He pulled away just enough to break the kiss. “What are you doing?”
“We wasted seven years. I’m not wasting another seven seconds.” Her lips not only tasted like perfection, they spoke sense. “You offered to be my lover…”
“Are you accepting?”
“I want you to kiss me, Richard Clark. And yes, I want much more than that, too. From you.”
His eyes closed for a heated moment of hesitation. “You hate me.” He could still feel every word she’d given him like a laceration across his back. But every word he’d given her stung sharper, dug deeper. He hated himself.
She kissed the tip of his nose. “No te odio, Richard Clark. And I begin to suspect there’s not much you could do to change that.”
Right. Yes. “Fire.”
“Pardon?” Her hold on him went slack.
He pulled out of it, tripped up the stairs. “Fire. In the bedchamber. If I’m going to get you naked, Beatrice Bell, I refuse to let you freeze.” He tumbled back down the stairs and set his palm atop her head, pinning her in place. “Wait. Right. There.”
She nodded, grinned.
And upstairs, he brought a fire to roaring life more quickly than he ever had before. When he reached the entry hall once more, she was gone.
“Bloody—Beatrice!” He yelled her name. “Where are you?”
“Here!” Her voice soft from a room down the hall.
He followed it to the study he never used. Set at the back of the house, it looked out into the garden, or rather, a small boxed-in section of the garden crowded with flowers newly blooming.
Beatrice stood at the small desk beside the chair that faced the window, the garden. Just as he’d always imagined her.
“This is”—she exhaled softly, then swung around to face him, hands clutched together at her heart—“lovely.”
“Do you recognize it?”
She shook her head. “Of course not. This house was not here when I last was.”
“Hm.” He stood next to her, her shoulder brushing against his arm.
“You must get much work done here.”
“None. I use John’s study at Slopevale. His estates. His study.”
“But then why make this?”
He shrugged, running a flat palm along the large yet elegant desk that looked out into the garden.
“You know,” she said, “I always imagined having a little study just like this. Books everywhere, the desk facing the window instead of away from it. I’d like to look up from my translations to see how the world?—”
“Is changing outside the window.”
“Yes.” She peered at him, a question in her gaze. “But only a small bit of the world. The garden out there is more of a little corner, secluded. A source of variety as the seasons change but not too much distraction. You could take a desk out there and work if the day is nice.”
“There’s a portable one in the corner for just such use. And a chair and a little rug to go beneath.”
“My… you’ve thought of everything.”
“No, you’ve thought of everything. And you’re dripping, sweetheart. Let’s undress you. I’ve a fire upstairs.” He tugged her toward the door.
She stopped him, her gaze slowly skimming every surface of the room. “It’s as if you peered inside my head and brought it all to life.”