Page 36 of Gentleman Jim

Meanwhile, Maggie had been reduced to seeing her own flame weaken and die—a mere cinder left to flicker in the ashes of what had once been her life.

If only Nicholas had come back sooner. If only he could have seen her in the months before the contagion of Jenny Seaton’s illness had wrapped its suffocating fingers around Maggie’s lungs. If only…

“You’re very quiet,” St. Clare said.

She looked up at him, managing a slight smile. “I have a great deal on my mind.”

“Anything you’d like to share?”

Up ahead, Jane and Lord Mattingly disappeared down a path to the right. The Trumbles’ garden wasn’t large, but what it lacked in size it made up for in ornamentation. Wherever one looked there were arbors, trellises, and artfully placed topiary providing hidden spots of intimacy among the trees and flowerbeds.

Maggie came to a halt beside a stone bench. A trellis of roses shielded its back from view, and climbing ivy shrouded the sides. It was a perfect place for a private conversation. “Shall we sit down?”

A look of almost comical relief crossed over St. Clare’s face. “Yes. Please. I’ve been trying to get you alone all week.”

She laughed. “It’s rather more difficult now, isn’t it? We’re not children anymore.” Taking a seat on the bench, she arranged the skirts of her sprigged muslin gown.

It was one of her new dresses, made by Madame Clothilde. The fashionable modiste had been everything Jane had claimed—a small, sharp-eyed Frenchwoman of indeterminate age, who wielded her needle rather like a fairy godmother might wield a magic wand.

Maggie had lost the first bloom of her youth, it was true, and illness had robbed her of her once famous figure, but Madame Clothilde’s designs had managed to bring her back to life with colors that flattered and cuts that clung in just the right places.

St. Clare sank down at her side. Close. Too close. “Miss Honeywell—”

“You can’t keep denying it.”

“I must,” he said. “I’ve already told you. I’m not this childhood friend of yours. Mister whatever his name was.”

“Nicholas Seaton.” She angled to face him, and her knee brushed his. It was the barest touch. Hardly an intimacy—her muslin-covered limb against his linen-covered one—but she felt it all the way to her core. Her heartbeat quickened. “Strange then, that you resemble him to such an extraordinary degree.”

“A resemblance proves nothing. If there is a resemblance. I believe you said that it’s been ten years since you saw your friend?”

“Ten, yes. Not twenty or thirty. It’s hardly any time at all if one thinks of it.”

“Ten years is a lifetime.”

“It doesn’t make one a stranger. I still recognize you. You haven’t changed that much.”

The corner of his mouth ticked up. “Your Mr. Seaton was my copy, it seems. My twin.”

“No. Not twins. Not entirely. You’re bigger than him. Taller, too. But your face—”

He looked down at her, amused. “What about my face?”

“Your eyes.” Her gaze held his. A shivery warmth pooled low in her belly. She knew him. Recognized him with every fiber of her being. A stranger wouldn’t have this effect on her. No man ever had before. “I think I know my friend.”

His head bent to hers, close enough that he might kiss her. “As I said before,” he murmured, “your friend is a fortunate fellow.”

Mingled disappointment and frustration warred within her. She drew back from him. “If you will insist upon this fiction—”

“It’s not a fiction, my dear. It’s an incontrovertible fact.”

My dear.

The rogue. He was enjoying this, whoever he was. Seeming to drink in her every expression, her slightest change of mood. To relish the very sight of her.

“Very well, then,” she said, piqued. “Where were you born?”

He answered without hesitation. “In Venice.”