Well, not again.
“No, brother. One woman can tell when another is in over her head and she has allowed her more tender feelings to get the better of her. What may have started out as a mere game has turned into something more, at least for her. Knowing this, however, my advice is to withhold any mention of the book for the time being.”
He felt his brow pucker. “But she and I both know that is the reason we are here in the first place. Why would either of us need to pretend otherwise?”
“Because when I brought up the book to her, she became instantly defensive, making excuses that she didn’t know where it was. So I pretended to believe her. And that was precisely when she became unguarded and revealed herself.” She stood and laid her hand on his sleeve. “This book means a great deal to our family. After all that we have suffered to protect it, we cannot afford to let it slip through our fingers again.”
Lucien knew she was right. And he felt guilty for the wayward thrill of anticipation that trampled through him at the very thought of spending the coming days with the woman who’d taken it.
Chapter 16
Falling like a soufflé
Meg wanted to trust Lady Morgan’s advice, but waiting for the book theft to simply “sort itself out” seemed like it could take far too long. And there wasn’t much time left of her holiday. Besides, holding fast to the secret that had been weighing on her heart might do more harm than good. So, when Lucien had escorted her to her rooms, she’d decided to take a chance and tell him the truth the following day.
Unfortunately, during their tour of the vineyard with the aunts, her nerves—and the wine—got the better of her. In the end, she’d fallen asleep in the carriage on the way back to the hotel and then slept in her rooms through dinner as well.
The day after that, she garnered her courage once more.
They took a rowboat on the lake while the aunts watched from beneath their parasols on the shore. Drifting along, alone with Lucien, would have been the perfect time to tell him everything. But when they were nearly halfway across the vast lake, a boy sailing a small skiff was caught unawares by a gust of wind. He toppled into the cold water, flailing and crying out.
Meg and Lucien were still a distance away. Yet, without hesitation, he stripped off his coat and spectacles and plunged over the side. Taking up the oars, she paddled behind as he quickly closed the distance with precise, powerful strokes. When they reached the capsized boat, however, the boy was nowhere in sight.
Lucien dove under the water.
Then everything went eerily calm. There were no more shouts from the shore, no gulls screeching overhead. It was as though they were all holding their collective breaths as the seconds ticked by, turning into minutes. And still . . . nothing.
Her lungs burned with the need to breathe, and she took in a raw gulp of air. But it only filled her with panic because she knew he wasn’t breathing.
Gripping the sides of the hull, her fingertips dug into splinters of dried white paint as she searched for any sign of them. They had to break the surface soon or else . . .
No. She couldn’t finish that thought. It was unbearable.
Nevertheless, her mind conjured a vision of her life without him, of the years passing without his hand to help her down from the carriage. Without his dark eyes to stare at her through smeared lenses that she would clean. Without the thunderous feel of his heart beating against her own. Without that disapproving mouth she so liked to kiss. Without . . .
The overwhelming emptiness of such a future brought her to the undeniable realization that she had fallen in love with him. Not the butterfly-tender, innocent love she had felt for Daniel. That had been a child’s fancy. She knew that now.
But this? This was everything. An entire universe of feeling—burning comets, imploding stars, the crush of continents colliding, rising, breaking apart to form something new.
The notion that the Fates might have put him in her path had been one thing, but knowing it with soul-deep certainty was another altogether. He was her soul’s counterpart.
And she was still in the boat, staring at the calm surface of the lake? No! She could not—would not—lose him.
Frantically, she began to unbutton her spencer, fully intending to go into the water. She’d swum the river at Crossmoor Abbey, after all, so she knew she was a strong—
Just then, she heard a great splash. A heaving intake of air. A rough cough. And there, beyond the hull of the sinking skiff, Lucien breached the water. The boy, hacking and sputtering, was tucked securely against his chest.
She cried out in happy relief, her cheeks wet with tears as she fumbled for the oars and rowed over to where they were treading.
Taking fistfuls of the boy’s sodden coat, she helped drag him into the rowboat. Then she leaned to one side as Lucien levered himself over the other, chest laboring beneath his plastered waistcoat. His shirtsleeves were transparent over the sculpted definition of his shoulders and arms, and a thick hank of dripping hair fell in a tapered rope down the center of his forehead.
After catching his breath and scrubbing the water from his face, he grabbed the offered spectacles. Then he took in Meg’s appearance—her hat torn from her head, hair tumbling from its pins, her spencer wrapped around the boy’s shoulders.
He gave her a hard look. “Do not tell me that you were planning to go in.”
“Fine,” she said with an offhand shrug as she swiped her fingertips over her damp cheeks. “I won’t tell you.”
Slipping a handkerchief from her sleeve, she held it out for him. And he took hold of it, seizing her hand as well.
Something fierce and tender passed between them as his gaze held hers. She could feel the moment her heart started beating again. It happened the instant that the pulse at his wrist thumped, strong and steady, beneath the pads of her fingertips.
He gripped her in return, his fingers like an iron shackle around her wrist. “Meg, you realize that the weight of your skirts would have taken you—”
She laughed. She couldn’t seem to help it. A sudden dizzying swell of giddiness overcame her at the sight of his stern frown that tried ever so hard to mask the concern and warmth in his gaze. He’d worn a similar look when they’d stood on the mountaintop and she’d goaded him into revealing how he felt about her. “If I didn’t know better, I might begin to think that your wayward affection has now surpassed seventy-five percent and is still climbing.”
He released her, but only after his hand gently squeezed hers and the corner of his mouth twitched. “Surely not.”
Then he took up the oars and rowed them to shore.
Meg should have told him the truth then. However, after enduring such a harrowing experience, she couldn’t bring herself to tell him about her deception.
She’d had a taste of what losing him would feel like, and she couldn’t risk it.
* * *
As the days passed, however, she became conflicted.
At first, the sweetness of hot afternoon strolls along the lake—the air ripe with budding fruits, and evening walks beneath shadowed hillsides of olive trees, among gardens bursting with a fragrant bouquet of acacia, lupine and vining clematis—seemed to last forever.
But before she knew it, a handful of days had turned into a sennight.