“I was thinking.”
“About—let me guess. About Ivy?”
“I can’t believe I ever considered an arrangement between us,” he said, laughing reluctantly. “You aggravate me to no end. Why would you presume to know what was on my mind?”
“It might have been that lost look on your face when I came in.”
“My back was turned to you. For all you know I could have been sticking out my tongue at the water carrier on the wall.”
“But you weren’t,” she said, approaching the couch. “You were thinking about her.”
He sighed.
“It’s all right as far as I’m concerned,” she went on conversationally. “But you must remember that whether she’s fallen in position or not, she was still born a lady.”
“So were you,” he said, arching his brow. “Even if I can’t recall a time when you acted like one.”
Elora stared at him in speculation. “And that remark, James, is one I would expect from a brother teasing a younger sister.”
“Which would explain why we never became lovers even though we had ample opportunity.”
“A blessing, isn’t it?”
“Perhaps,” he said. “But allow me to defend myself for a moment. I had nothing to do with Ivy’s unfortunate circumstances.”
“As far as I can tell, you’re not offering her redemption. I did see the look on your face when you carried her to your bedroom after her accident.”
“The sight of that much blood is always distressing,” he said, turning his face from hers.
“Did you carry off the wounded soldiers in your regiment on the battlefield with such solicitude?”
“Possibly.”
“Did you stroke their foreheads and turn hysterical when one of them pricked a finger or required stitches for a wound?”
“I thought she was going to fall out the window. Did that scare me? I won’t deny it. Furthermore, I did not ‘stroke’ her face. I merely wiped away a streak of blood to make sure there wasn’t a gash on her head from the broken glass.”
Elora studied him with her lips compressed as if she didn’t believe a word he’d said. She knew him too well, he realized. He might delude himself, but it was damn hard to deceive someone he had trusted.
“Head injuries can be dangerous,” he added as an afterthought. “So can falling from a window.”
“Falling in love with someone who has no defenses against the world is dangerous, too.” She picked up a twig from the couch and examined it from several angles. “Are you in love with her?”
“Don’t be absurd.” God help him. Elora couldn’t have any idea where that twig had come from; she had been miles away from here last night. “I’ve only known her for—”
“—five years?” she said, flicking the twig in his direction.
He deflected it with his left hand. His good hand, as he’d once thought of it, lifted a second too late, feeling as if it belonged to a puppet he was still learning to work.
Silence passed, and James felt compelled to speak, if only out of fear of what Elora would say next. “How was Walker during your visit? Did he behave?”
She plopped down on the couch. “Walker is a little beast. But what can you expect?” She laid her head back on the cushions and studied the pagoda. “I took him straight to his governess. She didn’t seem at all herself this morning.”
“Perhaps her wrist is causing her discomfort.”
“This room is quite secluded, isn’t it? Did you bring her here last night for a rendezvous?”
He almost choked.
She lifted her head. “Sticking out your tongue again? You should be careful. My grandmother always said if you did it often enough, it would freeze in that position. Imagine how painful that would be.”
The only pain James felt in the next few moments was the deep sting that radiated down his right shoulder and his arm to his fingertips as he grasped Elora’s hand and hauled her to her feet. He’d attempted to hit a target on a tree before dawn and had narrowly missed Carstairs instead.
Some duelist he was.
And since he suspected he would probably not make a good liar, either, he decided to ignore Elora’s impertinent remarks, neither repudiating nor confirming what they both knew to be true.
As they reached the door, Elora balked and pulled out of his grasp. “Allow me to give you a little advice. You do not want to be seen by the woman you desire with the woman you supposedly desired before you realized who was the true object of your desires.”
He glanced down the hall. “If I hadn’t known you half your life, I wouldn’t have understood a word you just said.”