Page 40 of Courting Trouble
She faced him, the lamps glimmering off a sheen of moisture in her eyes as her hand stilled beneath his. “I’ve never feared you for a moment.”
No creature should be so soft. So inviting.
The air thickened between them and Titus didn’t know how they’d come to be closer to one another. Couldn’t say which one of them had stepped forward to close the gap.
“Nora?”
Her tongue darted out, glossing her lips. “Yes?”
“If you knew what I’d become? If you’d seen this place and realized what I could have eventually offered you…would you still have thrown me out that night?”
He watched her features crumple and immediately regretted the question. Even though she’d been cruel in their past. Even though she’d been so contaminated by disgrace in the eyes of society for all her supposed misdeeds.
Even though he’d never truly forgiven her…
It seemed he’d still rather tear at his own skin than cause her pain.
To his surprise, her fingers laced with his and she pressed lips as plush and smooth as petals to knuckles still rough from a youth spent in toil.
“Titus…” She swallowed twice before gathering herself to continue. “You were the brightest, best, most brilliant person I’d ever known. That I’d ever even heard of. Ialwaysunderstood you were capable of this and more. I never for a moment questioned that, unless you had the chance taken from you, you would perform miracles. You were born to astonish the world.”
Pleasure shimmered through him at her words, followed by a dart of ire. “Then…why—”
“Titus?”
At the sound of his name, so familiar on another woman’s lips, he dropped Nora’s hand just in time for the bedroom door to open.
Revealing Mrs. Annabelle Rhodes.
Tossing her abundant copper curls, Annabelle pressed a hand to the deep cleft of her cleavage in a gesture meant to be both enticing and astonished. “It’s been amonthof Wednesdays since you’ve taken me up on my…invitations.”
“Annabelle,” he growled.
She drew her generous bottom lip between her teeth, her green eyes already hungrily devouring him. “Since you claimed to be too busy to leave your lair, I decided to join you in it. To steal whatever moments you can spare. I’ve been famished for—”
“Annabelle,” he forced her name through his teeth. “I did not give you a key so you could—”
As she advanced out the door, she finally noticed he wasn’t alone. Her eyes narrowed as she drew her gaze up and down Nora’s dressing gown.
“Titus…whoisthis?”
“I’m no one, I assure you,” Nora said from beside him, turning the arm in the sling to the light. “Merely a patient.”
“A patient, you say?” Annabelle planted her fists on her buxom hips. “Then what are you doing in the doorway to his bedroom this time of the evening?”
Titus opened his mouth to put Annabelle in her place, but Nora stepped in front of him. “I’m Nora,” she introduced herself in an endlessly pleasant voice. So cultured. So practiced. So false. “Dr. Conleith is an old friend of the family. I’ve been prevailing upon his hospitality whilst visiting London, but I’ll be leaving in the morning when my family arrives to collect me.”
Would she?
Annabelle’s features positively melted with delight, and then sobered when she realized that it was her in the scandalous position. “Oh. Well… I’m also a patient, or rather, my husband was. He died. Not for any lack of expertise on the part of—”
“I understand,” Nora said, rather kindly, he thought, under the circumstances. “I’ll bid you both goodnight.”
“But…” Titus made to take her elbow, but she backed out of his reach. She’d been sleeping in his chamber, the door of which was filled by his current mistress.
“Until tomorrow.” She smiled pleasantly and curtsied with enough grace to please the Queen, before she turned away.
But not before Titus spied the falter in her smile. The crack in her façade.
