One Week as Lovers by Victoria Dahl Page A

him.
    “All right. I want wine, and you have it. So I suppose I’ve no choice.”
    She followed him into his room—the room where she’d lain last night—and looked around as if his belongings might be a message left for her to study.
    A basin still steaming faintly in the cool air. A cloth that had washed his face, his neck. The bed, now neatly made and absent any evidence of her body. Two wine glasses on a table pulled close to the fire, one empty and one stained with the dregs of his recent consumption.
    Nick waved her toward the table. “Sit. You must be tired.”
    She glanced at the corners of his eyes, reddened as if he’d rubbed them hard. “You must be as well.”
    As if to confirm her words, he collapsed as soon as she took her own seat. “I admit to a bit of trouble sleeping last night. Unearthly revelations, you know.”
    My word, he already had her smiling. “I suppose.”
    After he filled the glasses, they both set into their soup. Heat worked its way from her belly to her limbs. Quiet as they were, this was a hundred times more comfortable than their earlier hours had been. When Nick reached for the bread, his fingers caught her eye.
    Long and blunt, they were not as elegant as the rest of him. They tore into the bread, ripping the crust, breaking the thin loaf in half. The firelight glinted off the golden hairs that dusted his skin. The muscles of his forearm flexed as he stretched across the table to deliver half the bread to her plate.
    Those big fingers had been on her today. Stroking. Holding. “Thank you,” she managed to say.
    “My pleasure,” he answered, the words soft.
    Her gaze flew to meet his. Could he read her thoughts? Did he share them? But his smile was pure and free of flirtation.
    Guilt turned the warm soup in her stomach into a hot coal. He belonged to someone else.
    “How is your family?” she asked too loudly.
    “Well.” He did not add more.
    “I was sorry to hear about your father. He was so kind. A good man.”
    A smile flashed over his face. A smile or a grimace. “Yes. A wonderful man.” Nick picked up his wine and pushed the half-eaten soup away. A few seconds later, he’d downed the glass of wine and refilled it to the brim. “Kind,” he added with another strained smile.
    “You must miss him.”
    “I suppose. It’s been a very long time.”
    A long time? His father had only died two years before. She took a bite of bread to hide her shock. He’d always been so close to his father, a man nearly as warm and friendly as Nick himself. Perhaps his grief made two years seem an eternity.
    But his eyes were distant, removed. More like an ancient wound than a fresh one. It’s been a very long time .
    Another glass of wine disappeared. Her confusion deepened. “Are you not hungry?”
    He set down the glass and leaned forward. “I want to apologize again. For earlier. For everything.”
    “It’s all right,” she said reflexively.
    “No…I should explain. Or try to. It’s just that…The women in London, they’re not like you, Cyn.”
    Her spoon clanked hard against the bowl. She set it down. Did he think she did not know that?
    “They’re more…worldly.”
    “I’m sure they must be,” she ground out.
    “You’re protected here in the country.”
    “I’d hardly say that, Lancaster,” she snapped.
    He blinked. “I’m sorry. Of course. I’m not explaining this well. And there are plenty of women like you in London. I’m speaking in generalizations instead of saying what I mean.”
    “Which is?” She tried not to remember the phrase “women like you,” but had no doubt she’d turn it over in her mind for weeks.
    “I’m trying to tell you that the woman I am to marry, Imogene, cares as little for me as I do for her. Less even.”
    “Perhaps she is only shy.”
    “No.” He smiled again, and this time it reached his eyes. “No, that’s not it, I’m afraid.”
    Cyn reached for her wine. She did not like this conversation, yet she was