She and Court had met in the boathouse after everyone else had been long abed, just as they had with Percy so many times before. She had been weeping, and he had taken her in his arms to comfort her. But somehow, the mingled tears and comfort and pain had turned into kisses, and then those kisses had become something more.
And then eager hands had begun sweeping clothing away.
“You recall it, don’t you?” Court asked quietly. “What happened between us.”
Of course she did. He had made love to her that night, and they had fallen asleep tangled together, draping their discarded garments over each other, too exhausted to return to the main house. Her irate father had been the one to discover them the next morning, and marriage had been their sole recourse.
A marriage he had not wanted, a fact which Court had made more than apparent when he had left her.
“I don’t want to speak of it,” she told him. “It’s in the past where it belongs.”
“It is hardly in the past. I’ve thought of nothing but that night.” He reached for her, his hand cupping her cheek. “That night has haunted me. Followed me across oceans and continents, until finally, I could stay away no longer, and it brought me back to you.”
His hand was warm and large, his thumb stroking her cheekbone, his gaze holding hers in its relentless thrall. “You’ll have to resign yourself to the fact that I intend to assert my husbandly rights at some point, Vivi.”
Despite herself, his words sent wicked heat cascading over her. Her body swayed, as if she were a plant seeking the sun, because that was what Court had always been to her: heat, vitality, life. But no, she would not give in with such ease.
“When will you seek to do so?” she asked. “Here? Perhaps against the trunk of this chestnut tree would suffice. I’ll lift my skirts, and you can rut away.”
Her words were ugly, and she knew it. He had never treated her with anything other than gentleness and tender care. But that had been before he had left her.
He clenched his jaw, the thumb that had been caressing her stilling. “Is that what you think of me, Vivi? That I am no better than an animal? Because if it is, let me reassure you.” At this, he pulled the hat from his head and leaned nearer, his lips almost grazing hers as he spoke. “I mean to woo you. To court you. To seduce you. To do everything I should have done a year ago.”
Those were words she would have longed for not long ago. Words she would have held in her heart when he had left her until the day he had abruptly returned. But the days had turned into months, and the months into a year, and her hurt and anguish had only compounded.
“Why did you not do it then, instead of leaving me?” she demanded, refusing to touch him in return, regardless of how much she yearned to do so.
“Because I wasn’t ready,” he murmured, his handsome face close, so close, his scent taunting her. “I wasn’t worthy of you then. I hated myself for what I had done, for the promise I had broken to Percy.”
Her brother’s name sent a shock through Vivi. It was the first Court had spoken the name aloud, the first she had heard anyone speak it in nearly a year. She still missed her beloved brother with an aching grief from which she knew she would never fully recover. His death had been such a shock. Percy had always been brimming with life, and though he had found himself in many scrapes over the years, he had always extricated himself with aplomb. The sunken yacht, however, had taken him to a watery grave.
“What promise did you make my brother?” She searched Court’s eyes, seeking answers. Seeking the truth.
He pressed his forehead to hers, and for a moment, they were sheltered together beneath the large, accommodating brim of her picture hat and it felt as if it was the two of them united against the world, just as it always should have been.
But then he spoke, shattering the illusion. “I promised Percy that I would never touch you.”
And suddenly the reason for his yearlong absence became abundantly, terribly clear.
She drew back enough so that she could see Court’s face, hold his gaze. “When?”
Vivi wasn’t even certain why the timing mattered to her, and yet somehow, it did.
“Since you were eighteen and I danced with you at a ball. It was a promise I kept for years in deference to our friendship. And then, in a moment of weakness, I broke that promise, and I couldn’t forgive myself for it.”
She felt as if someone had knocked the air from her, and she almost doubled over to catch her breath. Vivi recalled that ball. It had been the first time Court had looked at her as if she was a woman rather than his best friend’s sister. And when he had whirled her about the ballroom, hope had risen, firm and determined, in her heart. Later, when he had teased her about mud puddles and frogs at their next meeting as if she were still a girl, and he had told her she was the younger sister he had never had, she had been thrust into despair, thinking she had imagined his interest.
She was reeling, struggling to comprehend the implications of this revelation. “Percy asked you to stay away from me?”
“He was damned protective over you, just as a brother ought to be,” Court said, withdrawing his hand and leaving her bereft. “He told me I was far too much of a wild rake, and back then, I cannot lie, Vivi. I was, while you were young and innocent. He feared that a dalliance between the two of us would only end in heartache for you and the ruination of my friendship with him. He was afraid I would hurt you, and he was not wrong in that. It would seem that I have, and badly.”
He had turned her unrequited love to ash, but that was another matter. She was still stuck on the unsettling revelation that Court had not left because of Vivi herself, but because of some vow she had never known had been made. A vow to her brother.
Vivi shook her head, feeling as if the world had suddenly turned itself inside out. “Why would he make you promise?”
Court’s expression shifted, hardening. “Because I had asked his permission to court you. He was angry. Shocked, I reckon. He had always believed I considered you a sister until that moment. He refused to hear it, and he made me swear to him that I would never touch you.”
“You wanted to court me,” she repeated numbly. “After the ball where we danced.”
