“Leaving?” she managed to say. “Why? Where?”
“Back to London. My father—” Something dark and painful twisted across his face. “He’s dead.”
And then she was hugging him, resting her head against his chest and clutching her arms around him, and he was curling into her, his hands fists in her cloak at her back and his face finding a home in the crook of her neck.
“I’m so sorry,” she mumbled against his waistcoat. “I am so sorry.”
He shook, a moment of tortured convulsions, and then he pushed away. “Thank you. But do not waste your sorrow on me. My father and I were not close. And I’ve come to realize the old man may have done more ill in the world than good. Me as well. I would have kept doing ill, too. But for you.”
The moon above made the white of his shirt glow, made the unshed tears in his eyes glisten, made the world into something new, a space out of time, out of duty, out of propriety.
“I should feel… empty, I suppose,” he said. “But I know what empty feels like. This is not it. Emptiness is having no purpose, is thinking yourself happy but not being able to put down a bottle because when you do… the nightmares seep in. Loneliness and dissatisfaction, fear and self-doubt.”
“Keats—”
“I don’t feel that now. I feel brimming over with purpose, determination. Damn the bottle, damn the man I used to be.” Each word rose higher in the darkness, and his profile in the pale moonlight seemed sharp and noble and too beautiful for a mere mortal. When he turned his gaze to her, any shadow that she might have seen there once had disappeared. His eyes were clear and bright and eager. “I return to London a different man entirely.”
When I return to London.
“Will I ever see you again?”
“That is another thing I wished to speak with you about.” He wove their fingers together—his, hers, his, hers, palm to palm and pulse to pulse. “I know you have plans, but I would like to be part of them. Lucy.” He pulled her closer and whispered the words against her hair. “I want to marry you.”
A surge of bright, pure light, nothing dusty or dim about it.
A wave of crashing cold water, creeping with seaweed and choked with salt.
Joy and sorrow tangled together, breaking her apart.
She wanted him. She wanted to give her heart to him, her life.
Impossible. Duty demanded otherwise.
So, perhaps instead, she could give her body. For a single night only.
She cupped his cheeks, and his hands found the softest parts of her.
She went up on toe and brushed her lips against his. He kissed her back as if he meant to push his very soul into hers through breath and lips, through teeth and the clutching, seeking, demanding hold of his strong hands.
They kissed until her breath grew raw. They kissed until her legs gave out. They kissed until her breasts ached for more. He whirled her around and pressed her against the wall of the cottage next to a climbing vine of summer roses. Pink in the daylight but night red now. He released her only to press his palms firm against the wall on either side of her head as he parted her legs with his knee and pushed his muscled thigh against her very center.
How did he make her melt there? Every time. And every time she wanted his touch more than she had the time before. An impossible accumulation of desire.
She flattened her palms against his chest and shoved gently. When he blinked down at her, brow furrowed, chest heaving with his heavy breaths, she said, “Take me inside. To your bed.”
His mouth fell open. “I… It’s… Hell.” He wiped his hand down his face, then gave a soft bark of laughter. “It’s not a bed, Lucy. A pile of rough blankets, hard and cold. I would give you silk and feather for our first time. I would give you wine and candlelight.”
“I don’t care. Take me to it.Take me.”
“You don’t know what you’re saying.”
“I know there are ways to prevent a child. You must simply pull out of me before?—”
“Yes,” he snapped, “I’m aware.” The space between their bodies, previously humming with heat, had begun to thaw.
She could not have that. Grabbing his shirt, she dragged him closer, kissed him hard and quick. “Please. It is what I want. Once before you leave.”
“Damn me to hell.” He melted against her, catching her up in another kiss, this one slower, hungrier. Clutching her to him, he spun them toward the door, a moon-mad waltz that ended with the soft groan of the door closing behind them.
