“But you are,” he protested. “You are Mrs. K-Keeping to me. As well as Agnes. And youarewhat took me away.”
Her nostrils flared. And her steps slowed. She had been setting a cracking pace. With a few more steps they would be beyond the terrace and beyond the end of the east wing, and setting off across the lawn leading to the eastern end of the wilderness walk. She had no intention of walking in any wildernesses with Viscount Ponsonby.
“I am scarcely hard to avoid, my lord,” she said. “It is not as though I put myself deliberately in your path every hour of every day. Or ever, in fact. You did not need to go away for five whole days in order not to see me.”
“Counting, were you?” It was his lazy, slightly bored voice.
“Lord Ponsonby.” She stopped walking altogether and turned toward him. She hoped he could see the indignation in her face. “You flatter yourself. I have alife. I have been too busy—toohappilybusy—to spare you a thought. Or even to notice that you had gone.”
His back was to the moon. Even so, she could see the sudden grin on his face—before she took a sharp step backward and then another until the wall was behind her and there was no farther to retreat. He advanced on her.
“I did not know you could be p-provoked to anger,” he said softly. “I like you angry.”
He lowered his head toward hers, and she expected to be kissed. She even half closed her eyes in expectation.
“But I did need to go away,” he said, his voice no more than a whisper of sound and breath, “so that I could come back.”
“On the assumption that absence makes the heart grow fonder?” She raised her eyebrows.
“Doesit?” he asked her. “Are you fonder of me now than you were f-five days ago, Agnes Keeping?”
It was hard to speak with the proper indignation when one had a man standing so close that one could feel his body heat and when, if one moved one’s head forward even an inch, one’s mouth would collide with his.
“Fonderimplies that I was fond to start with,” she said.
“Wereyou?”
He was a rake and a libertine and a seducer, and she had always known it. How dare Dora aid and abet him by offering her own cloak because it was warmer than Agnes’s? Dora ought to have leapt to her feet and forbidden him to take her sister one step beyond the door of the room.
Agnes took her hands away from the wall behind her and braced them against his chest instead.
“Why did you go?” she asked him. “And, having gone, why did you come back?”
“I went so that Icouldcome back,” he said, and he covered the backs of her hands with his palms. “What sort of wedding would you prefer, Agnes? Something g-grand with b-banns and all sorts of time to summon everyone who has ever known you and all your relatives s-stretching back to your g-great-grandparents? Or something quieter and more intimate?”
That weak thing happened with her knees again, and she licked dry lips.
“If it is the f-former,” he said, moving his head back just a little so that he could look down into her face, his eyelids lazy, his eyes keen beneath them, “then there is all the t-trouble of deciding upon a venue. St. George’s on Hanover Square in London would p-probably be the most sensible choice because one can invite half the world, and a g-good half of that number already has a town house there or knows someone who does, and the other half will have no bother in f-finding a good hotel. If it is elsewhere—your f-father’s home, mine, here—one has all the h-headache of deciding where everyone will stay. If it is the l-latter—”
“Oh, do stop,” she cried, snatching her hands away. “There is to be no wedding, so it does not matter which type I would prefer.”
He ran the backs of his fingers lightly along her jaw to her chin and up the other side to cup her cheek.
“In five d-days with nothing much to do but drive a curricle,” he said, “I did not compose an affecting marriage proposal. Or even anunaffecting one, for that matter. But I do know that I w-want you. In bed, yes, but not just there. I want you in my life. And p-please do not ask your usual question.Whyis the h-hardest question in the world to answer. Marry me. Say you will.”
And suddenly it seemed ridiculous to say no when she ached to say yes.
“I am afraid,” she said.
“Of me?” he asked her. “Even at my worst, I n-never physically hurt anyone. The w-worst I did was fling a glass of wine in someone’s face. I lose my t-temper at times, more than I did before, but it does not last. It is all just sound and fury—am I quoting s-someone again? If I ever yell at you, you may f-feel free to yell b-back. I would never hurt you. I can safely promise that.”
“Of myself,” she said, fixing her eyes on the top button of his coat and leaning her cheek a little into his palm despite herself. “I am afraid ofme.”
He gazed deeply into her eyes. It was strange how she could see that in the darkness.
“Even tonight,” she said, “I was angry. Iamangry. I had no idea I was going to be, but it has happened. You play with my emotions, though perhaps not deliberately. You find me and talk with me and kiss me and then—nothingfor days, and then it all starts again. You made me promise five days ago that I would not say no, and then you left and gave me no chance to say either yes or no. You did not tell me you were going away. You did not need to, of course. I had no right to expect it. And now I have a premonition that this is what marriage with you would be like, but on a grander scale. Life as I have known it for years, including the five years of my marriage, would be turned on its head, and I would not knowwhereI was. I could not stand the uncertainty.”
“You fear passion?” he asked her.
