She caught the bow of her upper lip between her teeth, worrying it. “I am certain you are.”
“Julianna.”
She pulled her foot from his grasp and rearranged her limbs and skirts, hiding herself completely. “The hour is late, and I should return to my chamber or risk being discovered flitting about in the night with you.”
She was retreating from him, and all over his own stupid tongue. He could have kicked himself in the arse.
He rose from the bench and dropped to his knees on the cool marble floor before her, ignoring the bite of the hard surface into his knees. He would stay thus all night for her if he had to.
Sidney rested his palms on her skirts, on her thighs. The intimacy of the touch was not lost upon him. Heat shot up his arms. The connection between them was as potent as ever. His cock was more rigid and unforgiving than the marble.
“Stay,” he implored softly. “Please, sweetheart. I did not mean to suggest I am a sybarite or a rakehell. I am neither of those things.”
She nibbled on her Cupid’s bow again. “I do not think you are.”
Thank Christ. Her good opinion of him was important. More important than anything.
He flexed his fingers on her thighs, giving her a gentle squeeze through the layers keeping him from what he wanted most—her bare, delicious skin. “Then what is amiss? It is only a quarter past one. You stayed later last night.”
Sidney was acutely aware of the dwindling days in her stay here at Farnsworth Hall as well. He had only so much time in which to ply his charm. To win her over. To earn heryes. To make her his betrothed, and soon, his wife.
“I have enjoyed our time together,” she began.
And he sensed a loomingbut. Where the devil had he gone wrong? Was he pursuing her too doggedly? Was it truly one stupid sentence which was causing her reticence?
“I have enjoyed it as well.” He held her stare, drinking her in. The oil lamps set a glow in her cinnamon hair that lent her an ethereal air. “Do not go yet.”
“You are older, handsome, sought-after, and infinitely more experienced than I am. I do not want to be pursued or courted because of your guilt over what occurred in the lake.”
What had occurred in the lake had been the best moment of his bloody life. And what he felt for her now could not be further from guilt. It was all-consuming, a raging fire in his blood. She was the only woman he wanted. And though he had long believed love a lie, a clever fiction invented by artists and writers and poets, he now knew differently. His parents’ union had been one of convenience. But he had seen enough to know he did not wish that for himself. Not if he could have love.
Not if he could have Julianna.
He shook his head. “Can you truly not see yourself as I see you? Do you have no notion of how rare and special you are?”
She worried her upper lip some more, and he had to stifle a groan. Watching her torture her delectable mouth was, well,torture.
“Rare? Like the truffle?”
God, she was priceless, this woman. He wanted to devour her. He wanted to kiss her and make love to her and never let her go.
“Rare like Lady Julianna Somerset. The only woman I have ever wanted to make my wife,” he dared.
She swallowed, and he tracked the movement down her creamy throat. The moment seemed heavy and alive. So very alive, and in a way no other moment in his life had been. A definitive moment. He felt it to his marrow.
“Oh,” she murmured, her eyes wide.
Wide and blue and brilliant and fringed with long, coppery lashes. Those eyes told him so much. The more time he spent with her, the easier it was for him to read her gaze and understand her emotions. She was nervous now. Hesitant, too. But…receptive. Hopeful.
The time to press his suit was upon him, and he knew it.
“Do you trust me, sweetheart?” he asked, slowly caressing her thighs through those hated barriers. To the devil with the silk and the petticoats and chemise.
She paused for a breath longer than he would have preferred.
But then she gave him the answer he had been seeking, and nothing else mattered.
“Yes.”
