Page 45 of Charlotte
The room seemed to go on breathing around them, though Lottie heard little of it. Delly’s pencil stilled, and Cornelia turned discreetly toward the shelf. Mrs. Schulte, by some miracle of self-command, said nothing at all.
Peterson looked at the book.
“No need.”
“I know.”
“I said I get by.”
“I remember.”
His jaw tightened. “Then why?”
“Because you looked at it as if it was not a stranger.”
His gaze rose to hers. There was the guardedness. The warning. The old hurt standing close behind both. Beneath it was something else, something quieter and more tender than his fear.
Want.
He wanted the book.
Perhaps he hated that she could see it.
Perhaps he was grateful.
Perhaps both could sit inside a man at once and make him look as tired as Peterson did just then.
“It is Mr. Tennyson,” she said, keeping her voice light enough not to shame him. “He can be melancholy, but he is not poor company. If you dislike him, you may return him and tell me so plainly. I have survived criticism before.”
His mouth moved. “From your sister?”
“From Delly, Mrs. Whitmore, two grocers, one milliner, and a child who told me my bonnet looked like a pudding.”
“A pudding.”
“It had unfortunate gathering.”
This time, the almost-smile became a real one.
Small, crooked, and gone quickly, but real.
Lottie held very still around the joy of it.
Peterson reached for the book with his left hand.
His fingers closed carefully over the cover, brushing the edge of her glove before he could prevent it. The touch was slight. Hardly anything. Kid leather against work-roughened skin.
Still, Lottie felt it all the way up her arm.
He felt it too.
She knew because he stopped.
Only for a breath, but he stopped with the book between them with his fingers resting where hers had just been. His eyes lifted. Whatever he saw in her face made him swallow.
Delly made a small sound from the ledger table.
Cornelia turned a page that did not need turning.
