He chuckled, sunshine breaking over the storm clouds of his face. “So that I could hold you in my arms once more. So that I could tell you how sorry I was, so I could beg for forgiveness and woo you with cake. All the cake to be had in England. The continent as well. So, I could kiss you and tease you and make you laugh and perhaps one day convince you to marry me.”
She stiffened and pulled her arm back under the blankets with a shiver.
“You’re cold.” He stood and left her side, poked and prodded and blew on the fire until it roared.
Cold? She was on fire. Every part of her in flames. He would always be this way, wouldn’t he? Protective and high-handed, seeking to fix something for her when she, herself, was not certain it needed fixing.
But it was not anger and indignation that boiled her blood at the moment. It was lust, raw and needy. As well as something much more potent—the desire to protect him, too. What to do with all that? She knew what Aunt Prudence would suggest. Take the man’s body and discard all else. But theall elsewas what Georgiana liked best about Josiah. His body was a delight, to be sure, but his mind, his heart, his humor… they stirred her even more.
When he returned to her side, he drew his chair nearer and sat in it, half draped across the bed at her side, his fingertips playing with her hair. “How did you find my house?”
“I didn’t know it was yours. I didn’t know it existed. I climbed a tree and looked out and saw a clearing, a house. I walked toward it.” She closed her eyes, shame flaming through her now. “I’m such a fool. I should never have walked off alone like that. I’m lucky I’m alive and not a solid block of frozen ice.”
His hand in her hair stilled for several moments before it began stroking through her hair again. “You were wearing silk, Gee. Silk stockings, silk shift…” His voice was hard and rough. “Your vanity clearly outweighs your sense.”
Her eyes snapped open. “And your ego outweighs any justification for it.”
He grinned. She grinned back.
“I’m angry with you,” she admitted. “I don’t like being told what to do, what’s best for me. I’ve looked out for my own interests for over a decade now, and I can do so for several more. That’s partly what sent me out alone into a snowstorm. I wanted to prove to you, to myself, that I need no one. Not even you.” She huffed, rolling her eyes at her own foolishness. “I swear, other than this unfortunate lapse of judgment, I’m quite capable. I’m merely… not in the city. I suppose I’d never be able to survive the dangers of the country. This proves it.”
“False. You found your way through the woods to somewhere safe. You are, always have been, quite capable. Even when out of your element. Gee… we don’t have to marry. I won’t force your hand. I don’t want you to feel as if I think you’re incapable. I don’t. I never could. I merely… I want to keep you safe. Always. I”—he closed his eyes as the muscles in his jaw worked hard—“found you half frozen on my doorstep and couldn’t decide what the best course of action was, besides getting you inside and warmed up. Should I thank God for guiding your steps toward me or curse myself to hell for driving you to such madness? Had you not warmed up, woken up, my heart would have frozen with you.”
She pressed her hands to her chest to calm it. He wouldn’t force her. And it made her soul sing.
He cupped her cheek once more, then leaned forward and dropped a breeze-light kiss on the tip of her nose. “It is Miss Darlington’s choice to tell about what she saw or not. And it is my choice to hold out my hand to you. Or not. But I am holding it out, Gee. It’s yours. The choice is also yours. Whether or not you take it. Whether or not you marry me.”
Marry him.
Or not.
Her choice, taken away by no one.
She held it in her hand like a precious gem as ash fell from the sky and into her palm to mar it. Where would they live? Would she be able to trust him fully, man that he was? Would he tire of her one day? Would they find in a year’s time they did not suit? Would he stop being her friend as soon as he became her betrothed? Her lover? She shook the ash of doubt away and beheld the gem.
Then she made a choice, and she surged up out of the blankets to kiss Josiah soundly. And he kissed her back, his fingers spiking into her hair and pulling her toward him. No. She pulled him down, her arms escaping the warm cocoon of blankets he’d rested atop her to circle around his neck and pull him entirely from the chair until he sprawled across her. Even though he balanced on his elbows poised on either side of her body, the weight of his body rippled a delicious feeling through her. Safety. That was it. He made her feel warm and safe and… not sated. Not yet. But soon.
She arched against him, and the blankets fell below her breasts, pressed into his chest. He hissed a curse and rolled to the side, pulling her with him so the back of her body fit into the curved front of his own, the blankets between them muffling sensations, baring the knowledge she needed of the way he might feel against her backside.
His hands though, no barrier prevented them from cupping her breasts and rubbing his thumbs over her tight, pebbled nipples as he showered kisses along the curve of her neck. How had she been so cold earlier, frozen to the very soul? She’d never suffer a chill again, not with the inferno his firm lips pressed into her skin.
“Please,” she said, “please more.”
And he obeyed, biting her shoulder, a light nip that sent sparks skittering through her body like marbles scattered across ice, and then he nipped the lobe of her ear, kissed the tender corner of her neck behind it.
More. She needed more, and the damn blankets were in the way, heating her, constraining her, keeping her from getting exactly what she wanted.
“Off. I need the blankets off,” she said.
A deep chuckle near her ear, and then he shifted and slipped to the floor.
She reached for him. “Come back.”
He walked away instead, ambling to the end of the bed where he lifted one corner of the top blanket. He pulled it slowly toward him, gathering the material in his arms, and when it was a red wool bundle, he tossed it to the floor, reached for the next one and did the same.
“There are five blankets here, two greatcoats, four shirts, and three sheets.”Swoosh. Another blanket disappeared down the bottom of the bed.
Gaze riveted on him, on his wild hair and glittering eyes, she clutched the very bottom sheet, the one nestled against her body, up to her chin.
