“It’s dark. Humor me. I will control myself.” She let him fall into step beside her as they made their way toward the Macintosh residence across the square. “Thank you for telling me. Erm… Lady Emma?”
“Yes?” Difficult to talk to him when she could only think about other ways of using lips.
“Do not fret over what happened in the garden just now. Please do not. It was no sin. Only a blessing. If I… if things were different, it would not be a secret kiss in a garden only. Do you understand?”
She didn’t, but she nodded. What did he mean? What things must be different to have more than a garden kiss with him? Her age? Her work matchmaking? Did these things make her unsuitable to be his—
No use thinking of it. The dark gathered around her. The dark gathered inside her.
She crossed the street toward her door, and he stayed inside the garden behind the gate. She paused with her hand on the doorknob, uncertain, unable to look away from him though it felt like needles looking.
“When I am feeling at my most self-flagellating,” he called out, “I tell myself this. I would be worse off if I was not aware of my mistakes. Because I’d still be making the same ones.”
She laughed, and the sound warmed her, seemed to call the stars out from the settling darkness. “You are correct, of course. Thank you.”
She would not blame herself for the kiss, would not chastise herself for taking what she could from a man who would offer nothing more.
Before she disappeared inside the townhouse, Lady Emma smiled, and Samuel could see it even in the gloomy dark. The smile on her lips wrapped round his heart.
And it yanked him into the future. Wedding, children, mornings and evenings—Emma laughing, Emma smiling, Emma kissing him. Emma’s body naked and perfect beneath his own. Emma keeping him levelheaded and him soothing her fears. Emma carrying their child. Emma’s hair gone white with age. Emma in every single way a woman could be with a man, a husband. And all of them withhim. His future, their future, stretched out before him all at once, a flash of something just right that pulled him out of his body for a breath.
A rumble growled across the sky. The clouds had reappeared, blocking the stars, the moon. A storm was coming.
“Hell.”
The doorway across the street empty.
The kiss in the quickly fading past.
Future melting away like a dream at dawn upon waking.
The truth remained. His life was an imminent explosion, and he would not subject Emma to another scandal now she was safe in London.
In other circumstances, he could make her his. She was an earl’s daughter. She should be available for a duke’s interest. Too old, some would say. Too odd, others might add, considering her work with matchmaking. None of that mattered. It would be him ruining her if anyone found out his family’s secret.
He trudged across the garden once more and blinked in the entry hall light when he let himself into Clearford House. He shut the door and leaned back against it.Bang, bang, bang—each slam of his skull across the wood failed to knock sense into him, failed, too, to knock the memory of their most recent kiss away.
“Samuel?” June was half out of a sitting room, her brow pinched together. “Is something amiss?”
“Not at all, Juney.”
“You’re lying. You look sad.” She stepped more fully into the hallway. “And that makes me sad.”
“Don’t say that. I won’t have it.” He patted her on the head. “Are you reading?”
“Mm. A lovely book by a lady who Annie recommended. Do you want me to read it to you?”
“No, thank you. I am exhausted and wish to retire.”
“Very well.” He turned for the stairs.
“Is Lady Emma well?”
He froze, hand on the newel post. “Lady Emma?”
“Weren’t you talking in the garden with her just now?”
“Yes. She’s well. There has been a… change of plans. She will not be able to meet with me tomorrow.”
