Free Lord Haversham Takes Command by Heidi Ashworth Page A

above the pounding of her heart.
    “Why, Miss Crenshaw, my dear girl! Don’t you know, it’s what all the Parisian fellows do these days,” he said with a flip of his wrist. “They find the loveliest girl in the inn and they sleep outside her door. It’s terribly gallant, don’t you think?”
    It was a pretty answer, but Mira knew it to be a lie. Her disappointment now too great to hide, she felt her face fall. In fact, she was persuaded every muscle in her body had turned to jelly. Before she could put a hand against the wall to steady herself, he was there to balance her in his arms, and she found herself suddenly in his room with the door shut behind them.
    “Perceptive girl, I should have known I could never throw dust in your eyes long enough to deceive you about anything at all whatsoever,” he said, gazing earnestly into her face. “In point of fact, I did know it, which is why I was determined to stay as far away from you as possible,” he admitted as he assisted her into the chair alongside his bed, which, she noticed, had not been slept in.
    “But, Harry, why?” she asked, her heart beginning to again hammer in her chest. She sensed rather than saw the way the muscles in his shoulders tensed as he turned away from her.
    “Why must I lie to you? Pretend to be someone I am not?”
    She nodded, and he began to pace the bit of rug between the bed and the fireplace while she waited.
    Finally, he threw his hands in the air and said, “I can’t. I simply am not at liberty to explain why I must keep secrets from you. Perhaps one day I shall.” Kneeling at her feet, he took her hands in his. “You have always stood my friend and I must beg you to continue to do so,” he urged, his eyes glittering with unshed tears.
    Before she could form a reply, he rose to his feet and once again turned from her to stand with his hands braced against the mantel. “What might I do to convince you of my sincerity?”
    Mira had never in all her life felt such an intense range of emotions in so short a space of time. One minute her heart was pounding, the next it hung like lead in her chest. Every time her hopes had been lifted, they had been as equally dashed, and now he twisted her into pieces with a sorrow that seemed so genuine. However, if he could truthfully answer her original question with as much authentic feeling as he even now exhibited, she would give him the benefit of the doubt and wait with patience for the day when he could tell her all.
    “It is true, we have always been friends and it is my dearest wish we might remain so, though, as you must have guessed, I have no use for your Bertie.”
    “As I would have had no use for you should you have taken a shine to him,” Harry said with a rueful laugh.
    She rose to her feet and reached out to lay her hand on his arm but snatched it back. In spite of all the familiar interactions they enjoyed when they were young, to touch him now, if even in the same careless way, felt like a promise rather than a mere gesture. She pressed her hands together against her once again fluttering stomach and imposed her conditions.
    “I understand you feel you mustn’t tell me what is happening or why. Though I do not like it, I can see that you are sincerely distressed. It is not my wish to deepen that distress, yet I find I need some indication of your veracity. You need not tell me all; I merely wish to know the answer to a single question and should you tell me true, I will wait for the answers to the others for as long as you need keep them from me.”
    Slowly he turned to face her, his mouth a grim line even as hope lightened the shadows in his eyes. “Ask and I shall answer, but only if I am free to do so, in which case it will be God’s truth, I so swear it.”
    Now that the moment was at hand, Mira felt oddly reluctant. She knew her questions would reveal her feelings but she dared not trust him with something so precious as of yet. Perhaps it would be safer if her