How about now?”
Gwyneth took a step back and tilted her head, surveying the placement of the frame on both its horizontal and vertical planes. And not—most assuredly not—the long, well-muscled arm that held it there. “A pinch to the right and it will be perfect.”
“A pinch?” Thad sent her a patronizing grin over his shoulder. “Since when is ‘pinch’ a unit of measure anywhere but in the kitchen? I am my father’s son, Gwyn. I need precision. An inch more? Half of one?”
“I don’t know.” She raised her hand and pressed her fingers together. “This much.”
Thad rolled his eyes. “And you pinch your fingers, as if this is salt going into a bowl. Very well.” He made a show of raising his pressed fingers and moving the frame that amount.
A smile tickled her mouth, but she held her lips together against it. “No, no, not your pinch. Your fingers are too large. My pinch.”
The glower he aimed her way was so exaggerated she had to put a hand to her mouth to hold back the laughter. Without taking his eyes from her, he scooted the frame back to the left a wee bit. “Better, my Lady of Exactitude?”
“Much.” She batted her lashes and heaped sugar into her smile. “That will do quite nicely, my Lord of Facetiousness.”
“That would be Mr. Facetiousness, thank you. No pesky titles in my fair land.” He had turned back to the wall again, but she heard his smile. With a few quick motions, he picked up the pencil from the mantel and made several faint marks on the wall.
Gwyneth nestled a little deeper into the eastern-style couch directly across from the dormant fireplace. The ottoman, she had learned, was directly from the empire after which it derived its name, brought back on the same nearly catastrophic voyage as the rugs Thad so adored. “Are you certain you do not need my assistance?”
“You ask as you stretch out like a cat ready to nap in the sun.”
“One can hardly help but do so on such a comfortable chaise.” She stretched a bit more for show. “Still, I would get up if it meant seeing my masterpiece properly hung.”
“No need for such a sacrifice, my lady. I daresay I can manage to get it square.” Laughter colored his voice, and he sent her a warm look over his shoulder. One that made her infinitely aware of the fact that her stretch had brought her skirts up an inch too far and put her figure on rather prominent display.
She all but leaped to her feet. “So you say, sir. But I have no evidence of that, have I? For all I know, your walls are bare because you have never managed to hang anything straight upon them.”
“You have found me out.” Ruler in hand, he measured something against the back of the frame, and then held the wooden strip up to the wall and made another mark. “I have proven myself utterly incapable of nudging a frame along its wire until it is straight. ’Tis a curse that plagues me daily.”
Gwyneth chuckled and eased across the space between them because…because unless she had a purpose for being elsewhere in a room, she always seemed to end up at his side. A realization that did indeed plague her daily. “I see no other reason for your dreadfully stark walls.”
The glance he sent her this time was far too serious for their banter. “I used to have a few decorations. I sent them all to Alain’s new house when he escaped the Turks. To help Jack make the transition from my home to his.”
Her feet came to an abrupt halt with half the room still between them. She frowned. Was this another fact that had slipped through the cracks in her mind, or had it never been mentioned? “Jack lived here?”
“Hmm.” He scratched one more mark. “Before Alain returned home. Which was six months after Jack’s mother passed away. Alain had hoped to return from his trip in time for his birth, but instead we got the news of his death. When Jack’s mother died too, I was the closest thing he had to family.”
A shiver overtook her, despite the evening’s heat. That explained much. “You said it was Barbary pirates who captured him?”
“First they left him for dead, and the sole crewman to escape brought back word that he had been killed with the rest. ’Twasn’t for another two years that we realized he had survived it, and that when they saw he lived, they sold him into slavery. We had no idea until he returned one day, out of the proverbial blue.”
Slavery. Another quake coursed through her. “What horrors he must have faced.”
“He has spoken to me of it only once, which was all he could bear.” Thad picked up the nail he had waiting on the mantel, and the hammer along with it. With one solid whack, he had driven it in just enough.
Poor Captain Arnaud. Gwyneth forced her feet back into action so that she could lift the painting and put it in his waiting hands. “There you are.”
“There I am indeed. And my first love with me.” He lowered it until the wire across the frame’s backing caught on the nail and then nudged it to the right. “Is she level?”
Gwyneth retreated a few steps to better see. “Tap the left side once more.” Latching onto levity again with both hands, she grinned. “Or is ‘tap’ too imprecise?”
He narrowed his eyes and tapped once upon the frame. “You tell me.”
Her breath caught in her throat as she took it in. Her painting, so prettily framed and hung in the center of the wall, where every visitor to the Lane house would see it. See her interpretation of his ship, the sea he so loved, him as fearless captain. Made all the more complete with said fearless captain leaning against the mantel and studying her as she studied her handiwork.
Her fingers tangled together over her abdomen. “Well, look at that. You managed it.”
“A feat that will inspire minstrels for years to come.” He too took a step away to survey it. “I daresay there is no finer painting in all these United States.”
Gwyneth chuckled. “I am afraid that is not saying much for your country.”
He turned to face her, brows raised. “Do not disparage your talent, sweet.”
