Free Everything I Ever Wanted by Jo Goodman

time.
    Southerton said, "Insulting?"
    "Charming," she said. "I found it charming. Unaffected."
    That could only mean he had been snoring. He wondered if he had been slack-jawed and drooling as well. There was nothing for it but to grin at this picture of himself, the would-be suitor made hapless by boredom and the necessity of sleep.
    India went on, reminding him, "Circumstances being what they were, I slept also."
    His grin deepened. "An odd beginning for us, wouldn't you say?"
    "Oh, was that the beginning?" " For us ," he had said. She did not want to dwell on that, yet the idea of it enticed her. "Then I should not mention the disturbance from your box or the"
    "Eastlyn's box."
    "What?"
    "It is East's box. Not mine. Let us be clear on that point."
    "Or the bruise on your chin," she said, knowing she must finish or he would spin her in circles yet again. In the future they would refrain from even a mention of their sleep-filled cab ride to her home or the late supper they shared. Their real beginning would start now. It only depended upon one of them to say it.
    India's own safety dictated that it must come first from him. She was touched by what she perceived as his reluctance to broach the matter.
    South rolled the snifter of brandy between his palms. The crystal rim reflected the warm yellow glow of the lamplight. He did not look at her. He had a picture of her in his mind several of them, actually. India Parr on stage: bewigged and rouged and costumed, a slight, willowy figure commanding almost as much space and men with as few words as Admiral Nelson had. India Parr in her dressing room: polite now but somehow reticent, estranged from the very crowd that had come to pay homage, the woman inside the dress and paint closer to the surface. India Parr in the dimly lighted carriage: weary, without protection, pale hair secured in a few combs, and a stem of a neck that was too slender to support her. And India Parr in this room: charming and cautious by turns, gracious, fighting her natural inclination to be alone, still wearing her woolen shawl as if it were a breastplate of armor, while speaking of Cyprians and disabusing him of the notion that he might share her bed.
    He looked up and met her dark eyes waiting for him a deep, direct gaze but not without expression. He thought they hinted at sadness.
    "It is the colonel, of course," he said quietly.
    She nodded slowly. There, it was said. "You might have told me before."
    "No."
    Then he had been given instructions to wait. She did not examine what reasons Blackwood might have had. The colonel's own thinking could not concern her. She never knew enough to make it her concern. The part she played in his dramas was but a small one, and she accepted that. Indeed, she would have agreed to do nothing else. "You understand I couldn't be sure," she said. "I had to hear it from you."
    He nodded. "And if I had only been an ardent suitor, more fortunate than most for getting this far? What then?"
    "I would have thanked you for the pleasure of your company and seen you out. You had not much time left to speak before that would have been the outcome."
    South had suspected as much. "And if I were neither ally nor admirer?"
    "You mean if your intention was to harm me?"
    "I mean if my intention was to kill you."
    India shrugged indifferently. "I considered it," she said. "More carefully than you. Doobin knows that you are here this evening. My maid and footman also. The hackney driver. I believe I can expect some discretion from them if nothing untoward happens. I cannot be persuaded that they will hold their tongues if I disappear or am murdered."
    "So you assessed the risk to your life against the odds that I would be caught."
    "That you would not want to be caught. It is a different thing."
    "It is," he agreed. "And you concluded you were most likely safe this evening."
    "Yes."
    "And in the future?"
    "There would be no future, my lord. We would never be alone again. "
    South mulled over