She reached up and touched the line of his jaw.
“Don’t regret it,” she said. “I don’t want you to regret it.”
He shifted at that, easing away from her. Slowly, he set her back on her feet, and she dropped her hand.
What a fool she was. She was softness and sentiment; heremotions ran too high. She knew this about herself. Her heart was easily bruised, and this man—
In the unequivocal light of day, he could devastate her.
Then he reached out with both hands and cupped her face. “Ah, Lydia,” he said. “Never.”
Chapter 17
How I wanted you. I wanted to keep you in my bed forever, give you words of milk and honey, pour out sweetness upon you. Tell you to lay your head in my lap and rest awhile, for I would keep you safe.
—from the papers of Arthur Baird, crossed out, begun again
The only thing that Arthur regretted was the dawn. He would have liked to haul Lydia into the bed, pull her delectable body up against his, and go to sleep with his face in her hair. But it was morning, so he had to watch her wrestle her dressing gown into place and return to her own bedchamber to prepare for the day.
He regretted the sun. He regretted her thousand-buttoned dressing gown. He supposed, as he washed and shaved and changed his clothes, that he regretted the state of last night’s trousers.
But he could not regret the feel of Lydia against him, the breathless pulsebeat of her desire—the demand of her thighs around his waist and the cry at the back of her throat.
He had not compromised her. He had not done something irrevocable, something that might trap her into marriage with him. For all his faults, he had not lost that last portion of his wits.
He did not know if he could win her affection—after what Davis had done to her, he did not even know how to begin. But suddenly, somehow, it seemed possible. She had wanted him—desired him—told him in low heated words what she yearned for him to do. It seemed conceivable that, given time, she might be persuaded to say yes if he asked her to marry him in truth.
He held to hope with both hands and imagined how he might ask her to be his. He felt the shape of the words on his tongue with no small trepidation.
But she had done it. She had told him what she wished for. Could he not be brave enough to do the same?
He was still wondering when he pulled open his door and found Lydia there on the threshold, her hand poised to knock.
For all that he’d seen her day in and day out for the last three weeks, he was still knocked sideways by the sight of her. Her dress was green, her hair neatly coiled. She wore delicate lacy gloves that buttoned at the wrists, and he wanted to peel them off. With his teeth.
He entertained the brief fantasy of carrying her right back to the bed. He entertained a second, much longer fantasy that involved his head between her thighs and a prompt rectification of the fact that he had not yet tasted her.
But despite the erotic intrusions—which surely ought to bebetterafter the morning’s interlude, notworse—he still had eyes and ears for nothing but Lydia. Her expression was dismayed as she unfolded a sheet of paper.
“I’ve had a note from Jasper,” she said. “He left it in my room—I’m not certain when. It’s… troubling.”
“Would you have me read it?”
She nodded and pressed the letter into his hands.
Lyd, it read in a deeply slanted scrawl,I’ve been called back to London. I’ll break the news of your marriage to Mother. Stay here in Scotland with Strathrannoch—in his castle or the summer house in Glencoe. I’ll write you when she’s calmed enough for you to come home.
It was only initialed, not signed—a looping messyJ.
He folded the paper and took her hand in his. He hated that she was upset—hated too that her brother would spread the word of their false marriage before Lydia had a chance to control the story.
But—God. He did not want to take advantage of her distress, and yet he wondered if this might be the opportune time to tell her that he wanted to make their deception real.
He felt a sort of comfort in the rationality of the notion. He could give her a reason to accept, some logical explanation for why she might choose to tie herself to him. If she married him, she would not have to tell her family anything beyond the truth.
He could appeal to her clever, methodical brain. He need not try to make inroads on her heart.
“Lydia,” he began, clasping her fingers more tightly, “I’m certain that you must be worried about what your family will think of all this.”
