even though the thick wall was only ten feet in front of her.
He gently moved the tips of his fingers, feeling the smaller, sensitive pads of hers beneath his own. Her head snapped round and she looked at him.
He saw it all, then—the tug of war happening behind her eyes. Something in her expression melted, met him.
‘We need to talk,’ he said.
She didn’t nod, didn’t say anything, but he saw the agreement in her eyes. However, now he had her where he wanted her he wasn’t sure what to say. Sorry? He realised he didn’t want to—because he wasn’t. Those few stolen moments in the cellar had tasted like freedom.
He took a leap, giving her more honesty than he’d planned to. ‘I’ve wanted to do that since almost the first moment I met you,’ he said.
Faith let out a heavy breath, her eyes still locked on his. Once again he felt that sense of accord, harmony—and a hint of wry acknowledgement.
She shook her head and looked at their linked fingers before returning her gaze to his face. ‘You? Me? I don’t know what this is…’ She pressed her free hand to her breastbone. ‘But it can’t go anywhere, even if we want it to.’
God, he wanted it to. The force of that realisation hit him like a thunderclap. It didn’t help that he knew she was right. Neither of them wanted this, were ready for this.
He let go of her hand. Her eyes shimmered with regret, and a little sadness. He breathed out hard.
‘It’s only a couple of weeks,’ she said, ‘and then I’ll be gone. Can we try to keep it professional until then—or at the very least platonic?’
He heard the hidden plea, knew she was balancing on a knife-edge, just as he was, torn between doing what was right and what felt right. Suddenly he had the overwhelming urge to protect her, save her. It washed over him in a warm wave, starting at his toes and ending at his ears, and then settled into a small hard rock inside his chest.
He nodded. ‘Goodnight, Faith,’ he said, his voice low.
Her eyes filled with silent gratitude. ‘Goodnight, Marcus.’
It was only as he watched her walk up the stairs that he realised he was protecting her from himself.
Faith did her best to keep busy the next day. She got to the studio early, determined to remove the last of the glass from the old lead. Each fragment she removed was placed on the carefully drawn template she’d made. It was slow work, but absorbing, and it kept her mind off things she didn’t want to think about. However, as the hand on the clock moved closer to four her heart-rate refused to settle into its normal rhythm.
Would he come?
At four-fifteen she had her answer. There was a rap on the door, but this time, instead of opening it a split-second later, he waited for her reply. Marcus was good with boundaries, she realised. He wouldn’t overstep their agreement, and she knew she wouldn’t have to remind him of it even once in the coming fortnight. So why didn’t that make her feel any happier?
‘Come in,’ she called, feeling her own boundaries crumble a little further, like the scattering of grit and pebbles just before a rock-fall. Mentally, she shored them up as best she could.
‘Hello,’ he said.
His expression was shuttered, wary. It was almost the way he’d looked at her on that first morning, except… She had the oddest feeling that although the walls were back it wasn’t that he was pushing her away, but holding himself back.
She cleared her throat. ‘Hi.’
Platonic, she’d said. And Marcus had wanted to be informed of any interesting developments regarding the window. She could do this. She could do platonic and professional. She’d never had any problems with it before.
‘Come and see.’ She indicated the half pulled apart window on the table in front of her.
He nodded and, just as he’d done for the whole of the
previous week, asked thoughtful, intelligent questions. She answered him clearly, adding in interesting facts, which had also become her habit. Anyone watching them would have thought nothing had changed, that what had happened in the cellar had stayed in the cellar.
Faith knew better.
The whole time they talked there was an undercurrent that hadn’t been there before, pulsing away beneath the surface.
And they didn’t deny it—to themselves or each other—but by tacit agreement decided to leave it be. It was frustrating, but it was honest. She didn’t think she could have lied to him anyway. Somehow he could see inside her. It wasn’t that she’d let her barriers fall—they were still tightly in place—but that to him, and only him, they were like the glass on the table in front of her.
‘I’ve asked Shirley to rustle up some help with the cellar,’ he said. ‘She’s sending a couple of the part-time cleaning staff down. There should be waiting for us by the time we get there.’
She nodded, knowing this was a good idea—a fabulous idea—even as her heart sank. It was a good idea to give Basil some back-up.
‘Hope they like dust,’ she said as she grabbed her coat, ‘and badgers…’
Marcus’s father had always accused him of being a contrary child with an iron will, and now that resolve served him well. Even so, the cellar-cleaning crew became his safety net over the next few days, stopping him giving in to the urge to ‘lose’ the doorstop one evening and do something stupid.
It didn’t help him forget, though. He couldn’t erase the memory of that kiss,