She knew well her grin must look impish. “I am not. I am disparaging the rest of the art to be found here. You ought to have heard the things said of you Americans in the London drawing rooms.”
“Prithee, what things?” A sparkle in his eye to belie the slope of his brows, he took a step forward.
She inched back. “The ones you might expect. That the land is still untamed and uncultured, and the people in it have no appreciation for refinement.”
“Rubbish.” The sparkle turned to an outright glint as he swept his gaze down her. “I have great appreciation for refinement.”
Had the sun reemerged and blasted her through the window? She felt its heat to her very bones. “Of course you would think so. How would you know better? Given that all Americans are uneducated bumpkins.”
“Bumpkins!” He took another step toward her, though if he wanted to look menacing, he would do better to keep the smile from the corners of his mouth. “You are calling me a bumpkin?”
She edged back a bit more. “Not I, sir. The ton of London. They are the ones who view you all as ignorant—” she had to take a larger step back to counter his stride forward—“uncouth—” she bumped into the leg of the low table—“uncivilized—”
“Uncivilized again, am I?” He caught up to her and reached out to keep her from tumbling backward with his long, strong fingers around her elbows. “Shall I show you uncivilized, Miss Fairchild?”
Yes, please. Thank heavens her breath had escaped her and kept her from uttering such embarrassing words. Not that he gave her time to speak. His hands jerked her close, one sliding around her waist and the other moving to tip up her head.
Her heart galloped when her gaze clashed with his. Amber eyes molten, sparking like a flame tossed by the wind. Terrifying and alluring and invigorating all at once, so intense she had to close her own to take it in. And then his lips were on hers.
Civility indeed had no place in his kiss. ’Twas more the embrace of an adventurer, one who was seeking, hungering, demanding…yet not demanding more than she yearned to give. She wrapped her arms around his neck and surged up onto her toes.
How could something feel both familiar and new? Never had a man kissed her like this—never, in truth, had she wanted one to. Yet as Thad’s lips caressed hers, she had the sensation of waking from a dream and finding it real, part misty wonder and part warm reality. And his arms…they felt like home around her.
Her smile took her mouth from his, and she opened her eyes to find Thad smiling too.
His fingers wove through her hair, making her wonder what happened to her pins this time—she had never had such trouble keeping track of them in England. He pressed a gentler, quicker kiss to her lips. “That will teach you what you get for calling me uncivilized.”
Laughter bubbled up and spilled forth. “It will indeed, you uncouth, uncivilized brute.”
Another brush of lips on lips. “You are an astoundingly slow pupil.”
“Perhaps you are a bad teacher.” She tightened her arms around his neck. “You ought to try that lesson again.”
“Well.” One more kiss, feather soft, tempting as a cup of chocolate. “If I must.”
He deepened it again, and this time was even more consuming than the first, making her imagine a thousand futures she could have in his arms. Tossing seas and galloping horses, exotic mountains and untamed wilds. Bustling streets and familiar faces, nights by the fire and days side-by-side.
So long as she could feel forever this certainty in her heart, that wherever he was, that was where she should be. As her fingers moved through his hair and onto his cheek, her heart beat in time to his.
A blistering French exclamation from the doorway made them both jump. Her feet firmly on the ground again, Gwyneth’s vision blurred from the rush of blood to her face. She leaped away from Thad and pressed her hands to her burning cheeks.
He dragged in a breath and turned leisurely toward the door, where Captain Arnaud stood glowering. “Thunder and turf, Alain. You startled a year off my life.”
Gwyneth slid to the side to keep Thad between her and Captain Arnaud, though she wasn’t sure why she felt the need to do so.
Arnaud swept his hat from his head and dashed it to the floor. “Is that what you call treading carefully, Thad? Taking matters slowly?”
Gwyneth drew in a long breath. They had spoken of her? Or rather, of Thad’s feelings for her? The thought made her insides turn to mush…until she realized that his best friend obviously did not approve. The mush hardened to lead and sank into the pit of her stomach.
Thad’s head came up. “Yes, that is exactly what I call it, given how long I have wanted to kiss her and held myself in check.”
Her breath caught. How long had he wanted to do so? Since she first started imagining it?
Arnaud muttered something too low for Gwyneth to make out, though the intonation was unmistakably French once more. He shook his head. “You are too blind to see the dangers. She is a guest under your roof, yet there you stand taking liberties—”
“Liberties! ’Twas only a kiss, and my parents are directly across the hall. I am hardly—”
“You are.” He stooped, scooped up his hat, but then he tossed it down again with even more fury as soon as he straightened. “Blast it, Thad, look at yourself. You have not courted her. You have only known her eight weeks. She is still distraught over her loss, and you swoop in and take advantage.”
Ridiculous. He would never… Joke as they may about him being uncivilized, Gwyneth had not a single doubt that he was a gentleman. She slid to her left, willing to risk being within Arnaud’s line of sight so that she might see Thad at least in profile. She found a muscle in his jaw ticking.
“Watch yourself, Alain. I have granted you many a jab over the last two years, but I will not suffer another now.”
