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‘It seems a silly rule. I am with you, so you cannot get hurt.’
She grabbed his hand, just to be certain. And they began to stroll through the rows of exotic plants.
She saw movement outside the glass door, and then it opened, and in came Briggs, looking... Well, he looked furious.
‘What is the meaning of this?’
‘We were looking at the flowers,’ she said.
‘William is not allowed in the greenhouse.’
‘So he said, but he’s with me and...’
‘Out,’ Briggs said.
‘Briggs...’
‘Out,’ Briggs said, his tone clipped.
She looked at him, at his handsome, angry face, and her heart squeezed.
She did not understand this man. This complicated man who made her feel like she was flying every night, and then who left her to try to find a place to land all on her own. Who both satisfied and left her aching with desire all at once.
Briggs...
And now he was angry with her, because she had done something wrong, but he had not laid out expectations for this. And she didn’t know how he expected her to know exactly what he wanted her to do about everything if he did not tell her.
He could not be so picky if he wasn’t going to be explicit in his instructions.
‘The plants are very fragile,’ he said.
And she stopped. Because she realised that this wasn’t about William. It was about him. And it wasn’t even about protecting the plants, there was something else.
‘We will go,’ she said. ‘But you must take us on a walk, and you must entertain us,’ she said.
‘Must I?’
‘You owe us, for behaving the part of an ogre,’ she said. ‘We did nothing to deserve your wrath. You did not leave clear instructions for me, and I was not given to understand there was any part of the garden that might be off limits. Now you have been an utter brute, and you must make up for it.’
‘You are not an authority over me, Beatrice,’ he said.
‘Of course not, Your Grace,’ she said, looking at him from beneath her lashes and knowing it would inflame his desire. Her confidence had grown in that at least.
She was rewarded with a flare of heat in his dark gaze.
She had been correct. He liked that. Liked her deference, even when it was hardened with an edge of defiance.
And that was how she finally got Briggs to take her and William out again, and how she got William slightly more out of his shell than he’d been over the past few days.
She would have to talk to Briggs about that. About the way he had been affected by what happened in the park. And about what she suspected was Briggs’s part in it.
* * *
Afterward, they had dinner together, and then Briggs went, to his studies she presumed.
She had a letter from Hugh to read, and one from Eleanor as well. Both informing her that they were coming for the Season, and would be there in just a few days.
She knew that she should feel excited. To see her brother. See Eleanor. But... She felt selfishly upset that they were coming in and breaking up what was happening here.
