He blinked like a cat in the sun. She came to herself abruptly and realized that he was giving her the same methodical examination to which she had subjected him. His eyes grew hooded as they tracked from her face to her lower body and the chair with its special wheels. And then he met her gaze, and she saw what she had dreaded… and expected.
When men looked at her, they did not see a woman. They saw a cripple, a girl never permitted to grow up, a creature to be protected and pampered but never loved. Not as a man loved a woman, as her father had loved her mother.
Most of the time she was able to ignore masculine discomfort with her affliction. Most of the time she didn’t allow herself to think of Niall’s business partners, or her friends’ brothers, as men at all. That entire part of her being remained safely locked away.
Until a man like this one came along. And suddenly, painfully, she was aware of his potent maleness and her own shortcomings as a woman.
“Miss Munroe,” he said.
She started, hardly expecting him to speak. “I am pleased to make your acquaintance, Mr. Holt,” she said, grasping at the rote phrase. “What is your area of expertise in the circus?” She smiled cautiously. “Are you the lion tamer, perhaps?”
He made a sound in his throat that she guessed was a laugh. “There are no lions here. No animals in cages, except for one. You could say that I tame him, as much as he can be tamed.”
His voice was baritone, a little rough, without the accents of refinement that Mr. Wakefield’s held, or the hint of a more advanced education that marked Harry French’s speech. It had its own particular music, like the sighing of wind in mountain pines.
“And what sort of beast is it, Mr. Holt?” she asked.
“One you have never seen before.”
“Rare and deadly, I suppose?”
“Yes.” He stared at her face as if he could discern her thoughts through sheer determination. “What do you do, Miss Munroe? What is your… expertise? Or do you have one?”
He was mocking her. She prided herself on reading voice and expressions, and there was no doubt that Morgan Holt meant to provoke.
She glanced around to see if Niall was listening, but he was deep in conversation with Mr. French and Caitlin Hughes. Ulysses had gone, and only Tamar watched from a distance, her snakes coiling about her upper arm.
“You refer, perhaps, to this?” she said, gesturing at her lower body. “Do you judge that one in my situation is unable to do anything of worth? I assure you that neither my mind nor my heart are paralyzed, Mr. Holt.”
As soon as the words left her mouth she wondered where they had come from, and why she had revealed so much to a hostile stranger. He did not know her, nor she him, yet already she felt as if they were at odds, engaged in a battle for which she did not understand the cause.
And that was ridiculous. If anything, he was an employee, part of a world separated from hers by class, money, and inclination.
“I am sorry,” she said coolly. “I misunderstood your question.”
“Harry says your family are important people in Colorado,” he said. “Your brother hired the troupe knowing Harry had to accept his offer, whether he wanted to or not.”
He scraped a hollow in the earth with his foot. “When you have money, anything is possible, isn’t it?”
Now she understood his antagonism. He did not feel contempt for her disability, merely for her wealth. He resented what he and his people lacked, and what they owed Niall. Perhaps his own background was one of poverty.
That was no excuse for his discourtesy. “I think I see,” she said. “You have decided that having money renders a person incapable of virtue or honest work. It is wealth that you object to, even when it provides you with employment. I am truly sorry that your life has been so difficult, Mr. Holt.”
Ah. That penetrated his armor. “Very kind of you, Miss Munroe,” he said with a curl of his lip. “I guess when you spend your life helping your inferiors, you don’t notice what your own life is missing.”