Her shoulders hunched, her gaze flicked downward. “I couldn’t stay,” she said simply. “You were going to marry Lady Cecily.”
“I wasn’t,” he said. “I wasn’t, and I knew it as soon as I learned our marriage had been annulled. Like a bolt from the blue. I knew I was never going to want her. Not the way I wanted you. I could never have loved her as I love you.”
“But she is—she is so damnedperfect,” she said, and there was such a plaintive pout within the cadence of her voice that he bit back a laugh. “It is very jealous and petty of me, I know—”
“I like you jealous and petty,” he said. “She’s a lovely woman. But I told her I had no intention of courting her—”
“You did?”
“Of course. And, happily, Lady Cecily had no intention of agreeing even if I had. She’s got a gentleman of her own whom she intendsto marry.” He rose to his feet once more, just long enough to shrug out of his coat and pull his shirt off over his head. Then he took a seat beside her to tug off his boots. “I am utterly exhausted,” he admitted with a sigh as he tossed first one boot aside, and then the other. “I had no idea where I might find you. I had to beat down Chris’ door at an egregiously late hour and beg him to tell me where I might find you.”
“Chris?” Her brows knitted. “He wouldn’t know. He’s not the sort to pay attention to things like that.”
“In fact, he did not know,” he said. “But his wife made a reasonable guess. At least, she gave me a general direction.” He slid his trousers off his legs, went to work on his own stockings. “Of course, I couldn’t leave at such an hour of the night. So I went home, slept rather poorly, and rose before dawn to pack. And then, of course, I had to get clearer directions, as I hadn’t the faintest idea of who Baron Armitage was or where in Kent he might happen to reside. I visited the solicitor, paid a call upon Lady Cecily, and came straight down. I’ve been traveling since mid-afternoon. And if you had simply stayed where you were meant to be, none of it would have been necessary.”
“I’m sorry,” she said, in a choked little voice. “I couldn’t stay. I thought I was going to have to watch you marry her, and I couldn’t do it.” She made an odd sound in her throat, a strangled little noise—and he wrapped an arm around her waist and pressed her face to his shoulder. “I could only say goodbye in a letter,” she said, her voice muffled against him. “I have never had the least trouble seeing a man off with a smile before, but I couldn’t do it for you. I couldn’t have managed even the pretense of happiness about it.”
“Because you love me?”
She shoved weakly at his shoulder. “Yes,of courseI love you, you absurd—mmph.” He smothered the final dregs of her diatribe with a kiss.
“There,” he said. “That’s all I wanted to know. You are forgiven.”
“Forgiven!” Her mouth dropped open in shock.
“For your brief flirtation with cowardice. I know it is because you are unaccustomed to such emotions. And so long as you promise not to run off again—”
“I’m considering it at this very moment.”
“—Then I will have faith that you will, eventually, grow more comfortable with them. Because Idohave to be told,” he said. “I need that vulnerability from you. Just as you insisted on it from me in the very beginning.” To be open and honest and trusting. “I lay my heart in your hands. But I want yours in return.”
“Yes.” She laid her hand over his heart, the softness of her palm warming his skin. “I have no experience with it. But I do love you, Anthony, and I will tell you.”
“Often.”
A shred of a laugh whisked against his cheek. “Yes. As often as you like.”
“Good,” he said, and turned to bear her back upon the bed. “Start now,” he said as he crawled over her, as her hands lifted to wrap around his neck and plunge into his disheveled hair. “And don’t stopuntil I tell you.”
Chapter Twenty Four
Over the breakfast table, the dowager baroness cleared her throat and announced, “I found a waistcoat in the drawing room this morning. Would anyone like to tell me how it happened to be there?”
Anthony choked on a bite of toast, casting a horrified glance at Charity from across the table. Her eyes widened, her tea cup tipping precariously in her hands. She gave a slight but firm shake of her head, and beneath the table, she aimed a kick at his shin. A warning, he thought, to keep his silence.
Mercy speared a chiding glance at her sister, and then gave a massive sigh and a roll of her eyes. “It’s mine,” she said, in a dry tone of voice.
“Yours?” The dowager baroness asked, with an arch of her brows. “I wasn’t aware you wore waistcoats, my dear.”
“Well, notmine,” Mercy said. “It’s Thomas’, of course.” She nudged her husband’s shoulder with her own once, and then harder again when the first nudge had failed to pull his attention from the pages of his paper.
“What?” he asked finally, adjusting his spectacles upon the bridge of his nose.
“Your waistcoat,” Mercy prompted in an insistent voice.
A blank stare. Clearly the poor man hadn’t a clue as to the nature of the conversation passing about the table around him. But his wife had been expecting some sort of confirmation in his own voice, and he did his best not to disappoint her. “Oh, yes, of course. My waistcoat. Certainly. What about it?”
“I found it in the drawing room,” the dowager baroness repeated.
