A tapping at her window made her think the rain had picked up, but then it happened again. Her heart leapt into her throat as she looked up to see a man standing outside the window. The small halo of light given off by the sconce on the wall illuminated his large size, and something about the set of his shoulders made her think it was Maxwell. He took his hat off, and a gasp tore from her chest as her suspicion was confirmed.
Maxwell Crenshaw stood outside her window in the dead of night! What on earth could he want?
It took a moment for her mind to catch up with what was happening. She stood there in shock as he motioned to the door that opened to the garden. It was the same door he had come in and out of back in June when Violet had been staying with her. After coming home from Yorkshire, Violet hadn’t wanted to go home to her parents. Helena had invited her to stay here while Maxwell and Mr. Crenshaw negotiated the marriage arrangements with Christian. Maxwell had come nearly every day to visit and give them updates on how the negotiations were faring. Because they didn’t want to advertise to all of London that Violet was here, he had come in and out through the mews, using the garden exit and that door.
She nodded and held her hand up for patience. She could not chance one of the servants seeing them, so she hurried to lock the door that led to the rest of the house. Only then did she open the leaded-glass door to the garden. A blast of cold air had her pulling her dressing gown tighter around her.
“Can I come in?” he asked, rain dripping off his hair.
* * *
• • •
For a moment, Max believed that she would close the door, that she had opened it for him only so that she could slam it shut. He couldn’t entirely blame her. Dinner had not gone well.
Her face grew taut, and he was certain she was about to say no, but then she stepped back to give him space.
He hurried in past her, and she closed the door and turned the latch behind him. Unexpectedly, her hands gripped the shoulders of his outer coat and she helped him to shrug out of it. He was cold, but he’d warm up a lot faster without the coat, which was nearly soaked through.
“You’re drenched. You didn’t walk here, did you? You could catch your death in this weather.” She sounded annoyed and irritated, while at the same time pushing him toward the fireplace.
Good. He was annoyed and irritated, too. After the carriage had dropped him at his parents’ house, he’d been unable to find a moment of peace. Instead of going to bed, he had walked here, and he was starting to realize how impulsive the act had been. “You ran away. I had to come find you.”
Setting his hat and gloves on the mantelpiece, he held his hands up to the flame, savoring the warmth as she looked for somewhere to put his coat that wouldn’t ruin her furniture. She was in her nightclothes, an eventuality that he hadn’t considered when he’d first set out to see her. He shouldn’t look, but he couldn’t help but watch her from the corner of his eyes as she hurried around the room. The nightdress and dressing gown ensemble was white flannel, thick to guard against the cold night. There was absolutely nothing provocative about them, except for the fact that she was wearing them. Except for the fact that they clung to her body, the skirts swishing about her legs. He could plainly see the swell of her breasts, the outline of her hips, and the curve of her buttocks. Worse, he knew that she was naked beneath her clothes. He would find nothing but warm, soft skin if he reached beneath them.
He took a deep breath and stared at the flames, lust and leftover fury burning him up from the inside as a coil of longing began to twist and tighten in his belly. No one could make him as simultaneously frustrated and aroused as she could.
Finally deciding on the chair at the little desk he had seen her use to write letters and where a stack of newspapers were kept, she pulled it toward the fireplace and draped his coat over it so that it could at least begin to dry in the few minutes he would be here.
“I left because you were being a brute.” Her voice was low but laced with steel. Now that her initial shock was wearing off, he could see her anger returning. Her defenses were up again. She crossed her arms over her chest, and he tried not to look, but he couldn’t help but watch as the flannel pulled against the curves of her hips.
“A brute? You all but attacked me, because I am committed to doing what is best for August and Crenshaw Iron.”
She rolled her eyes, and aggravation simmered through his veins. “You are hiding behind your sister instead of addressing the very good points I brought up at dinner. The fact of the matter is that without that building, people will suffer.”
He turned toward her before he could rein in his emotions. “No, the fact of the matter is that you could find another building if you wanted. It may not be there, and it may be outside London, but there are other options. There are always other options.”
“The world doesn’t operate in your narrow scope of reality, Mr. Crenshaw.”
He bristled at that. He liked it when she called him Maxwell instead of injecting this artificial formality between them. Nothing had ever been formal and proper between them. “So we are back to Mr. Crenshaw again. I thought when you said it over dinner it was because you were angry.”
“I was angry. I am still angry, because you don’t seem to even care to try to understand. These women and children won’t come to us if they think our only goal is to cart them off to another part of England. London is their home, and they have every right to it, just like any other Londoner. The objective is to change from within, to improve their lives by improving their homes, not pulling them away from everything they’ve ever known.”
He closed his eyes and took in a deep breath. This was getting them nowhere, and she was partially right. He didn’t understand, because they had never talked about her plans beyond their surface. When he opened his eyes, she was breathing just as hard as he was, her breasts rising and falling. She had braided her hair for bed, and it had fallen over her shoulder, making her look attainable somehow, as if she were not the cool and detached Lady Helena March but the much more touchable Helena.
“You’re right in that I don’t understand everything you’re doing, and I am sorry for charging in like this,” he began, forcing his voice to stay calm. “I went home fully expecting to pay a call tomorrow, but I couldn’t let this wait.”
“You walked from your parents’ house in the rain to tell me I am being unreasonable?”
“Well, I didn’t want to rouse the driver to do it,” he said, sarcasm dripping from his voice. “Besides, I couldn’t let him drop me off out front, not at this hour, and if he left me at the mews, that would look even worse.”
She stared at him in bewilderment, as if she was unable to decide if he were telling the truth or jesting. Her lips were parted, and he wanted to drag her into his arms and kiss her. It was a wildly inappropriate thought, but even so, excitement swirled in his stomach and he clenched his teeth to keep from acting on the impulse as he forced his gaze anywhere but on her.