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He locked his gaze onto Gwendolyn. “I’d say I’m the perfect age to wed, Pansy.”

She nodded. “Then you should.”

He dropped his gaze to his soup, the gold-rimmed edge of his bowl, and the sunken silver of his spoon, and in the murky, lukewarm liquid, despite the anger that colored his vision, he saw a truth that had been creeping up on him for days. Hewasthe perfect age, not just for marrying, but for making a home out of more than ship decks and inn rooms.

“I’d very much like to,” he said, his voice harder than it should be for such a conversation. “I plan to.” All he could say at the moment, his plans still as murky as the soup before him. Plans? He had plans for something other than travelling?

Apparently he did.

Pansy picked up her bowl and sipped the soup from the rim. Where was her spoon? She slurped, set it down, then said, “You’ll find a lady to wed you, cousin. You’re quite good-looking. Don’t you think, Miss Smith?”

More silence, and this one of the let’s-just-expire-because-that-would-be-less-painful kind.

Then, blessedly, the sound of a chair scratching across the floor. Uncle Henry stood, slapping his hands together. “Well, then, enough of that. Let’s retire to the parlor, I think.”

All the chairs made a cacophony of sound, a song of sweet escape, across the floor. For them. For Gwendolyn, who rose and made an exodus with them.

Jackson stayed put, though. Indeed, he could not move. Glued to the spot by every emotion. She was leaving. She’d not told him. She was leaving.

After she’d begun to share the smallest bits of herself she’d kept hidden before, after she’d asked him for a kiss and played with his brothers, after she’d… made no promise about a sunrise.

Hell.

He rose finally. He’d been fooled.Afool. For she’d fooled him with a kiss. Jove, he’d let that embrace in the portrait gallery give him hope. Hope! For them. Ha. She’d not been softening. She’d been saying goodbye.

He walked right past the parlor where they all gathered, in no mood for mirth or company of any sort. He wandered—down each hall, around each corner, up each flight of stairs.

His home, all of it, and he’d been foolishly imagining her here with him, building the vision up to a state of perfection he should have known to be impossible. With her. What a fool.

“Damn.” Moonlight spilled across his face, and he blinked, looked up for the first time in… how long? He could have been wandering for a quarter of an hour or a quarter of a century for all he knew. But his steps had taken him to the portrait gallery. Damn them. He didn’t want to be here and have his parents stare down at him, witnessing that kiss, that foolishness.

She was leaving.

“Jackson.” Her voice, wavering like starlight on the water. She’d finally chased him down. Finally. What he’d always wanted. And she’d only done so to say goodbye.

He turned to the window they’d stood at earlier that day. “How long has this been your plan?” He tried to keep his voice calm, but a blade sliced around the edges.

“I decided before we left London and told your uncle the day we arrived here. I was trying to find the right time to tell you. The best way. I am sorry you did not find out from me.”

He pressed a hand against the window glass and leaned his weight into his palm, closing his eyes as if floating in the darkness would make everything right.

“Do you wish to know my plans?” she asked.

“No. Yes.” He cursed. “What I wish to know is why? Are you leaving because of me?”

“In a way, yes.”

He stood slowly, lifting his weight from the glass and turning toward her, as he opened his eyes. She held her hands clasped before her, and her eyes seemed small universes of blue. “Is there anything I can do to keep you?” Because despite it all, he still wanted her. He took a measured pace of a step toward her, slow and loping. “I could, I think, if I put aside your own plans, if I tied you to my bed and drugged your body with pleasure.”

“Jackson.”

Another measured step, bypassing entirely her whisper of his name. “Kissed you and licked you until all your fears broke and dissolved. Impossible to put back together. Then I’d do it all again. A constant state of orgasm.” He settled his knuckles beneath her chin and tipped it up. His face felt like marble, not a charming impulse in sight. “I could keep you. And damn everything holy, but I want to keep you. To hell with gentlemanly restraint. To hell with patience. To hell with your own doubts, that damn dance you’ve got us caught in. Forward and backward, never finding our way out of this cursed circle of wanting and not having. I could keep you.” Those last words a growl ripped from some primal bit of himself hid away behind charm and studiousness.

She shuddered, her eyes falling closed and her shoulders melting as her body waved toward him.

“I could keep you,” he said again, the words as hard and unforgiving as he felt. Then he pushed her away, turned with a snap and strode from her, returning to the window. “You’re lucky I do not wish to keep a woman who does not want me.” False words, but true emotions.

He looked out at the shadows. Too hard. He’d been too damn hard, but his heart felt like stone in his chest, and hardness, coldness… surely those were better than the anger that threatened to eat him alive.