bread and cut two thick slices. His reaction to her was uncomfortable and he knew it was more than a desire for a return of his privacy that drove that reaction. This morning as he’d woken to a warm, soft body in his bed he’d felt a primal stirring deep inside him. It was absurd and now Edward was even more determined to hasten Amelia’s departure from his house.
‘Do you live completely on your own?’ Amelia asked as she swept into the room. For such a petite little thing she had a way of commanding your attention. A breezy smile was affixed to her lips and Edward wondered again what pain she was trying to hide.
‘Completely. My old housekeeper visits twice a week to deliver some food and other essentials.’
‘You don’t go down to the village?’
Edward shook his head, trying to ignore her incredulous expression. He had ventured out in the painful months after the fire, but the looks filled with pity and the expressions of concern had soon put a stop to his trips to the village.
‘I have everything I need here,’ he said brusquely, trying to discourage her from asking any more questions.
Amelia wrinkled her nose and looked around.
‘Don’t you get lonely?’ she asked. ‘Or bored?’
‘No. Not everyone likes chattering away incessantly.’
Amelia looked at him as if she expected him to elaborate further.
He had his sketches and his books, he still kept an eye on the running of the estate, although he had a reliable steward who did most of the work for him. As for loneliness, it was a welcome penance for the guilt he felt for surviving the fire.
‘Maybe you would like a little company?’ Amelia asked, with a quick glance at his expression.
Edward’s first instinct was to march Amelia straight out the front door that instant, but then he paused. She’d survived the night and was back on her feet, there was nothing to hinder her departure today so he could afford to be a little more courteous.
‘I can be very good company,’ Amelia said.
She might think herself a woman of the world, this little minx, but he could tell straight away that she was innocent in many of her ways.
‘Company?’ he asked, raising an eyebrow.
Immediately he saw the colour start to rise in her cheeks and her bottom lip drop slightly.
‘Not like...that is to say...’
‘I know we shared a bed last night, but I am not that sort of gentleman,’ Edward said.
‘I wasn’t suggesting...’
‘I’m teasing you,’ he said, knowing his serious expression didn’t quite tally with his words. Maybe he should stick to his more sombre demeanour.
‘Oh. Of course.’
Amelia drummed her fingers on the table as she struggled to regain her composure and Edward took the opportunity to study her properly. She was pretty, there was no denying it. Petite and slender with large brown eyes and soft blonde hair. The sort of young woman who would cause a stir when making her debut in society. His keen artist’s eye also caught details others might not notice: the nervous energy that stopped her from standing still for more than two seconds, the little pucker in the skin between her eyebrows that appeared when she was thinking and the way she sucked her bottom lip into her mouth as she decided what to say next.
She was nervous, Edward realised, more nervous than the circumstances should warrant. True, she was in a strange house with a reclusive man, but she’d survived the night unmolested—most young women would solely be concerned with how to leave with their reputations intact. Edward didn’t think it was her reputation she was worried about, there was something much bigger going on in Amelia’s life.
He thought back to the blood-covered clothes and the panicked state she had been in when he’d first found her almost collapsed in his sitting room. Last night she’d said she had been attacked and had fought back, but Edward sensed there was more to the story than that. For a few seconds he deliberated, wondering if he should delve deeper, find out exactly what sort of trouble Amelia was in, but he knew that would just prolong the time until he could usher her out of his life so he kept his mouth shut.
‘Maybe I could stay for a few days?’ Amelia suggested, looking up at him hopefully.
For all her beauty and feminine wiles, Edward could read her easily. She might think she was an enigmatic young siren, but every emotion was written across her face just as soon as she experienced it.
‘No.’
‘No?’
‘No,’ Edward repeated. It would be a bad idea. A terrible idea.
‘You can’t just say no. Why not?’
He guessed she was an only child. There was a sense of entitlement about her that suggested she had been spoiled most of her life.
‘I can. It’s my house.’ Edward grimaced and then relented. He was not a child and he would give her a proper answer. ‘I live alone. I like living alone, and in a few hours I will go back to living alone.’
Her face fell and he tried to soften the blow.
‘Besides, your reputation would be in tatters if you stayed here with me unchaperoned.’
‘What reputation?’ Amelia murmured under her breath. ‘I don’t care,’ she said louder. ‘I could tidy the place up a bit,’ Amelia suggested.
‘Do you have much experience at domestic chores?’
Amelia bit her bottom lip again. Edward felt the pulse of his blood around his body as his eyes flickered to her lips. ‘No,’ he said much more brusquely than he had intended, ‘I didn’t think you did.’
‘I could cook you a decent meal at least.’
Edward looked down to the two roughly cut chunks of bread and sighed.
‘I’m sorry, Amelia, but the answer is still no. After breakfast I will take you down to the village and you can catch the stagecoach to London.’
‘I don’t have any money.’
‘I’ll pay.’
‘What if I don’t want to go to London?’
‘Then you can get off at one of the stops beforehand.’
She fell silent, but Edward could see the cogs turning inside her head as she tried to think of another excuse not to leave. He wondered why she wanted to stay so badly and what it was she had been running from the night before. Just as he opened his mouth to ask, he once again caught himself and silently shook his head. It wasn’t his place to get involved. Later, when Amelia was safely on the stagecoach to London, he could brood over his lifestyle decisions, but the fact was right now he didn’t want to delve deeper into Amelia’s problems and if that made him unsociable that was fine by him.
