She locked the door behind her and leaned against it. She felt a bone-deep exhaustion that had less to do with her aching feet than it had to do with her bruised emotions. The conversation had worn her down. Miss Nora’s naïve hopefulness had been brutal. If her friend knew who she really was, what she had been through and how she had ruined herself ages before, she would not have pushed for the romance with her brother. In fact, Peggy was quite certain that both Miss Nora and her mother would have warned Lord Belton as far away from Peggy as was possible. On the morrow, she would speak to Adam. She would implore him to come with her. She would somehow explain that they must leave the town before the cooler and rainy weather came to the area. She would make him understand.
On the following morning, she did not speak to Adam about leaving. There was a steady stream of customers, and it never felt like the right time. She hoped to do so at the end of the day, but Adam and Jemmy had hurried away with the words that Mum was baking blueberry pies. Mum, she thought. It was understandable that Jemmy still called Mrs. Finch Mum, but Adam did not correct his friend and almost brother. Did Adam still feel Mrs. Finch was his mother, even after so long in association with her? Would he ever accept her? Love her? She was feeling despondent and sorry for herself. In an effort to dispel the feeling, she took up her broom. Cleaning always seemed to knock away the cobwebs in her mind as well as her environs.
When a knock sounded on the back door of the shop later that evening, she set her broom aside and opened it expecting that Adam or Jemmy had forgotten something and returned to claim it.
Instead, she was faced with an uncomfortable looking Lord Belton on her doorstep.
“I thought we were doing the ledgers tomorrow morning?” she blurted dumbly as she wondered if she had mixed up the days.
“We are.” He nodded. “That is not why I am here.”
It seemed silly for the gentleman to have to ask permission to enter his own shop, so Peggy stepped out of the way and invited him inside without preamble, although she could not think why he had come. The room was dark save for a few candles. She had pulled the curtains when she locked the doors to keep the local children from pressing their dirty faces to the glass in search of their next treasure. She had not expected any visitors and would have burned every candle and left every curtain open if she had known who was coming. There was something far too intimate about the darkened room, closed off from prying eyes, that sent her pulse racing before he even spoke. She could nearly taste his lips on hers.
She did her best to shake such thoughts from her head. The room was not intimate. It was a wide, cluttered storefront. It was no darker now than it had been when she had been sweeping alone only moments before. It was only that her mind went to sensual places whenever Lord Belton was near, and she had been unable to kick the habit even after weeks of telling herself that she was a fool. She could not love him.
“How can I help you?” she asked in the same tone she used with customers. She moved to put the counter between them. Perhaps then she could think of him in a professional manner and not keep noticing how fine he looked in the exquisite tail coat and Hessians. She wondered where he had been, dressed so, but she did not ask.
He followed her around the back of the counter, and it was only then that she realized she had trapped herself. Now, what was meant to be a wide sprawling room felt impossibly small. He leaned against the counter, leaving her room to press by him if she wished, but she could not have done so without revealing her flustered state. Instead, she begged calm and took several slow breaths.
“I have had a word from my sister,” he said as he picked up a tin soldier and began fiddling with it, his gaze devoted entirely to the toy though his words sent a jolt of something, panic perhaps, through Peggy’s veins. “A lecture more like,” he chuckled.
“Oh?” she mused. Perhaps, she could pretend to misunderstand, and the entire conversation would end right here. She had been agonizing about Lord Belton in the days since her conversation with Miss Nora, dreaming of him even. She was acutely aware of how alone they were. There was no chaperone. No likelihood of anyone stopping by at this late hour. This was even more dangerous than their curricle ride. If he touched her, she did not know if she had it in her at this moment to resist him, nor did she have the strength to tell him the truth about her past that promised to leave him with hatred for her and her secrets.
“Yes, Nora can be quite the brute when she wants to be.” He grinned to himself at the memory of whatever it was that his sister had said.
“I see.”
“Do you?” He looked up at her, caught off guard that she did not seem at all surprised by the conversation.
“I did not receive a lecture,” she explained with a laugh, “but I did experience something between an interrogation and having been subjected to the amusement of observing her talk out some silliness with herself during tea a few days past.”
He pressed his lips together in an attempt to suppress a smile as he shook his head. “The audacity,” he grumbled.
