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“My mother,” he said. “Eleanor has the hat you repaired for her. Let her be content with that.”

Charlotte pressed her lips together to keep from laughing, her shoulders shaking. “And what have you in mind?”

“A little book of family recollections,” he told her. “Stories she will enjoy. A few drawings, perhaps. My brother did enough foolish things to fill several pages without assistance.”

Charlotte’s expression softened, a tender light crossing her face at the mention of his brother. “She would like that,” she said.

“I hoped you might help,” Alexander said.

She looked up at him, her brows lifting. “With the book?”

“You remember her,” he said, warming to the idea. “You knew my brother, and I suspect you will have better judgment than I about which stories ought to be committed to paper.”

“I cannot draw,” Charlotte said.

“Neither can I,” he admitted. “We shall employ someone capable.”

She nodded. “That is sensible.”

Her interest encouraged him, and the old, familiar eagerness rose. He began explaining what he had already considered. A small volume bound in her favorite color with room for Eleanor’s contributions, perhaps a sketch of the house. His hands moved as he spoke, shaping the book in the air.

Charlotte listened, asking a question or two. When he described one of his brother’s more unfortunate attempts to impress a neighbor, involving a borrowed horse and a duck pond, she laughed so warmly. Alexander forgot the care with which he had intended to proceed.

“I shall have the papers brought to your house tomorrow,” he said. “There are several old letters you may enjoy. I thought we could work there in the afternoons. Your drawing room has better light than my study, and you would not need to go out.”

Charlotte’s hand stilled on his sleeve. He continued a moment longer, the words tumbling out, too pleased with the picture to notice the silence. “Eleanor can send her recollections directly to you. Once you have put them into some order...”

“Alexander,” Charlotte said.

He stopped, and the quiet in her voice rang like a bell. She withdrew her hand. It was a small movement. He felt it at once, the sudden cool where her warmth had been. “I offered to help you choose a few stories,” she said, evenly. “I have not agreed to receive your family correspondence or arrange my afternoons around making a book.”

He stared at her. “I did not mean...”

“I know you are pleased with the idea,” Charlotte said.

Her kind voice made the rebuke worse, and heat flooded his face. He looked back over what he had said and heard the assumptions plainly: the papers delivered, the afternoons settled, her drawing room claimed. “I have made it into an occupation for you,” he said, slowly.

“Yes,” she said.

“I thought you might enjoy it.” He had been too excited to see where he was going wrong.

“I might,” Charlotte said. “I would have liked the opportunity to decide how much of it I wished to undertake.”

His first instinct was to assure her that he required very little. That he could bring the papers himself, keep the work to an hour, relieve her of anything tiresome. The words crowded his tongue. He recognized, just in time, that each answer repeated the same mistake, and he closed his mouth on them. He put his hands behind his back, to keep from reaching for her. “You are right,” he said.

Charlotte glanced away. A pair of riders passed at the far end of the path; their voices carried briefly through the trees, and their horses’ hooves thudded softly on the turf. “I enjoy helping people,” she said quietly. “I am aware that I encourage them to expect it. But I do have things of my own to do.”

“I know.” He was a bloody fool.

“Do you?” she asked, turning back to him, and her green eyes were steady and clear. “You had already decided how I would help before I had agreed.”

He had no answer that would improve upon the truth; he tried to find one. “I liked the thought of being with you in the afternoons,” Alexander said, haltingly. “I allowed that to become an arrangement you had never agreed to.”

Her gaze held his. “Yes.”

Alexander drew a slow breath to steady himself. “I am sorry.”

She nodded, though disappointment still lingered on her face, and he saw her fingers curl at her side. He wished, with sudden force, that they were still laughing over the hat. But she had been comfortable enough to correct him then, too. The difference was that he had wanted this plan more, and wanting had blinded him.