Edmund had kissed women before. Perfunctory encounters during his youth, carefully controlled passion that never threatened his walls. This was nothing like those calculated exchanges.
This was fire and hunger and ten years of denying himself anything resembling human connection finally shattering under the force of want.
He kissed her like a man starving. Like she was air and he’d been drowning. His hands tightened at her waist, drawing her flush against him while her fingers tightened in his hair with enough force to sting pleasantly.
She made a small sound—surprise or pleasure or both—and Edmund swallowed it. Deepened the kiss until the world narrowed to just this. The warmth of her mouth, the racing of her heart against his chest, the way she yielded and challenged in the same breath.
When they finally broke apart—lungs burning, both gasping for air—Edmund pressed his forehead to hers, trying to gather thoughts that had scattered like leaves in a storm.
“Edmund,” she breathed. His name on her lips undid something fundamental in his chest.
Reality crashed back.
What had he done?
He’d promised her a practical arrangement. He had been explicit about the boundaries of their marriage. And now he’d kissed her like a man who’d lost all control—which he supposed he had.
Edmund stepped back. Put necessary distance between them before he forgot every promise and vow and carefully reasoned argument about why this was impossible.
“I apologize, Your Grace.” The formality tasted wrong after the intimacy they’d just shared, but he wielded it like a weapon anyway. “This cannot happen.”
Confusion flickered across her face. Then hurt. Then something that looked uncomfortably like anger.
She lifted her chin defiantly. “Can it not? Or do you simply refuse to let it happen?”
“Both.” Edmund forced himself to meet her eyes. To let her see the truth even as he pushed her away. “I cannot offer you what this would require. Cannot be the man you deserve. Cannot?—”
“Cannot trust yourself to feel anything?” She stepped closer, eyes blazing. “Because from where I’m standing, the only thing preventing this is your stubborn refusal to believe you deserve happiness.”
“You don’t understand?—”
“Then make me understand.” Challenge in every syllable. “Because all I see is a man who kisses me like I’m the air he breathes, then retreats behind walls the moment things become real.”
Edmund wanted to explain. Wanted to tell her about the fear that caring for her meant betraying James’s memory, about the terror that if he allowed himself to love her he’d become his father—destroyed by grief when loss inevitably came.
But the words lodged in his throat. Tangled with desire and fear and the ghosts of ten years’ worth of careful isolation.
“Forgive me,” he said instead. “This was a mistake.”
The lie tasted like poison.
He turned and left her standing alone among the portraits of dead duchesses. Fled like the coward he’d apparently become.
Behind him, he heard no footsteps. No pursuit.
Just silence that felt like condemnation.
Edmund didn’t stop until he reached his chambers. Closed the door and locked it against temptation and his own traitorous desires. Then he stood there in darkness, fists clenched, and tried to convince himself he’d made the right choice.
Tried. Failed.
Because the truth was he could still taste her on his lips. Could still feel the warmth of her body against his, the way she’d responded to his touch without hesitation or fear.
He’d told her it was a mistake.
The real mistake was walking away.
But admitting that would require courage Edmund wasn’t certain he possessed. It would require tearing down every wall he’d spent a decade constructing. It would require believing he deserved the happiness she offered.
