“You lied.” The words bigger than her rib cage, choking her.
“Only about my name, countess, about why I was here.”
She mouthed the wordcountess, trying to say it around a throat quickly closing up. “You kept calling me that because you are… were… anearl.” She groaned. “I should have known. Your voice, your bearing. But I chose to believe that Banbury tale about your London employer’s absurd requirements. I’m such a fool.”
“You’re not. Marry me.” Still he hovered oh-so close.
Still her body enjoyed the hovering.
“No!” She swung away from him.
“Likely the wisest decision, Miss Jones.” From the bed, Griff flipped through an old, dusty book, not even looking up as he spoke. “He’s a bounder.”
“I may be a bounder, but I’ll make you happy.” No matter where she fled, Keats pursued, his eyes cold yet wild at the same time. “But you insist on sacrificing yourself to duty! What aboutyou, Lucy?”
“What about me? The only good I can do in life is to make the world safe for other women. I’ve been given so much. A family who loves me and protects me. Wealth and, if the ton will have me, status. Why should I not give all of it away? Use it all to atone.”
He lifted his hands as if to touch her. No, to grasp her, clasp her, hug their bodies together. His arms hung heavy, charged with electricity in the air between them. And then he dropped them once more to his sides. “Because you are human. A good one, at that. And you deserve some happiness, too.”
Oh, how an hour could change everything. “Exactly something a man like you would say.”
“A man like me?” The knife edge back in his voice.
“Yes.”
His jaw clenched and unclenched. “You will not marry some stranger and sacrifice your happiness.”
“I do not follow your orders, no matter your name or title.”
He jerked downward, as if he might kiss her, claim her. She would let him. God help her, she would let him, earl in the room or not. No matter the lies that lay between them.
When he stepped back instead, running a hand through his hair and biting out a muffled curse, she should have felt relief. She felt, only, a little cold. And alone. Nothing left to say now. She eased the door open and slipped through.
Tried to.
His hand banded around her upper arm, pulling her back inside and pressing her against the door to close it.
“Miss Jones?” Fred asked from the other side of the door, his deep voice muffled and concerned. “Do you need help?”
“N-no. I need no help,” Lucy called, her gaze never leaving her lying lover’s face.
Keats leaned closer, one forearm braced on the wall above her head, and his lips, his warm breath, whispered against her ear. “Please, Lucy. Please marry me.”
She tugged, but he held her tight. Yet gentle. He would leave no bruise. A contradiction. He was what she hated and what she wanted at the same time. Infuriating.
“If you must marry for duty,” he whispered, “marryme.”
Ice flushed through her veins. No man told Lucy Jones what to do.
Not even this one.
When she jerked her arm away this time, he released her, and when she stepped into the hall, she didn’t even look back. She barely felt the stairs beneath her feet as she descended and left Hawthorne House. The warmth of the rising sun did not heat her skin as she crossed the wide, morning-fogged field.
Only when a dark shape appeared on the horizon did she blink back into the world.
“Ophelia?” She ran to meet up with the woman clutching her bonnet to her head. She quickened her pace as her sister-in-law’s face came into view—pale, worried. “What has happened?”
Ophelia stopped and doubled over, breathing hard. “Hades… Hades is… Pudding, let me catch my breath.” She straightened and looked to the sky. “Hades is at the inn in Dorking. There is an older man there, a viscount. And his son. They are looking for Lady Alexandra.”
