Chapter 34：HE LOOKS EXHAUSTED

"Of course," Travener said. "Using your title was simply a sign of my respect, sir, I assure you, but if you prefer..."

Ian inclined his head, his mouth tight with suppressed anger. Travener turned, cupping his hand possessively under Annie's elbow.

Her eyes met Ian's briefly before she allowed herself to be led out of the room.

Ian waited until the door of Dare's library, which he had commandeered as his own retreat when they had first come to London, had closed behind them. Then he eased down in his chair again, stretching out his aching leg and mentally reviewing every word of the conversation.

Annie had seemed just as she always did. She had treated Travener as a friend rather than a potential suitor.

And if it hadn't been for the look she had exchanged with him last night as she drank the wine he'd selected, Ian might have been able to put the handsome ex-soldier out of his mind.

Whatever had been in Annie's eyes when she had looked over the rim of her glass seemed burned into his consciousness, however. And it was still painfully there, as he listened to Dare's butler greet Annie on her return from the ride, something Ian had waited impatiently to hear for more than two hours.

*~*~*~*

"Ian?" Annie whispered.

She had come back to the library after she had changed to tell him she was leaving for lady Laud's. She knew that she was cutting the time very close, and she feared Ian's godmother might never forgive her if she were late. She had not, however, been able to resist the impulse to look in on her guardian.

When she opened the door, she had found Ian in his chair, his head against the back, his eyes closed. She had hovered on the threshold a moment, wondering if she should disturb him or let him sleep. And then, compelled by the same feelings that had caused her to spend too many hours last night thinking about children who have hazel eyes and kind smiles, she tiptoed across the room to stand looking down on him.

Unbidden, there appeared in her mind's eyes the image of Doyle Travener's virile, sun-darkened features. Unless handsome, but underlain by both pain and now fatigue. She fought the urge to put the tips of her fingers against Ian's forehead, to soothe away the strain that even sleep could not erase.

Her eyes still on his face, she stooped beside his chair and put her gloved hand on his, which lay relaxed on the arm. His eyes opened slowly to focus on her face, which was now level with his. His long fingers closed tightly around hers. Responding to that pressure, and almost without her conscious direction, her hand caught his, bringing it up so that she could press her lips against the back of it.

The hazel eyes widened. They were more aware now.

And she knew with a painful catch of her heart that if Ian had been fully awake when he'd opened his eyes, he would never have touched her hand like that. He eased his fingers from hers.

"Is something wrong?" he asked, his brow furrowed.

"I'm leaving for lady Laud's. I looked in on my way out and found you asleep. You looked almost too peaceful," she said.

She smiled at him, forcing back the surge of emotion she had felt at seeing his vulnerability exposed. A vulnerability he would never have wanted to reveal not to her. Not to anyone.

"So I thought, of course, that I would disturb you," she finished, deliberately injecting humour into her voice, which had thickened with the constriction of her smile.

"No rest for the wicked," he said, returning her smile.

"That's no rest for the weary, I think," she corrected, her own brow wrinkled as she tried to remember the correct phrasing.

"How was your drive?"

"Pleasant enough," she said.

She used the arm of his chair to push herself to her feet. The fact that Ian had been forced pull his fingers away from hers was embarrassment enough. To continue to knee at his feet could only add to it.

"It could only have been enhanced by a glass of wine," she added, smiling down at him.

His eyes had followed her rise, and at the smile, his mouth relaxed. "I should imagine the same might be said of Italian sopranos."

"I beg your pardon?"

"I understood from my godmother that was to be the afternoon's entertainment."

"Good grief," Annie said flatly, "and to think I gave up wiping Sally Eddington's nose for this."

She smiled at him again, hoping that if they bandied enough nonsense, he would forget the revealing caress of her lips against his fingers. Romantic and impulsive, she chided herself. And when you have fallen madly in love with a man who considers you little more than a child and nothing but a responsibility, that could indeed prove a humiliating combination. As it had this afternoon.