How bloody ridiculous was it, he didn't even know how to greet her, so he threw himself onto the chair by the fire? The door opened and he leaped to his feet.
"Miss Armstrong, you caught me at a disad-"
It was better to explain the fact the chair toppled over, but so long as she didn't detect he was nervous, it would be all right.
"You sent for me, Lord Hawley?"
She spoke in that light, cool but still earthy tone of hers that always had him a disadvantage, because it set distance between them, one he'd need a mallet to break through. All the plans, the plans he'd made, the promises too, vanished like smoke up the chimney.
In spite of everything. the sleepless nights, the hunger, the tiresome damned sessions with Tilly, with Ruby, with Belle, the crawling on his belly on the moorland a
