Juliet frowned. “I thought she was married.”
“She is. It’s complicated.”
She implored him with her grey eyes.
“They’re no longer married,” he blurted.
Her eyes flared wide, and hand came up to her chest. “Did he die?”
“No.” He dropped his voice as low as he possibly could. “Divorced.”
Her eyes widened so much further that she was in danger of looking around her spectacle lenses instead of through them.
“How long have you worn spectacles?” he asked, glad to abandon the topic of Marcus’ menace of a sister.
“About ten years now,” she said, readjusting them.
“Ten years? That’s a rather long time to wear the same ones, isn’t it?”
“I suppose so,” she said. She reached forward and twisted the stem of her wine glass between her fingers.
“Nobody else in your family wears them,” he mused aloud, his mind drawing up a picture of her mother and father, neither with spectacles. If he remembered right, none of her siblings wore spectacles, either.
The corner of her mouth tipped up just a fraction, a dimple forming in her cheek. “No. I’m the only one blessed with horrible vision, I’m afraid.”
“Horrible? It can’t be that bad.”
Her dubious look made him chuckle. “You have no idea. I can’t see a thing without them.”
“I find that hard to believe,” he teased. “Surely you can see something. Let’s find out, shall we?”
“We shall not.” Her fingers touched the stems on both sides of her spectacles.
He reached up and pulled her hands away. Tentatively, he slid them off her nose, revealing two angry red marks on either side of her nose. He turned the spectacles over a few times to look at them. They were awfully heavy. No wonder she had those nasty marks on her nose. He inspected the thick lenses and the loose hinges. Likely she wasn’t jesting when she said she couldn’t see without them. Just to be sure, he quickly made a face that always made his girls giggle.
She had no reaction. Not that he’d expected her to laugh, of course. But she showed no signs of knowing he’d done anything. Not even a scowl crossed her face. Curious.
“Did Mr. Nills in London fit you for these?” he asked, handing the heavy spectacles back to her.
She took them from him and glided them back up her nose. “No. Mr. Hunt.”
Patrick’s lips twisted. Mr. Hunt was a two-bit swindler who owned a shop in Bath that sold inferior eyeglasses, bent walking sticks, stale lotions and creams, and other worthless junk passed off as medical remedies. She needed to go to London to see Mr. Nills. “Would you be interested in going to London next week?”
Two flags of red stained her cheeks. “Of course.”
Placing three fingers on the underside of her chin, he tipped her face up, forcing her to look at him. “Is there a reason you don’t wish to go?”
“No.”
He knew better than that. If he’d learned one thing living in a house full of females, it was when they said no in a simple tone like that, they were lying. “What happened in London?”
The tip of her pink tongue poked out between her lips and moistened them in the most innocently seductive manner he’d ever seen. First the top, then the bottom. His blood heated and he swallowed hard.
“Nothing happened. I―I just didn’t enjoy it, that’s all. But if you need me to go with you, I will.”
“That’s good,” he admitted, leaning his face closer to hers, “what I plan to do in London isn’t something I can do without you.”
A delicate cough from across the table startled them both.
Patrick withdrew his fingers from beneath Juliet’s chin and dropped his hand to his lap, straightening. Slightly embarrassed at being caught having such an intimate moment with his wife in such a public setting, he glanced around the room. His temperature rose ten degrees when he saw the gleam in Marcus’ eye.
Keeping his hands under the table, Patrick reached one hand over and took hold of Juliet’s smaller one. He gave it a light squeeze, just to reassure her, nothing more. At least that’s what he told himself.
She squeezed back.
Without much thought, Patrick pulled her hand to his lap and intertwined his fingers with hers.
***
Juliet’s heart hammered out of control as Drake spun her around the floor, her skirt flaring out all around them as she twisted and twirled doing a country reel. She couldn’t remember a time she’d enjoyed herself more. Who knew Drake was capable of having this much fun? She grinned and he spun her again.
“You’re having fun,” he commented, pulling her close.