Close enough he could catch her waist in his hands if he chose. But he would not force this. He wanted her to meet him halfway this time. He could not forever be the one who initiated intimacies between them.
The pink in her cheeks darkened.
God, she was adorable when she was embarrassed. His lips ached to feel hers beneath them once more.
“Last night, I had suffered a blow to the head,” she dismissed, her tone deliciously tart. “My wits were addled.”
Even when she rebuffed him, he wanted her more than he wanted his next breath.
When the devil had he become so besotted with her?
“I do not think that is why you called me by my given name, sweetheart.” He paused, his eyes on hers as he dared the endearment once more. He had used it before, of course. But when he used it now, it held a different significance. A stronger meaning that had been absent before.
He touched her then, reaching out to take one of the hands buried in her skirts in his. He twined their fingers together, and she did not resist. Instead, she held him tighter, clinging. Their palms touched.
The expression on her lovely face turned stricken. There was no other way to describe it. She bit her lip, and her eyes glistened. Stormy violet and smoky gray drowned in blue, and he was drowning, too. In her.
Lost.
Or perhaps found.
“Benedict,” she whispered. “I cannot do this with you.”
It was a plea, but not the plea he wanted to hear. He was going to fight her in this.
“What can you not do?” he prodded, wanting to make her say the words aloud.
Again, her lower lip trembled. “What do you want from me?”
“Everything.” The word was a confession. The stark, absolute truth. A truth he had done his best to ignore, to banish. A truth he could not outrun, no matter how hard he tried.
She shook her head slowly. “You cannot have that.”
Yes, he could. He was determined. But he kept that to himself for now.
Instead, he posed a different question. “Then what can I have? What will you give me?”
“This is wrong.” But as she spoke, her fingers tightened on his. She did not look convinced the words she spoke were truth. Instead, she looked torn. Beautifully, heart-wrenchingly torn.
He did not falter. “Why?”
“I am not like you. I do not belong in this world.” She shook her head again, slower this time, as if to dispel some notion she could not seem to expunge. “I learned my lesson at that country house party so long ago. Lords and shopkeeper’s daughters do not belong together.”
Of course she did not belong with a milksop like Lambert. Everything in him railed at the notion. But not because Lambert was a viscount and Isabella’s father was a tradesman. Because Lambert did not deserve the sole of her shoe.
“Did you love him?” he asked, the hated question rising from him before he could quell it. He did not want to know the answer. It was none of his affair, and he knew it. And then something far worse occurred to him. “Doyou love him?”
“No,” she denied softly, studying him. “I understand that now. Anything I felt for him pales in comparison to the way…”
She had almost betrayed herself. Hope, that incessant fool, came back to life.
“To the way you feel now?” he asked.
“To the way I feel about you,” she confessed, though from the pained expression pinching her face, he could tell the revelation gave her no joy.
“Isabella,” he began, about to tell her he felt strongly for her as well.
But she stopped him, pressing her finger to his lips. “Hush, Benedict. I am going to be brave now. And foolish. And impractical. And everything I am not.”
