A wink followed by a blinding smile. Damn.
She swung her gaze from him, letting the blasted bonnet hide all but the plump curve of one cheek. “I have a talent for being saucy sometimes, too. Particularly when I’m with you.” A pause, and he thought she might not continue, but she did, her steps slowing. “You do that to me—wake me up, bring me to life, like the sun right now, waking up the little buds and tendrils of all the plants.”
“You’re calling me a sun?”
“I am. You glitter, you glow, you light up the world of everyone who watches you. They all want your warmth, as I do. Just a moment, a sliver of light in which to grow.”
Before she braved the winter once more?
He grasped her wrist, pulled her to a stop. “You are not a woman made for the winter. You are not a woman made for an affair. You are worth more than that. You are a woman a man should dedicate his years to, not just his minutes.”
Her gaze slowly lifted from the shackle of his hand around her wrist to his face. “Marriage? I do not desire another husband.”
“And why not?” He rubbed his thumb in slow, languorous circles on the inside of her wrist, feeling the tiny shiver of her pulse tick up in speed.
She looked over her shoulder toward the girls. They had collapsed atop one another in the grass and looked up at the nearly cloudless sky. A perfect picture that settled itself near his heart and seared itself upon his brain.
She peeked up at him, wariness wavering at the corner of her lips. “Because I have no wish to be widowed twice, and because I cannot watch them lose a second father.”
He dropped her wrist as if it had stung him, a honeybee’s sting, sharp and unexpected.
Her gaze grew shadowed, from more than brim of her bonnet. “You’re not … your mind does not wander in a matrimonial direction … does it?”
“No.” He pulled his unnecessary greatcoat closer, higher, hiding his jawline, and he tugged his beaver hat low. Too warm for them, but he was glad to have them both to hide behind. “I merely wanted you to know your worth. I want you to know what you are.”
“And what is that?” Her hand curled against her stomach. The white of her glove stark against the spring green of her spencer, the lavender of her gown.
“You’re the damn sun. You need no night sky to shine in. You are the light. Not me. I’m a gas lamp or candle. I’ll flicker out sooner than expected.”
The hand uncurled, reached for him.
He stepped away. “The girls look tired. Shall I escort you home?”
She let her hand drop, offered a smile. “Yes, please.”
Fake. He knew pretend when he saw it, was a master of it himself. He smiled at all of London, and they believed him, night after night.
They gathered the girls, and he set Bridget atop the horse and swung Izzy up onto his shoulders. They set their steps to the waltz of silence for the entire trip, but Grant could not help but speak as Freddy shooed the girls inside and made to enter the Cavendish house herself.
“Will I see you tomorrow?” he asked, “At Nora and Max’s party?”
She leaned the length of her spine against the doorframe and studied him, her head cocked to the side. She’d already removed her bonnet, and her hair curled in semi-disarray, just enough chaos to remind him of how it spilled across his pillow, through his hands like golden threads of silk.
“I will see you there?”
He nodded.
She nodded.
God, they were fools, staring at each other like awkward youths. What would happen if he surged to her side, caught her up in a kiss?
The worst would happen. Someone would see, and the affair she wished for would become the marriage she didn’t want.
The one he didn’t want either.
Right?
He bowed, a curt nod of the head, then swept onto his horse and galloped as fast as the streets of London would allow. Didn’t care where. Or that such gallops were a gamble, were dangerous.