Her fingers tightened on his, because surely if they did not, she would fly away, return to the real world where men like Shelbourne did not make declarations to girls like her. What could a handsome lord who was witty, intelligent, kind, and sought-after, with a cadre of desirable ladies ready to warm his bed, want with the gauche flame-haired friend of his younger sister?
“If you are feeling guilty because of what happened yesterday, I absolve you of all such wrongheaded notions,” she told him.
“Is that what you think?” His lips quirked again, almost as if he found something amusing.
He was so vexing. She could not begin to understand him.
Julianna worried her upper lip, considering Shelbourne. He certainly appeared earnest. Clad in sunlight and heroics. He was everything she had ever wanted. Everything she was too afraid to believe could be hers.
“I do not know what to think,” she admitted. “Not where you are concerned, Shelbourne.”
And she never had. Moreover, she feared she never would.
* * *
She insistedupon calling him Shelbourne.
Yesterday, she had been nearly naked in the water. Naked and voluptuous and so bloody tempting, nothing separating his eager hands and her body but a water-logged chemise. His tongue had been in her mouth.
And still, she would not refer to him by his Christian name.
The woman was going to be the death of him.
“Sidney,” he urged, offering her his arm. “Shall we walk?”
She eyed him as if he were a snake poised to strike. “Walk?”
“And talk,” he elaborated. “You need not fear I will take further liberties.”
How stiffly that promise fell from his lips. He had never been a man given to propriety. Where his father was staid and proper, Sidney had been a hellion in his youth. And he had fallen headlong into hedonism from the moment he had bedded his first woman, without a modicum of regret.
Something about Julianna made him want to change that. Made him long for things he had not previously believed it possible for him to want.
“Please,” he added when she continued to hesitate.
Her hand settled into the crook of his elbow with a sense of belonging. “I meant what I said. You needn’t feel guilty.”
Guilt was the least of what he felt.
Inside him was a fire that would not be controlled or doused, not with common sense or reason.
He did not say that, however. The emotions rising up within him were too bold and varied and bloody terrifying to reveal. They had been growing, more and more with each occasion upon which their paths crossed. But yesterday had been the day he had finally surrendered to the way he felt about her.
He guided them down the path, toward a wild tangle of roses in bloom. They were red, lush, and full, the air sweetly perfumed with their blossoms when the breeze passed.
“My grandfather, the last Marquess of Northampton, planted these roses for my grandmother,” he told her. “There was a bench here overlooking the lake. It was their favorite place to sit together. When I was a lad, he cut these roses for her every summer and filled her sitting room with them when they were in bloom.”
“He sounds as if he loved your grandmother very much,” Julianna said softly, her face shadowed beneath the brim of her hat, her gaze upon the massive clump of rosebushes. “What happened to the bench?”
“My father had it removed after my grandfather died.” Sidney was grim as he recalled the discovery, too late, that his father had seen the bench destroyed. “Grandmother was quite upset when she discovered what Father had done; she has refused to return ever since.”
“Why would he do such a thing?” Frowning, she turned back to him.
“He supposed it was in disrepair. It was fashioned of wrought iron and had begun to rust.” But it could have been repaired and saved with ease. The roses had only been spared a similar fate thanks to their tenacity and his father’s lack of interest.
His father was hardheaded and hard-hearted. It was difficult to believe such a clod had been born to his grandparents.
“I can see it would be a lovely place to view the lake,” Julianna said.
