Page 41 of The Meaning of Love
They’d reached the drawing room; the door had been left wide, and the three of them continued into the spacious chamber.
Instantly, Julian looked for and located Melissa. She was seated on a sofa, flanked by two of his great-aunts and Helen, and her expression as she stared at him looked distinctly brittle.
Vaguely aware that the captain and Felix had ambled on to join some others, Julian went directly to Melissa.
As he approached, he saw that while she fought to keep that definitely fragile smile in place, her eyes were bright with temper. Then he realized that his great-aunt Hortense was droning on about weddings she’d attended.
Hortense broke off as he fetched up before the sofa. She raised her quizzing glass and peered at him. “Ah, Carsely. There you are.”
She drew breath to say more, but reaching for Melissa’s hand, he cut in with, “I’m afraid I’ve come to”—rescue—“steal Melissa away. There’s an issue on which I require her opinion.”
“Oh?” His great-aunts and Helen looked intrigued.
Melissa gripped his hand and popped to her feet. “Of course, my lord. I’m happy to help.” She waved toward the doorway. “Shall we?”
The pointed look she cast him stated they needed to leave the room before she did something regrettable.
He tucked her hand in the crook of his elbow, inclined his head to the three older ladies, and with Melissa, walked smoothly but quickly from the room.
“I take it,” he murmured as they stepped into the front hall, “that your ordeal was worse than mine.”
“Horrendous,”she confirmed through clenched teeth. “I need to be away from them all for a while.”
He glanced at her now-set face. “Do we need to talk privately?”
She hesitated, then nodded. “That might be a good idea.”
The tension in her voice was alarming. He led her down a minor corridor and around to the garden parlor, a small but pleasant room that overlooked the side garden.
He opened the parlor door and looked in. As he’d expected, there was no one else there, but as the room was a reception room and on the ground floor, a lamp had been left burning, turned low, on the end table beside the sofa facing the windows.
Melissa looked past him, sighed feelingly, drew her hand from his sleeve, and walked in. She made for the sofa and slumped down upon it in a susurration of silks. “The past half hour has been my worst experience in the ton bar none.”
He winced, closed the door, and went to turn up the lamp. “That bad?”
“I literally know of no words sufficient to do it justice.”
He debated sitting beside her, but then he wouldn’t be able to see her face. He stepped around the sofa, pulled up an armchair, and sat more or less facing her. He reached out and took one of her hands. “Words aside, what happened?”
Puzzled, Melissa looked at him, then waved toward the drawing room. “Didn’t you see?”
“Just then?” He shook his head. “I looked at you, not anyone else—well, except my great-aunts and Helen, and even then, I wasn’t paying attention to them.”
She stared at him, then humphed. “Well, that’s nice in its way, but if you had looked, you would have seen that every single eye in that room—literally every female eye—was trained on me. From the moment we regained the drawing room, no matter what they were doing—chatting to each other or simply standing and waiting—every single one of them angled themselves so they could keep an eye on me! It was”—she waved her free hand wildly—“unnerving!”
He grimaced.
Lowering her hand, she paused, recalling the moments. “It was as if they werewillingme to break—to give up and tell them what they want to know. Even my mother and my aunts were doing it.”
To her relief, he didn’t suggest she was overreacting. Instead, he regarded her steadily. “They’re waiting for a declaration, and they’re not going to back down.”
She huffed. “I strongly suspect this evening is a sign of things to come.”
His gaze on her face, he blew out a steady breath, then asked, “Have you in any way changed your mind about our deliberations of Wednesday?”
She shook her head; of that, she was sure. “It feels…right.”
He nodded. “Yes, it does. Simply put, everything about us seems to fit.”
