As you can imagine, their first and completely unexpected meeting is an emotional roller coaster for both of them. Two Americans, one an heiress, one a former pickpocket and now a successful businessman, have both come to London to marry British aristocrats. They never counted on meeting each other.
Here's a snippet from May and Rex's meet moment.
“Wait.”
Rex shouted the word and forced himself not follow her. He would not chase May
Sedgwick down the street like a lovelorn fool. He started breathing again when
she stopped, but May didn’t turn back. She halted on the pavement as if she’d
hit a wall.
A few
steps ahead, May stood stiff and still, her fists clenched at her sides. She
hadn’t even bothered to retrieve her cloak and gloves when she fled Ashworth
House, and he shrugged out of his overcoat as he approached her from behind. He
moved as he would toward a skittish creature, afraid she might bolt at any
moment.
Before
he could settle his coat on her shoulders, she twisted around and glared at
him.
Letting
her go would have been the wiser choice. Her accusing gaze bore into him and
there was nowhere to hide, no time to feign disinterest and smooth his
expression into one of indifference as he had in Ashworth’s sitting room.
Whatever
he was, whatever the yearnings of his twisted heart, he suspected she could
read every shade of it in the way he looked at her.
Her
mouth had gone round in shock when she’d first seen him, and he’d hated himself
for wishing for something more. Some flicker of pleasure. Some glint in her eye
to tell him she remembered the parts of their past that haunted him. When her
mouth trembled, he’d waited for tears. Now it was clear she would give him
nothing but wrath. And he couldn’t even claim he didn’t deserve it.
“I
thought perhaps you were dead,” she said, her voice breaking on the final word.
He’d
thought so too for a while. Maybe some piece of him had died when they parted.
Certainly he’d shed that naive and hopeful fool Reginald Cross long ago.
There’d never been another choice. Being fearless, willing to do anything to
survive, had meant the difference between wallowing in misery and stepping
forward into a chance at success.
“You
almost sound as if that would have pleased you.” He lifted his coat to arrange
it around her shoulders, careful not to step too close or touch her.
Electricity never sparked more brightly than May’s eyes as she stared at him,
warily watching his every movement.
When he
reached up to tug the coat snug at her neck, she shoved his hands away and
pulled the lapels together herself.
“Truth
pleases me most of all, Mr. Leighton, or Cross, or whatever it is you call
yourself now. Do you even know how to tell the truth?” Her breath puffed out as
she spoke and the cool air rouged her cheeks and mouth into tempting daubs of
color in her otherwise pale face.
“I never
lied to you.” He couldn’t meet her eyes, couldn’t let the loathing in her
sapphire gaze seep in beyond his well-constructed walls.
“You
said I should wait for you. I went to Central Park, just as you requested, and
you never came.” She swallowed convulsively, as if she was choking on the
words. “You promised we’d never be parted. The least you did was lie to me.”
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