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regretted it immediately — alone, she would have lounged against the sensuously curved arm. She couldn’t relax like that in front of him, though. And the chaise was backless, which meant she would have to sit ramrod straight, as though she awaited his favor.
    He felt no such constraint about his posture. He flung himself down into one of her chairs, facing her, his long legs spread out in front of him like he was at his club rather than in a gently-bred woman’s home.
    Then again, he probably didn’t have a club. No club would have had him before he left, when he had obscene wealth but refused to bow to all the indigent lords who thought themselves above him. He hadn’t been back long enough to use his title to gain entrance. And he was in his own house, not hers.
    Ellie sipped her whisky again, too quickly. Her thoughts kept scattering, bouncing between present and past. She tried to anchor herself to the present and the question of why he was home.
    Nick didn’t say a word. In her dainty chair, sipping whisky out of her delicate tumbler, he still managed to look like a predatory animal. He watched her, though, as though considering what to do with her — whether to toy with her or kill her swiftly, perhaps?
    She inhaled sharply and told herself to stop being dramatic. She couldn’t let him unnerve her again, or she might never regain control.
    After three minutes of silence, three minutes of him staring at her and her looking at some point over his shoulder, her patience flared out. She tossed the rest of her whisky down her throat, standing before the burn reached her belly. “If you won’t talk, I have guests to see to. Perhaps in another ten years we can repeat this charming scene. Until then, I wish you very happy.”
    She leaned down to set the glass on the small table between them. His hand shot out to grab her wrist. He kept her pinned there, bent awkwardly at the waist, her face mere inches from his.
    “This isn’t the conversation you promised me,” he said. “And this time, I won’t let you leave until we’ve had it.”

C H A P T E R F I V E

    Ellie felt all the questions, all the anger, all the tears of the last ten years eating their way out of the secret places where she had buried them. His silent judgment had affected her more than she realized. She damned him for it. She tried to pull her hand away, but now that he was in a position to claim something of her, he didn’t seem willing to relinquish it. She couldn’t match him for strength.
    But she would never let him see her cry.
    “What good is conversation?” she asked, her voice bitter. “I broke our engagement and married your cousin. You inherited when he died, yet chose to stay on the other side of the world. I think we’ve made our intentions to each other quite clear.”
    “And yet,” he said. His fingers tightened on her wrist. “And yet the fact that I haven’t forgiven you means that I haven’t forgotten you, either.”
    She dipped her head, unable to look in his eyes anymore. She could have said the same to him. She had imagined saying it on any number of nights, when she had lain awake and wondered if he would ever return, if he dreamed of her as she dreamed of him.
    His free hand came up and brushed a lock of hair out of her eyes, tucking it behind her ear. He had done that frequently when they were younger, during their secret courtship, when they’d rambled the countryside unchaperoned and her hair had turned to shambles in the wind.
    If only he’d eloped with her when she had begged him to, before she went to London and was lost to the social whirl. If only she’d eloped with him at the end of that season, rather than giving in to her father’s threats and promises.
    She raised her head. His hand slid naturally to the curve of her cheek. She waited just a moment too long to tilt her face away, but she didn’t examine her reasons. “Let me go, Nick.”
    She heard the pleading note in her voice and hated