Page 47 of A Lady's Wager
Even if, at times, she did miss the touch in the dark and the knowing look from across the room. The realization she’d made with Elizabeth, that some part of her still longed to be loved, caused her to shift in her seat. She was forty-nine years old. Any chance of love had long since passed her, if, in fact, there had ever been a chance at all.
Mr. Firth was watching her so closely that she feared he could see every image in her head. “I have not taken lovers,” he finally said, sitting back against the cushions and letting out a breath. He stretched his arms across the back of the carriage seat, giving the air of this exchange the feel of a casual conversation. Which it was not. At least for her.
“Please, Mr. Firth,” she said, shaking her head and yet accepting her own shimmer of curiosity. She did not have these sorts of conversations with anyone, let alone a man. And this man in particular. This man whose words haunted her, this man whom she took particular notice of each time they were in shared company. This man who confounded and intrigued her.
“I do not feel it right if I am not committed,” he continued. She swallowed her surprise at him having said the same thing she’d thought only moments before. “After Laura died, there were a number of women in the village who became quite attentive. I was not ready to marry again, however, and did not pursue any of the invitations.”
“Do you regret that now?”
He shook his head. “No, it would not have been right. I want equal intention when I do marry again. I want partnership. Devotion.” He shrugged. “Love.”
“You truly are a hopeless romantic,” she teased in an attempt to lighten the mood.
He shrugged and put both of his palms up in a show of surrender. “Alas, it is true.”
“And the woman you pursued in Manchester?”
He dropped his hands back to the seat. “A friend of Laura’s, actually, from when they were girls in Devonshire. We began correspondence after the death of her husband two years ago. It was a friendship at first, with someone who understood loss and then last fall, it turned to something more. With Lydia and Reed masking my agenda…” He paused to let out a breath and shake his head. “I arranged to go to Manchester and see what might come of it. It wasn’t the same in person as it was on paper.” He looked up at her, eyebrows lifted. There were tiny shots of silver in those eyebrows, and she found herself wishing his hair was unbound as it had been that morning. Was it only that morning she’d confronted him in his home? “We gave it a solid try, but it just wasn’t there, at least for me.”
“What wasn’t there? Love?” She heard the censure in her voice when she said it.
“Attraction,” he said to clarify. “And not because she wasn’t beautiful, she was, but there was just…” He rolled his hand through the air as though searching for the answer, then dropped it. “There just wasn’t that feeling you get that makes you want to be closer. The feeling that makes you pretend to accidentally touch their shoulder or hold their hand a bit longer than necessary when you help them into the carriage.”
She caught her breath and he looked at her quickly, then shifted uncomfortably and looked away, picking at something on the seat beside him.
She continued to stare at him, thinking of the times he had accidentally brushed her shoulder—the most recent time was when they were at the musical performance last night, but it had happened before. Each time he’d handed her into the carriagetoday, he held her hand a bit longer than necessary—and she hadn’t necessarily wanted him to let go.
She looked at her skirts, thinking about all those times as well as her own awareness of him.
“Can you relate to that, Mrs. Markshire? In any small way?”
She looked at him and saw both the curiosity and anxiety in his eyes; of wanting to know and fearing the answer. “That sensation of fire you feel in their company that makes you wonder if you were ever to find yourself alone with them, what might transpire.”
She blinked at him but did not look away. “I-I don’t know,” she finally said. “Sometimes a certain feeling can be interpreted as something else.” Would that she’d explored those thoughts Elizabeth had shared. Perhaps then she would be better prepared for this moment.
“And what do you feel when you and I are together?”
Goodness, but he was bold. Yet here, in the relative safety of his carriage, it felt almost…normal for them to talk this way.
“Annoyance, mostly,” she said.
He smiled. “And?”
“Curiosity,” she admitted.
“About what?”
“Mr. Firth,” she said, at a loss for words and transfixed by those eyes. He scooted forward on his seat, their knees nearly touching in the center of the carriage.
“Because I think that if both of us are feeling this…curiosity, we ought to explore it. See what else might be there. I think that we are at a time in our lives when we should not put off such things.”
She looked away then, overwhelmed and, frankly, confused. She felt so much when she was with him—but what exactly had she been feeling? She’d translated it as many things: concern for Rachel, an irritation at him for stepping into London, a threat towhat she had been working so hard to do. The threat, however, had never been what she thought it was—the threat was that he upset her balance, upended her determination, made her want and feel what she worked so hard not to want and feel. She leaned back against the cushions, not having noticed that she’d leaned forward at one point toward him. Her mouth was dry and her heart was racing. Was this happening? Had he actually said these things?
“Women of a Certain Age do not expect to hear such things,” she finally said after far too long a silence had rumbled between them.
“Beautiful, accomplished, and capable women of any age should absolutely expect to hear such things and feel such things.”
He watched her a few more seconds, then scooted back on his own seat. “You should know that men of a certain age do not want games and side steps, Coletta. I find the direct route to be the most effective most of the time, and so, if you do not feel what I feel, it would be best for me if you would say so. I am well-versed in handling disappointment, so you need not protect me if I have overstepped and overstated. I would rather know sooner than later, if you don’t mind. Perhaps we can talk of this some more later, after you’ve had some time to your thoughts.”