Arnaud loosed a scoffing laugh. “You have granted me…? Is that what you call refusing to discuss something?” He strode across the space between them and gave Thad a push that would have sent a smaller man tumbling backward. “It is time you give me answers. Is this how you treated my wife, Thaddeus? How you convinced her to marry you while I was rotting in a louse-infested pit in Istanbul?”
Gwyneth staggered back as if she was the one he had shoved. What could he be talking about? Arnaud had been married to Marguerite. Thad’s wife had been Peggy.
Peggy—short for Margaret. Gwyneth tried to blink away the realization, but it still clouded her eyes. Had she not found it amusing that Captain Arnaud called his son Jacques while everyone else used the Anglicized version? Yet she had never once considered he was doing the same with his wife’s name.
She felt Thad’s gaze on her and refocused her own past the shock. Why did she feel betrayed? He had never lied to her about it, had never said anything to deliberately make her think Marguerite and Peggy were two different women—but he had certainly never explained it, either.
Still, there was no missing the hurt clouding his eyes as he looked again at his friend. “Alain, you had been gone two years. Dead.”
Arnaud held out his arms, needing no words to point out the lie.
But Thad shook his head. “Dead. Your crewman saw you struck down. You were gone. And you know well what that did to us all.”
His friend pivoted away, strode to the fireplace, and braced himself on the mantel. The clouds in her painting suddenly seemed darker, feeding off his inner storm. “Two years would not have been enough for her to grieve me.” His tone proved it, so heavy with mourning for his Marguerite that she must have felt the same.
Gwyneth’s gaze went again to Thad, whose Adam’s apple bobbed. “No. Nowhere near. But she was dying, Alain, and the money was gone. What was I to do? Leave her and Jack to starve?”
Arnaud speared him with a sharp glance and a quiver at the corners of his mouth. “You take them food.”
“To where?” He lifted his hands and let them fall again. “You know well she sold the house to buy medicine. They had no place to go. Your widow, the son you had never even met, would have been left to the streets.”
“My wife.” Slashing a hand through the air, Arnaud’s nostrils flared. “So you swoop in to play the hero as you must always do. As you are doing now, again, with another grieving woman.”
A second blow to her chest. Wishing she had a shawl to clutch around her, Gwyneth stumbled another step to the left.
Thad sent her a helpless look before turning it back to his friend. “It is not the same. Peggy needed someone to care for her. It was a matter of survival—”
“She was carrying your child when she died!”
That accusation ripped through the room like a bolt of lightning, making Gwyneth feel stranded in a tossing, tempest-ridden sea. Having no part in this, not really, yet trapped within it. And she shook her head. That was why no one would mention Peggy and the babe. Not because of Thad’s grief, but because of Arnaud’s.
A grief so very understandable. She took another step away from them. To come back from death, back from slavery, and find that one’s wife had died in one’s absence…as the wife of one’s closest friend. To find that the woman supposedly so ill she could not survive on her own had been with child…
The slight stoop of Thad’s shoulders hinted at the weight Arnaud’s words brought crushing down on him. “We believed you were not coming back. And we were left with whatever we could make of the pieces that truth brought upon us. She was my wife—”
“She was my wife!”
Thad sighed. “Please try to understand. Please. Every day I fell to my knees and prayed for her healing. Prayed the Lord would touch her and make her well. Because the only future I could see was the one that seemed true at the time—that you were dead, that she and Jack were all I had. And so my priority was not to guard your feelings. It was to try to forge a sound marriage, one that could grow strong when my prayers were answered. That was the only reality I had, Alain.”
A soul-rending cry tore from Arnaud’s lips as he flew across the room, heading straight for Thad.
Gwyneth spun away and darted out the door. She understood that Arnaud had long bottled up his feelings over this and they were now erupting. She understood she had been an unintended casualty from an issue too long ignored.
But understanding did nothing to hold together the shards of her heart.
She nearly collided with the elder Lanes, who stood in the hall a few steps from the door. Her face flaming again, she tried to hurry away.
Winter’s hand on her arm stayed her. “Gwyneth, I am sorry. You did not realize…and I never paused to consider you wouldn’t. I should have explained it to you.”
“No, he should have.” Perhaps not at first, given how sensitive a subject it was, but sometime. Certainly sometime before he took her in his arms and kissed her senseless. A thud came from within the drawing room, all the inspiration she needed to pull her arm free. “Excuse me.”
She took a few steps, but Winter shadowed her. “Gwyneth, he—you have a right to be upset. But know that regardless of what Alain says in his anger, your situation now is nothing like Peggy’s was. Thaddeus has never looked at any woman the way he does at you.”
Maybe that was true, but who was to say it was not because she was more broken, more in need, more in distress than any other damsel he had yet come across? Because she provided more opportunity for him to play hero, as Captain Arnaud had called it?
She needed to get away, to be alone, to close out this whole family and all their noble, terrible truths. And so she headed for the stairs, the one place Winter still moved slowly, and ran up them two at a time. Gaining her room, she slammed the door. And for the first time since her arrival, she turned the key in the lock.