Miss Angleton exhaled roughly, flinging her arms wide in the sand. Her eyes were closed, and she tried to speak, but coughed instead. Amelia’s hands fluttered helplessly around the girl’s shoulders until Miss Angleton grasped Amelia’s hand and opened her eyes.
“Can you speak?” An anguish in Amelia’s voice cut Drew deep.
“That better have been the world’s best kiss, Mrs. Dart. Because getting a good glimpse of it near killed me. Heavens.” Miss Angleton rolled her head to the side and swung her arm over her eyes. “It certainly looked delicious. Couldn’t take my eyes off it. Didn’t see the wave coming.”
Andrew emitted something like a growl from his throat and pushed to his feet. In those moments before he’d had her safe in his arms, he’d been as overwhelmed by emotion as he had been overwhelmed by the waves. His heart more likely to take him down, though, to drown him. What if she had died? She was no one to him, an employee with such odd quirks, she would create more problems than solve.
But if she had died… He felt as if he’d left a bit of himself back in the waves, chunks of his nothing he’d used to keep everyone and everything out. And now that his fear was gone, he was empty, and quickly filling up with rage.
He bit the inside of his cheek to control it. “Are you well, Miss Angleton? Can you walk?”
She grinned, a half-hearted, exhausted sort of thing. “If I say no, will you carry me up to the castle? You’ve a surprisingly muscular physique. Quite nice. I’d not say no to experiencing the safety of it again.”
He crossed his arms over his chest and glared.
She sighed. “I suppose. Guess I’ll walk, then.” Miss Angleton rolled to her hands and knees and stood. “Though I bet if Mrs. Dart almost drowned,” she grumbled, “you’d carry her quick enough.” She headed off in the direction of the cliffs at their lowest point where one could take the steps to the top that had been carved into the stone.
“She’s fine,” Amelia breathed. “Thank heavens she’s fine.”
“Foolish woman.”
“Indeed. You saved her.”
He shrugged and wiped the salt water off his face, pushed his hand through his hair to squeeze it out and down his neck. “Perhaps I should not have.”
“You don’t mean that.”
“No.”
“She owes you her life.”
“She can repay me by finding a new profession.” Drew stomped away from her, toward the picnic blanket they’d abandoned earlier. Seemed so long ago now. After that kiss. A kiss that had not been an accident, an impulse. A kiss that had been unavoidable. It would have happened eventually, even if she’d let him walk away. Everything between them seemed to be building to it.
But what now? What came after a such a kiss?
In silence, they folded the blanket and packed up the picnic implements. Drew gathered his greatcoat and boots and ripped off his sodden stockings. Better the chilled air on bare skin than otherwise. Though more scandalous. Not that Amelia was looking at his legs. Drew wrapped his greatcoat around hershoulders and shoved his bare feet into his boots, then he held the basket over his arm and, with the other, escorted Amelia up the steps.
The longer they went without speaking, the more he feared they would never speak again. He could not apologize for the kiss because she had wanted it. Had initiated it. And he had wanted it, too. How, then, did one go on after that? Could they pretend it had not happened?
With each silent step the castle grew larger before them. But with the first crunch of the gravel garden path beneath his boot, her hand wrapped around his arm, stopping him. When she did not speak, only looked at him, her mouth slightly parted as if at a loss for words, he put a hand on her shoulder.
Her gaze flickered to his hand then back to him.
“What is it, Amelia?”
She shook her head as if she needed the motion to knock the words out of her mouth and into the air. “Do not stop.”
“Do not stop what?”
“Do not stop what we started on the beach.”
Ah. Her perplexing request made a bit of sense now. “Do you want me to kiss you again?”
She nodded. “And more.” She licked her lips. “I told you that I have, in the past, considered marriage. Most girls do. But I do not think it shall ever come to pass. So”—a sharp, quivering inhale—“give me more in the time we have left. Give me everything I will not have in life. And then I will return to Manchester with you, and I will remain with you. But until that time comes…” Her eyes were wide and dark and pleading. “Remain with me.” She clutched her hands at her belly, her fingers interlocked. They were bone thin and knuckle white. She shivered.
Straightening her pelisse and then pulling its collar high around her neck, he pushed a lock of hair behind her ear. Andthen he unlocked her hands and put one of them inside his pocket. The other hand, he kissed, just the knuckles, before he rested it on his arm.
“We have a deal, Amelia.”