“She does possess it all,” Peggy confirmed with false brightness. “And that is what has brought you here?”
“In a way,” he confirmed, “though I’ll be damned if I let her know she had any part in this. The nosy little minx. I asked Lord Abernathy if he would call after I left, and I left him sitting in the parlor. She’ll stay in her room all night if he’s below.”
At that Peggy laughed outright. “And he agreed to this?”
Lord Belton nodded. “He’s a good friend and not nearly as terrible as she makes him out to be.”
“Won’t he be cross at being made to wait?” she wondered. The Baron shook his head and explained that the gentleman was well aware of Miss Nora’s aversion and had willingly taken up the task if only to vex her.
“He won’t budge, and neither will she.” He laughed. “They are both stubborn.”
“You have set the perfect trap!” Peggy said with approval. It seemed fitting that Miss Nora receive her dues. Without realizing it, Peggy had inched closer, craving the nearness of him and relishing in their shared pleasure at Miss Nora’s expense. She could smell his fine cologne on his skin. He really did not come here to work then. No. He had dressed as the gentleman caller. She realized that he had prepared for this meeting as she had not. She was dusty from the sweeping, and her hair was falling from its pins. It was not until his fingers linked with hers that she realized just how near she had drawn to him.
“I had to see if it was all just that one night for you,” he whispered, looking down at their hands and then up at her with the bluest of eyes.
“Lord Belton…” she began.
“Nash,” he corrected. “I want to hear my given name on your lips.”
She sighed. Despite the fact that her fingers were still laced with his, it seemed a step too far to say his name. She was already dangerously close to losing her heart; or perhaps it was already lost.
“It has been constant for me,” he continued when she would not speak. “Every time I see you, whenever your name is brought up, even just driving by the shop and knowing you are within, I cannot stop thinking of you.”
She pulled her hand free and turned away from him. Perhaps if she could not see the longing in his eyes or the way his body leaned over her as if he wanted to touch her but was afraid that she might run… Perhaps then she could resist despite every piece of her calling out to him. She stepped back to escape him. No. To escape her own desire more than him. She tripped on the edge of the worn carpet, and his arms tightened around her.
“You caught me,” she said.
“I will always be there to catch you,” he promised, his lips impossibly close to hers.
“You can’t.” She shook her head. “Be there. I have told you; this cannot be.”
“I will always be there,” he said. “Always.”
Peggy did not know how to answer. She couldn’t. The truth would cause problems for her, but mostly for Adam. Adam, who lived on the far edge of Lord Belton’s estate. She did not want him to have to escape with her. She wanted Adam to choose her, and it seemed as if he might never do so. Nonetheless, she didn’t want to force Adam to her side. She could not be so cruel, not when she herself had been forced into so many things in her own life.
“At first,” Lord Belton said, “I convinced myself it was one-sided or just a momentary lapse that you regretted. Then, I resigned myself to the belief that there had to be someone else who held your affections. Someone from your past,” he began. She shot around to look at him to condemn the ridiculous notion, but he continued on before she had need to speak. “Nora assured me that there was not.”
Peggy wished she had lied to Miss Nora, for it would have made an ironclad excuse, but then she realized that her own reaction in this moment would have disproved that very lie in an instant. She knew her face was flushed with longing.
“I had mistaken everything, but then Nora said there was no one else. I must hear it from you. I must know.”
He was talking in circles. Peggy didn’t understand what he meant. Know what? The look of confusion must have shown on her face.
“Now, there is only one thing that matters.” He took a breath, steeling himself. “Do you love him?”
“Who?” she blurted.
“Adam’s father.”
“No!” she said immediately. She had not credited where this conversation was going or how he knew about Adam. She was completely out of her depth, but she had no time to consider. She shook her head trying to clear it, trying to make sense of everything.
“There is no one, but that does not change anything,” she cried, splaying her hands between them with hopelessness. He caught them up and pulled her to him so that she landed fully against his chest. His strong muscled chest. He was so incredibly warm, and his strong arms wrapped around her sheltering her in a way that was so foreign and so incredible that for a moment she could think of nothing else but the nearness of him.
“That was the only question left that mattered,” he replied as his mouth found hers.