Page 40 of A Modest Independence

“Impertinent. I hope you left him with a flea in his ear.” Jenny stepped into her room.

Tom remained at the door. “I told him the truth.”

She turned to face him. “Which is?” Considering the fact that he’d told everyone they met that she was his sister—a product of his mother’s second marriage, no less—she wasn’t entirely certain what the truth was anymore.

“That we’re going to look for a friend who disappeared during the uprising.”

“Oh.”

“Did you think I’d make something up?”

“I don’t know. I feared you might.” She paused before admitting, “I hate the lies we’ve told.”

“One lie,” he said. “A necessary one. And one on which we’d already agreed.”

“Yes, but…I didn’t expect you’d embellish it quite so much.”

“How else to account for our having different last names?”

He was right. Of course he was. But Jenny still felt uneasy about it. She’d been known to withhold the truth now and then, when the occasion required it, but outright lying was another matter. It troubled her that Tom had such an innate facility for it. This morning, when first they’d met Mrs. Plank, he’d uttered that rot about her being the child of his mother’s second marriage so smoothly, so easily. It hadn’t appeared to bother him at all.

“Yes, but—”

“It’s your reputation, Jenny. Would you rather I told them the truth?”

She compressed her lips. “I haven’t any choice, have I? You’ve put me in a devilish position.”

“I know. And for that I can only beg your pardon.” He glanced past her into the empty hotel room. An oil lamp was lit, illuminating a bed that was presently heaped with half-packed luggage. “Where’s Mira?”

“Still at dinner with Ahmad, I expect. He said he was taking her to a café.”

Tom’s eyes met hers. “Shall I wait with you until they return?”

Jenny’s stomach fluttered. Wait with her? Here? It shouldn’t sound so shocking. They’d just spent a whole day and night together in a railway carriage after all. And yet…the very idea of Tom keeping company with her in a hotel room was too scandalous to contemplate.

Scandalous and quite deliciously tempting. Like a piece of forbidden fruit offered to her on the flat of his hand. All she need do was reach out and take it.

But she was not wholly lost to propriety. Not yet, anyway.

“No, thank you,” she said. “I’m going to order a bath.”

The words were out before she’d fully considered them. A bath? Good lord.

Tom cleared his throat. “Well. I’ll, ah, leave you to it, then.”

Jenny bid him a swift goodnight, shutting the door a touch more firmly than she’d intended. She had no strength of will, that was the problem. When it came to Tom Finchley, she was ready to fling her hat over the windmill. To abandon her principles, her very reputation, and throw herself into his arms.

Marriage needn’t even enter the equation, he’d said.

But he hadn’t been speaking of that. He’d been speaking of companionship. Of tenderness.

No one had ever accused her of being an overly tender person. Strong and forthright, perhaps. Temperamental and stubborn and loyal to a fault. But tender? Affectionate? She wouldn’t know where to begin.

Everything you do is pleasing to me, he’d said.

The memory of if sent a nervous tremor through her veins.

What exactly was it that he wanted from her? He knew she didn’t wish to marry, that she didn’t wish anything to interfere with her newfound independence.