“I know. Four years, I believe.”
Francesca swallowed, wishing this weren’t so difficult. This was Michael, for heaven’s sake. It wasn’t supposed to be difficult. Yes, they’d parted badly, but that had been in the dark days immediately following John’s death. They’d all been in pain then, wounded animals lashing out at anyone in their way. It was supposed to be different now. Heaven knew she’d thought of this moment often enough. Michael couldn’t stay away forever, they’d all known that. But once her initial anger had passed, she’d rather hoped that when he did return, they’d be able to forget that anything unpleasant had ever passed between them.
And be friends again. She needed that, more than she’d ever realized.
“Do you have any plans?” she asked, mostly because the silence was too awful.
“For now, all I can think about is getting warm,” he muttered.
She smiled in spite of herself. “It is exceptionally chilly for this time of year.”
“I’d forgotten how damnably cold it can be here,” he grumbled, rubbing his hands together briskly.
“One would think you’d never escape the memory of a Scottish winter,” Francesca murmured.
He turned to her then, a wry smile tilting one corner of his mouth. He’d changed, she realized. Oh, there were the obvious differences—the ones everyone would notice. He was tan, quite scandalously so, and his hair, always midnight black, now sported a few odd strands of silver.
But there was more. He held his mouth differently, more tightly, if that made any sense, and his smooth, lanky grace seemed to have gone missing. He had always seemed so at ease, so comfortable in his skin, but now he was…taut.
Strained.
“You’d think,” he murmured, and she just looked at him blankly, having quite forgotten what he was replying to until he added, “I came home because I couldn’t stand the heat any longer, and now here I am, ready to perish from the cold.”
“It will be spring soon,” she said.
“Ah yes, spring. With its merely frigid winds, as opposed to the icy ones of winter.”
She laughed at that, absurdly pleased to have anything to laugh about in his presence. “The house will be better tomorrow,” she said. “I only just arrived this evening, and like you, I neglected to send advance notice. Mrs. Parrish assures me that the house will be restocked tomorrow.”
He nodded, then turned around to warm his back. “What are you doing here?”
“Me?”
He motioned to the empty room, as if to make a point.
“I live here,” she said.
“You usually don’t come down until April.”
“You know that?”
For a moment, he looked almost embarrassed. “My mother’s letters are remarkably detailed,” he said.
She shrugged, then inched a little closer to the fire. She ought not stand so near to him, but dash it, she was still rather cold, and her thin nightrobe did little to ward off the chill.
“Is that an answer?” he drawled.
“I just felt like it,” she said insolently. “Isn’t that a lady’s prerogative?”
He turned again, presumably to warm his side, and then he was facing her.
And he seemed terribly close.
She moved, just an inch or so; she didn’t want him to realize she’d been made uncomfortable by his nearness.
Nor did she want to admit the very same thing to herself.
“I thought it was a lady’s prerogative to change her mind,” he said.
“It’s a lady’s prerogative to do anything she wants,” Francesca said pertly.
“Touché,” Michael murmured. He looked at her again, more closely this time. “You haven’t changed.”
Her lips parted. “How can you say that?”
“Because you look exactly as I remembered you.” And then, devilishly, he motioned toward her revealing night-wear. “Aside from your attire, of course.”
She gasped and stepped back, wrapping her arms more tightly around her body.
It was a bit sick of him, but he was rather pleased with himself for having offended her. He’d needed her to step away, to move out of his reach. She was going to have to set the boundaries.
Because he wasn’t sure he’d prove up to the task.
He’d been lying when he’d said she hadn’t changed. There was something different about her, something entirely unexpected.
Something that shook him down to his very soul.
It was a sense about her—all in his mind, really, but no less devastating. There was an air of availability, a horrible, torturous knowledge that John was gone, really, truly gone, and the only thing stopping Michael from reaching out and touching her was his own conscience.
It was almost funny.
Almost.
And there she was, still without a clue, still completely unaware that the man standing next to her wanted nothing so much than to peel every layer of silk from her body and lay her down in front of the fire. He wanted to nudge her thighs apart, sink himself into her, and—
He laughed grimly. Four years, it seemed, had done little to cool his inappropriate ardor.
“Michael?”
He looked over at her.
“What’s so funny?”
Her question, that’s what. “You wouldn’t understand.”
“Try me,” she dared.
“Oh, I think not.”
“Michael,” she prodded.
He turned to her and said with deliberate coolness, “Francesca, there are some things you will never understand.”
Her lips parted, and for a moment she looked as if she’d been struck.
And he felt as horrid as if he’d done so.
“That was a terrible thing to say,” she whispered.
He shrugged.
“You’ve changed,” she said.
The sad thing was, he hadn’t. Not in any of the ways that might have made his life easier to bear. He sighed, hating himself because he couldn’t bear to have her hate him. “Forgive me,” he said, running his hand through his hair. “I’m tired, and I’m cold, and I’m an ass.”
She grinned at that, and for a moment they were transported back in time. “It’s all right,” she said kindly, touching his upper arm. “You’ve had a long journey.”
He sucked in his breath. She used to do this all the time—touch his arm in friendship. Never in public, of course, and rarely even when it had just been the two of them. John would have been there; John was always there. And it had always—always—shaken him.
But never so much as now.
“I need to go to bed,” he mumbled. He was usually a master at hiding his unease, but he just hadn’t been prepared to see her this evening, and beyond that, he was damned tired.
She withdrew her hand. “There won’t be a room ready for you. You should take mine. I’ll sleep here.”
“No,” he said, with far more force than he’d intended. “I’ll sleep here, or…hell,” he muttered, striding across the room to yank on the bellpull. What the devil was the point of being the bloody Earl of Kilmartin if you couldn’t have a bedchamber readied at any hour of the night?
Besides, ringing the bell would mean that a servant would arrive within minutes, which would mean that he would no longer be standing here alone with Francesca.