“Are you well?” she asked. “Your heart is racing again.”
“I’m well.” Not though. His heart ached, and his body felt like it was sprinting away from danger. Or chained near it. No escape.
Cheek resting on his chest, she mumbled, sleepy and sated, “Do not go, Felix. Please.”
He said what he didn’t want to say. “I won’t.” How could he deny her? How could he deny the part of himself that wanted to be right here. With her. Forev—
A vision flickered before his eyes—a boy with Caroline’s dark hair and Felix’s own eyes, sick in a room and crying for someone, anyone. No one heard him, though. There was no one to hear.
He shook it off and kissed the top of her head again.
He would stay for as long as it took to slake this desire. This thing between them would run its course. She would find more passion in the running of this refuge. He would return to London knowing she was safe and taken care of. He could stay until then.
She was already asleep, her visible cheek rounded and red, her dark lashes a sweep against her pale skin. And those lips, those lovely red lips slightly parted, as if about to say his name. Or as if exhaling her final breath before death.
Chapter Twelve
The folly wasa little oven in the mornings. Caroline would know, having spent the last week waking up there. She’d moved her clothes to the folly, and it had become a fully outfitted bedchamber. Minus the bed frame. Still only a mattress tick, but that lent the space a certain charm.
As did the entirely nude length of her husband stretched out on it, one arm bent behind his head, the other splayed across his taut torso.
Difficult to dress when he was looking at her as if her skin alone might break his fast. No toast necessary.
“Come back, Caro,” he said.
“We’ve much to do today.” She clumsily tightened her stays and stepped into her stockings, tied one with a pink ribbon. Felix liked pink.
The sight of it roused him from the bed, brought him prowling toward her. “Let me.” He knelt at the chair she sat in, his stronger fingers deftly maneuvering the second ribbon. When he was done, he kissed the top of her knee, squeezed her calf. “Shall we return to bed?”
She tapped his cheek. “No. I am writing to a midwife I know in Manchester today. Hawthorne’s future guests may findthemselves in a variety of precarious positions, and it’s best to be ready for them all.”
“Naturally.”
“And then I must help the maids clean out the conservatory. You are going into Dorking, are you not?”
“I had planned on it,” he said with a sigh, “but plans are made to shattered into tiny little unreadable pieces, Caro-mine.”
She gasped. “Blasphemy. Clothes now, husband.”
He groaned, claiming a long, sultry kiss before doing as she’d commanded. Something of a shame. The clothes, not the kiss. If anyone should go around undressed, it should be Felix. He left off his jacket, though. The heat had already pierced their little heaven, and she liked him in shirtsleeves, liked to see him rumpled, those sleeves rolled up past his elbows.
She rolled them up for him as they made their way through the garden, and oh, the smile that dragged from him. She’d no idea happiness felt this way, like wicked grins and low chuckles, like secret touches under a shady tree.
Which, somehow, she dragged him away from. But not without grumbling.
She set him at a small stone patio outside of a drawing room the maids were cleaning. The door was thrown open to let in the sun and the breeze, and one of the footmen, Freddy, hovered in the doorway. He seemed to be trying to keep one eye on Caroline and the other on the women working inside. A predatory eye?
Freddy jumped forward, arms outstretched. “Don’t fall, Miss Farmer!”
No, a protective eye. The footmen were proving quite valuable. Sympathetic and sweet despite their hulking figures.
“Sit, Caro.” Felix urged Caroline into a small wicker seat beside a matching table laden with tea then sat himself. She folded her hands in her lap. Felix liked to pour her tea. Unusual, but he said she’d get it too hot for herself, and he could not haveher perfect tongue burnt when he had other plans for it. Difficult to argue with that.
Everything was perfect. The days, the nights, her plans, even the unexpected addition of a husband to her household.
Perfect.
Felix had not had a nightmare since she’d shared his bed. And that reminded her of a plan she’d been developing.
