When It's Perfect by Adele Ashworth Page A

thoroughly engaged expression of false modesty.
    “And yet,” he carried on, “your hands are so… different from mine.”
    She tried not to smile. “Which hands are those, Lord Renn?”
    He gazed to her lap. “The… delicate, feminine ones, with long, tapered fingers for caressing a brow softly or rubbing hard muscles after a day’s labor. For exploring.”
    Mary just sat there, feeling the quickening pace of her heart, and having no idea at all how to reply to such a literal comment, so formally expressed even as it contained such utterly intimate meaning. They had been speaking in riddles. How quickly he had turned the conversation to one that felt improper. Suddenly, for just a very brief second, she knew he rested on the verge of taking her hand in his.
    Without clear thought, she clasped her arms together protectively over her breasts.
    The earl straightened, his features going slack, and he once again looked out over the bay, placing his palms on his thighs.
    “Do you suppose,” he asked very slowly, “that Mrs. Coswell knows more of what Christine feared than she let on?”
    Mary tried to clear her muddled mind, noticing how a cloud covered the sun at exactly the same moment, just as it did her mood. If this marvelously handsome man were only a little less distracting…

    “I’m not sure,” she returned, immensely proud of how her voice remained flat as her nerves flared. “Why do you ask?”
    She shouldn’t have pressed him.
    He looked back into her eyes, so close and candid, his brows furrowed with a combination of pain, confusion, and anger.
    “I ask because she gave you—only you—a certain look that had me sensing something more.” His lips thinned grimly, then he lowered his voice to add, “Did you sense it as well?”
    Mary shivered from a rush of coldness, from a sense of loneliness and despair that she felt even now for Christine.
    “It’s possible, my lord,” she replied, rubbing her upper arms. “But I would imagine there is more to learn about Miss Longfellow than either the vicar and his wife or I can offer.”
    She hoped that answer would suffice. For an almost unbearable moment he did and said nothing.
    Then, very quietly, almost gingerly, instead of lingering on the subject of his concern, he murmured, “I would like to call you Mary.”
    She nearly swooned from such a marvelous thought. But she couldn’t allow such familiarity.
    “I don’t think that would be appropriate,” she said, fearing that her hesitancy and strange desire to allow it would show through her words.
    Apparently it didn’t. His eyes darkened, and after a second or two, he raised his chin a fraction. “As you wish.”
    For an uncomfortable moment, neither said anything; they just looked at each other. Then he lowered his gaze to the wild grass beneath his feet.
    “Well, I believe you’re quite right about Mrs. Coswell. Which leads me to wonder about Christine’s things. As far as I know they’ve not been touched.”
    Swiftly, he stood and faced her, arms at his sides. “I intend to take the afternoon and go through her personal items, Miss Marsh. I would like you to join me.”
    She shook her head. “I’m sorry, but—”
    “You must,” he interjected forcefully. “It would be… unseemly for me to do so as a man and her brother, but not for you as her personal”—he flicked his wrist—”trousseau… maker. The only other person to do it would be my mother, and she can’t under the grief of the moment. I’m sure you understand.”
    His formality had returned again, and Mary wasn’t certain whether

    or not she liked it better than the tiny bit of friendliness they’d shared. Yet that was irrelevant. He treated her exactly as he should—she had seen to that by denying him the right to use her given name. She could only do as he’d requested.
    Mary stood then too, as elegantly as possible under the circumstances, allowing her gown to flow around her legs without adjusting it. The