She sat up in bed, feeling about in the darkness for the pocket watch he kept on a bedside table to facilitate her returns home. Miranda snatched it up, peering through the murky light to see the time. In all the weeks of their clandestine meetings, she had never lingered so long at his house in St John’s Wood.
And the weeks had passed by in a flurry of heated kisses, sumptuous dinners, and decadent lovemaking.
Three days.
Impossible to believe that was all they had remaining.
Her heart stuttered at the reminder that their time together was rapidly dwindling, just like the night and its protective darkness likely were. The pocket watch slid from her grasp, falling to the Axminster with a muffled thump.
“Miranda?” Rhys’s deep voice cut through the silence from next to her in bed, slumberous and raspy. “What is it, darling?”
“I must have fallen asleep,” she explained. “I was trying to find the time, but I dropped your watch.”
His arm slid around her bare waist beneath the bedclothes, warm and possessive. “Don’t go.”
She was tempted to linger. He could never know how much she treasured these moments alone, when they were close in the aftermath of their shared passion, all seemingly right with the world. When their affair was over, she would return to these memories, she knew, again and again.
Hollow comfort.
“I must,” she told him softly, hating that she could not stay here with him, that she could not wake in his arms to the morning light.
That they could never acknowledge what they were to each other. But there was no future together. It was an inevitable truth she faced each morning that took her one day closer to what would be their last.
He pulled her gently against his chest, nuzzling her throat. “You are the stars in my night sky, glittering and mysterious. I want you all day long, and yet you leave me before the rising of the sun.”
His words were unexpectedly poetic, tinged by his flair for the melodramatic. So very Rhys.
Oh, how she loved this man. How she would miss him when they soon had to part.
Miranda sniffed, blinking furiously against impending tears.
Three more days, she told herself.It isn’t over yet.
“Such is the way of it for us,” she reminded him softly, caressing his forearm, which was still slung around her waist. “I need to return home whilst it’s yet dark.”
“Or you could stay here.” He cupped her breast, gently massaging. “Remaining would be far more pleasurable than leaving, I assure you.”
She smiled sadly, desire sparking back into flame despite the heavy emotion weighing on her heart. “You needn’t convince me of that. There is nothing I would like better than to stay in this bed with you all night and all day.”
“Mmm.” He pinched her nipple lightly, sending a twinge of desperate yearning to pool between her thighs. “Then why don’t you?”
“You know why.” She took his wrist in a firm grasp and plucked his hand from her breast. “Besides, I shall see you later tonight, won’t I?”
“Of course, but you don’t even have to go to your school today. Why not linger just a bit longer?”
“Because I cannot risk being seen returning to my home at dawn,” she countered. “Particularly not in a brougham that isn’t mine.”
“Blast.”
She slipped from the bed and retrieved his pocket watch from the floor, holding it up to the moonlight to discover that the hour was even later than she had supposed. “My goodness, it’s nearly dawn.”
Panic set over her, chasing any lingering desire.
“Bloody hell,” Rhys grumbled, rising as well. “Don’t worry, darling. I’ll see to it that you’re safely returned to your home before the sun rises.”
By lamplight, they both hastened to dress, Rhys playing lady’s maid for her and helping her to fasten her corset and button her gown back into place before restoring her hair to its customary chignon. He threw on his trousers and other garments with a swift agility that suggested this was not the firsttime he had dressed in a hurry. She tried not to think about that as they dashed to his waiting brougham together.
And as the carriage bounded over the roads that would return her to her modest home, she tried not to think about the women who would, inevitably, take secret early-morning carriage rides with Rhys. The women who would have the privilege of smoothing down his wayward golden waves, of lacing their fingers through his, and of leaning into the comforting strength of his solid frame.
