CHAPTER TWO HUNDRED AND NINETEEN – DRAWING BOUNDARIES

She'd just finished banking the coals in the hearth for the evening when a hesitant rapping sounded at the door. Frowning, Charlotte crossed the now-empty common room and pulled open the door to find James himself on the stoop, one booted foot scuffing the ground in an uncharacteristically bashful gesture. For a long moment, the pair simply stared at each other in silence, the weight of everything unspoken hanging thick in the air between them. Charlotte felt her throat constrict, every biting insult and heated confrontation replaying rapid-fire through her mind as she drank in the sight of him. He looked...different, she realized with a start. Where before there had been carefully cultivated dishevelment, a calculated air of roguish charm, now James seemed almost wilted. His shirt hung untucked and rumpled, hair in disarray as though it had been some time since he'd tended it. Even his eyes, those smoldering blue flames that could inflame desires with a single look, appeared dimmed