‘They’re not though, are they?’ she whispered and almost sobbed at the years of regret she’d betrayed with those stark words. ‘Please leave me be, my lord. I should never have slept when there is so much to do and it won’t happen again, I assure you.’
‘Nonsense,’ he said gruffly. ‘When I first laid eyes on you today I thought you looked as if you might break if you didn’t bend soon. You’re too thin and look as if you haven’t slept or eaten properly in weeks.’
‘I can’t sleep and food seems to choke me at times,’ she admitted reluctantly.
‘Go on like this and you’ll make yourself ill. Do that to yourself if you must, but how can you risk shocking your daughter with your wan appearance when she sees you? She must be struggling to come to terms with losing Virginia, close as I know they had become to each other while she was growing up.’
‘Yes, she was heartbroken,’ Chloe said heavily, remembering how it felt to hold her sobbing daughter whilst she cried as if her poor heart might break the day Chloe had Lady Virginia’s coachman drive her to Bath so she could tell Verity Lady Virginia was dead.
‘So eat something,’ he demanded.
‘I have, at regular intervals.’
‘Then eat more and go to bed and sleep properly tonight, instead of pacing the corridors like a ghost and making the night watchman think he’s being haunted.’
His voice was brusque, but there was what looked like genuine concern in his eyes as he inspected her face. His well-hidden kindness touched her as she couldn’t let herself be touched by her employer. She rubbed her eyes self-consciously, pushed an annoying curl behind her ear and tried not to gaze back at him as if she might adore him, if things were different.
‘I must look like something the cat brought in,’ she muttered unwarily.
The wretched man stared at her with a glint of humour and something they’d both declared forbidden in the depths of those grey-, gold-and green-rayed eyes of his. She wanted to fall into them and never land on solid ground again for a long moment.
‘You must know you’re beautiful,’ he said wryly, almost as if talking to himself and being overheard by the wide-eyed sceptic in front of him.
She shook her head in hasty denial and tried not to love the fact he thought so.
‘But you’re still too thin,’ he insisted, ‘and you have shadows under your eyes a Gothic heroine would envy.’
‘Well, she’d be welcome to them,’ she said unwarily and the quirk of humour kicking up his fascinating mouth became a true smile.
There was all the warmth and hope and unwary fellow feeling in them that had nearly carried them over the precipice a decade ago. Chloe felt them both balance on the edge of the inevitable again. It felt terrible and utterly desirable, as if even their thoughts were cursed to curl up together and purr with delight at being reunited.
He reached out a long finger, as if he wanted to physically brush the shadows away from her eyes. She felt the whisper of his almost touch on her skin and gasped with hope and fear at how much she wanted it. She slicked parched lips with her tongue and watched him hesitate, had the sense of a strong man fighting what he knew was wrong, yet he was still drawn on by what felt so strong between them it could overrule everything, if they let it. There was curiosity and impatience in his eyes, before he blanked them and my Lord Farenze was himself again; remote, self-assured and cynical and as distant from the housekeeper of Farenze Lodge as ever.
‘Eve and Bran are coming,’ he warned her huskily.
Chloe strained her senses to catch a hint of whatever sound or instinct told him they were about to be rescued from folly, whether they wanted to be or not.
‘Pretend I never came in here. Act as if you woke up the moment they asked what I’m doing here,’ he whispered.
Lost for words again, Chloe nodded, then burrowed her face into the pillows and drew the bedclothes over her chilled shoulders. At least pretending to be fuzzy with sleep would give her time to pull wanton Chloe into line and forget he’d been here as best she could. If she proved as obedient to the curb as his rampant side, she had nothing to worry about.
‘Bah!’ she muttered crossly into the pillow, ‘just bah, my Lord Farenze!’
No danger he might hear her. He was back through the door and nearly closing it again before she could slide down the bed and cover her now-shivering body. Nobody else would ever know he’d found her here, heavy-eyed with sleep and wanton desire.
She heard Miss Winterley express surprise at her father’s presence in an over-loud voice meant to warn Chloe not to start awake and betray herself and felt a hard flush of shame burn her cheeks at the thought she knew of Luke Winterley’s presence all too well. She felt it in every fibre of her being and the man was Miss Winterley’s father, for goodness’ sake.
‘You took my book,’ he replied and if his excuse sounded lame and defensive, it might explain what he was doing here better than a smoother lie, designed to cover something clandestine and shocking.
‘And there are none downstairs in the famously well-stocked library Aunt Virginia and Uncle Virgil amassed between them?’ Eve asked, as if she knew very well her father had really stumbled on the housekeeper enjoying a nap in the wrong place at entirely the wrong time, but how could she?
‘Not the one I was reading before you stole it,’ he said grumpily.
‘And now I am reading it, so you would be stealing it from me. I can’t believe you to need distraction so badly, especially in the midst of a house party you must play host to, that you need to barge into my bedchamber when I am not there and try to repossess part of your library, Papa. I’m not even going to think about the list of tasks awaiting you here that you reeled off as an excuse for not being able to spend much time greeting neighbours who call to express their condolences.’
‘I didn’t know then how much distraction I’d need,’ he muttered darkly.
Chloe’s eyes stung at the sound of him so gruffly sheepish it opened up a host of new temptations inside her. She didn’t want to love him and screwed her eyes shut in denial of any tears tempted to come further.
‘Don’t be such a cross old bear, Papa,’ Eve told him and Chloe could hear the rustle of her skirts as she marched up and hugged her father.
Wrong to envy Eve such ease with her father, that ability to breach the chilly touch-me-not air he normally carried about with him like a shield.
‘I’ll try not to be, my she-cub, but there will be reasons aplenty for me to growl over the next few days.’
‘Aye,’ Brandy Brown added from what sounded like a position just inside the room, ‘you’ll need the patience of a saint before the vultures fly off at last.’
‘They’re not all vultures, Bran,’ Eve chided.
‘We don’t know them well enough to judge what they are yet, my lamb,’ her maid said cynically and Chloe decided there was no need to worry about Eve Winterley with such a formidable protector at her side, as well as a father who would clearly walk through fire to keep his beloved daughter safe.
‘I know Lord Mantaigne and Great-Uncle Giles perfectly well and even Uncle James isn’t as savage and sarcastic as he used to be. Aunt Virginia was always trying to persuade him to live a steadier life, so perhaps he will turn over a new leaf in her honour.’
‘And I’m a Dutchman,’ Chloe thought she heard Lord Farenze mutter darkly and wondered what divided the half-brothers so deeply, so alike in colouring and stature as they were, yet as sharply distant with each other as two siblings could be without openly declaring war.
‘No,