Page 39 of An Honorable Deception
“I’ll go to bed soon.” She didn’t mean it, but if it would convince him to leave her to her task ... She picked up the dossier with Gemma’s hand again, inadvertently knocking Yates’s away from her back in the process.
Yates sighed. “I can see we’re going to have to do this the hard way.”
She ought to have anticipated what that meant—ought to have but didn’t. One second she was trying to find her place on the page again through her bleary eyes, and the next, she was being lifted off the ground.
Laughter bubbled up, as it always did when he pulled such a stunt.
Panic crashed down, popping the bubble of joy when Marigold’s warning clanged through her memory.
“Put medown!” She could hear the strange note in her own voice, one better suited for a dark alleyway and a drunk ruffian than one of her best friends in the world, who was only acting like he always did.
She was on her feet in the next second, and he’d taken a step away, hands raised in surrender and a shadow in his eyes she’d never seen there before. Oneshe’dput there. “Sorry,” hesaid, and she could hear the confusion in his voice alongside the sincerity. “I didn’t mean to—did I hurt you? Offend you?”
Lionfeathers. Maybe shedidneed to go to bed, because she felt the burn of tears at the back of her eyes. He looked so contrite. Horrified. Concerned. That was what did it—the fact that he’d do or undo anything to make certain she was well.
She didn’t deserve such a friend.
She squeezed her eyes shut and rubbed them. “No. Sorry.” She wanted to say it was all Marigold, pour out the tale of the conversation that still bothered her every time she thought about it. But she could never look him in the eye and say,“Your sister wants to make certain you don’t fall in love with me again.”How arrogant that would sound!
And it was a pointless concern. That had been abundantly clear as she’d watched Yates watch Alethia that day.
Making herself look at him again, she offered a small smile. “You did nothing wrong—and you are a good friend. It’s ...” Would she be overstepping? But he needed to understand. She sighed. “I see how you look at Alethia, all teasing aside. And I see howshelooks at you. And while I already explained to her that we’re simply old friends”—with a single kiss at age seventeen to muddle that, which she hadnotexplained—“it wouldn’t look like that. If you were married, you wouldn’t still hoist me about like your partner in the circus, would you? Because I’m not Marigold, much as I often feel like part of your family.”
For a beat, he was still, and she could see her words settling over him, finding their places. His hands lowered, slipped into his pockets. And he nodded.
Henodded. She didn’t realize until he agreed with her that some part of her, some part that was still seventeen and standing on a wintry, wind-tossed bluff by the sea, hadexpected—wanted—him to argue. Wanted him to get that fierce, determined look in his eyes and say that no, he wasn’t interested in Alethia. Wanted to hear him say what he’d said all those years ago—that there was no one in the world for him but her.
There was, though. She’d squandered her chance, and he’d mended his heart, and now this was what they had. A friendship that could be beautiful but that had to change from its current state. Because its current state relied on teasing that looked like flirtation, and that couldn’t continue if he pursued Alethia.
It shouldn’t feel like another shade of mourning. This wasn’t loss. Wasn’t death. Wasn’t betrayal. This was maturity.
She let her gaze fall before she saw something in his that she hadn’t the energy to work through at the moment and eased back a step. “You’re right—it’s late, I should sleep. Is it all right if I leave this out until morning, do you think?”
He gave her a crooked grin—which, yes, she noticed because she looked up at him again. “I can guarantee you that no one else is going to come in here and touch these files before you do. In fact, I think we’ll be perfectly comfortable calling this your domain from now on. I hereby dub you Mistress of the Filing Cupboards.”
She smiled. “I accept the commission.” And then she turned to the door. Exhaustion crowded in now, though it felt less physical than mental. Emotional.
“See you at the gymnasium at seven.”
She wanted to tell him she and Marigold had been going at seven-thirty. She wanted not to show up. She wanted to go out at seven and not tell Marigold and laugh with him while he oversaw her torture. She wanted so many things that contradicted one another that she could find words for none of them. She simply nodded and left the room.
She slept, at least. Quickly, soundly, and then it fled again without complaint when the first light of dawn speared through her east-facing window. Her eyes certainly felt better, and the muscle strain had eased. Her mind was still the same muddle it had been at midnight, though. She dressed for the gymnasium and didnotgo back into the study, because she knew for a fact she wouldn’t remember to leave it again in time to make her standing appointment with the barbells and skipping rope.
Marigold was already moving toward the stairs when Lavinia emerged from her room, and Yates’s laugh came from the direction of the kitchen. He was dressed for exercise, too, though she tried to tell herself that seeing him so wasn’t what made her throat go tight. It was the memory of her overreaction last night. The memory of the argument with Marigold.
It was the realization that after Marigold gave birth, after Yates and Alethia had begun to court instead of just stealing glances at each other, this wouldn’t happen again. Lavinia could still be their friend, but she couldn’t be the kind of friend who stayed here for months on end, joked with Yates at the crack of dawn, or let him take her arms in the gymnasium and show her how to do the next exercise.
Why would this stupid ache not go away?She lifted a hand, rubbed it over her chest.
And regretted it when both the siblings stopped in their tracks as if lightning had struck, staring at her in horror.
Her hand fell away. “Don’t even ask. I am perfectly fine.”Physically.
Marigold’s fingers curled around Lavinia’s elbow. “Perhaps we should take the day off. I could use a rest.”
She rolled her eyes. “You’re a terrible liar.”
“I am a fabulous liar! I’ve made a career of it.”
