Page 159 of A Modest Independence

“Jenny, I—” He broke off. “May I still call you Jenny?”

Her brows knit. “Of course you may. Why shouldn’t you?”

“It’s been a long while. I didn’t like to presume.”

“Nearly three months.” She folded her arms at her waist and began to walk toward the shoreline. The waves lapped against the sand, covering it in a froth of seafoam. “You never wrote to me.”

Tom kept pace at her side. She was close enough that her skirts brushed his legs. Close enough that he could smell the faint fragrance of her perfume. Her warm, feminine presence provoked a storm of emotion within him. “No, I didn’t.” He paused before admitting, “I wanted to. Rather badly.”

“Then why…?”

“You needed time.”

“I’ve had it.”

His heart thumped hard. “And?”

“And…here I am.”

Tom was silent for a long while. “How long are you staying for?”

“There’s a question.”

He touched her arm, bringing her to a halt on the wet sand. “Do you have an answer?”

She turned to face him. “Partly. But it isn’t complete.”

“I don’t understand.”

“What I mean to say is…what I do next very much depends on you.”

He looked at her, unwilling to hope. But hope flickered nonetheless.

Jenny sighed. “I’ve thought of a hundred things I might say to you since you left me in Cairo. In my imagination, I’m always much more eloquent. But now I’m here…” She gave him a rueful look. “The inadequacy of words.”

“You have something you’d like to tell me?” He scarcely recognized the sound of his own voice.

“Yes, though heaven knows I’m going to make a mull of it. You know me, Tom. I’m not comfortable with poetic declarations or grand romantic displays.” She took a step toward him. “But if I were…”

Tom’s gaze was riveted to hers.

She set both hands on his waistcoat. “If I were…I’d tell you that I can’t live without you. I’d say that the mountains of India—even the pyramids of Egypt—are nothing without you by my side. That I’d give it all up to have you back with me. For one moment longer in your arms.” Her lips tilted in a faint smile, even as a warm blush swept up her neck and into her face. “That’s what I’d say, anyway, if I were a romantic sort of female.”

His throat bobbed on a swallow. “What would the unromantic Jenny Holloway say?”

Tears brightened her blue-green eyes. Her voice, when it came, was husky with emotion. “Only that she loves you. And that she’s sorry—so dreadfully sorry—that she hurt you.”

Jenny waited for Tom to say something. Anything. In truth, he looked rather shaken. Her hands slid up the front of his black woolen waistcoat a fraction of an inch. She felt him inhale an uneven breath.

“I see.” He regarded her steadily. His eyes were bluer than she remembered. There was an expression in them that was hard to read. “Does this mean you’ve changed your mind?”

Her pulse beat a throbbing rhythm at her throat. She suddenly wished she hadn’t permitted Mira to lace her corset so tightly this morning. Was it any wonder that fashionable ladies often swooned in situations like these? Between her racing pulse and the rioting butterflies in her stomach, she felt as though she’d soon follow their example.

Had she said too much? Dared too much? She was fraught with sudden uncertainty.

And then, in the loosened folds of his cravat, she saw a glint of sapphire.

Her heart took flight.