He kissed her one last time, letting the gown fall between them, then stepped back down the corridor. He was gone all too quickly, though she couldn’t blame him for it. She wondered if he was suffering the same shock that she was, amazed they had gone so far, finding their desire so strong that they were too weak to resist.
Alaina reached for the door and hastened inside. She closed it behind her and leaned on the door, gasping in shock as she laid a hand on her chest.
She looked around the room, half expecting to see Caroline in there. With relief, she shook her head. It would have been awful if Caroline had been in that room and had heard everything they had done against that door.
Alaina stumbled away from the door, moving further into the room. A fire had been lit, and she happily fell into a chair by the fire, finding her legs were now so weak after what she had done that she had to sit down. As she capitulated into a chair, she saw a small slip of paper on the mantelpiece. She jumped up, reaching for it, at first thinking it was from Caroline, only to see that it was addressed to Callie.
It’s from Marcus.
She peeled open the paper, reading fast.
‘Callie, a poem for you.’
She lost herself in his words, so caught up in the heartfelt poem that she staggered away from the fireplace and fell back onto the bed with a soft thud. She held the poem to her chest.
“It’s not an act,” she whispered aloud. The poem, his words, what he had done to her against that door made it all absolutely certain. He cared for her as she did him.
***
Caroline giggled as she stepped out of the kitchen, moving towards the door that led out into the kitchen garden. It was still unbelievable to her, the fact that she was now so free that she could step outside at night if she wished to breathe in the fresh air.
She left the kitchen business far behind, where the other maids and footmen were still talking over all their plans for the next day with the house. She’d enjoyed hearing all about their news, listening to the lives of the other maids and how they had all ended up in that house. There was one person in particular who had been missing from that room – David.
Caroline gritted her teeth, angered that she seemed to notice how much where David was. She stumbled out into the kitchen garden, her hands on her hips as she breathed in the cool night air and smiled.
Sighing with satisfaction, she walked through the garden, trailing her hands over the rosemary bushes nearby and making their scent leap into the air. If she had tried to leave her father’s house in the middle of the night for a walk in the garden, there would have been uproar at the idea, but not here. In this house, she was free to do as she wished.
She left the kitchen garden and walked into another much smaller walled garden. The borders were high with tall spiralling flowers, and the walls were peppered with green ivy. Her eyes darted between the plants, admiring the way the dew-covered leaves glittered in the moonlight, and then all at once, she smelled smoke.
She halted, sniffing the air. It was not the sort of smoke that came from a fire. No, she would know that smell anywhere. She would smell it after dinner parties where the women were told to leave the dining room for coffee so the men could smoke their pipes alone without them. She had often wondered what smoking would be like but had been told in most insistent terms by her father that smoking was not a ladylike pastime. He had ignored her scoffs about such a thing.
She looked around, seeking out the person who was smoking.
A short distance away, leaning against a patch of wall, stood a tall man, his handsome face turned up to the moonlight and basked silver in that light. He breathed out a perfect circle of smoke into the air, watching as it hovered before dissipating.
It’s him.
Caroline froze, her stomach tense when she recognized David’s face. He hadn’t yet noticed her, far too focused on what he was doing. She stepped back, intent on escaping before he could see her. She was still too embarrassed to face him after the way she had stood there ogling him in the stable.
Yet her shoe scuffed a pebble beneath her. At once, David’s head jerked in her direction.
For a moment, there was no sound between them. They just stared at one another, with Caroline all too aware of the way her heartbeat was pounding against her chest walls.
This is mad. How can I be so attracted to him when I do not know him at all?
David still didn’t say anything. In fact, he was so silent that she wondered if she would be able to slip away fast and run back to the house. Slowly, he raised his pipe and inhaled. There was something about watching him do such a thing that riveted her to the spot.
I don’t want to go anywhere.
He lowered the pipe again and very slowly stepped away from the wall. He joined the main path of the garden, turning to face her. He was nowhere near as undressed now as he had been in that stable, yet he didn’t have a jacket on. His sleeves were rolled up to his elbows, revealing a flash of muscle on his forearms. That glimpse of skin was enough to make Caroline’s mouth dry.
Suddenly, he smiled at her, though she could not return it.
“I was waiting for the moment you were going to run away again,” he said suddenly, breaking the silence between them, though his voice was still quiet.
“Did you want me to run away from you?” Caroline asked, working to keep her voice level.
He tilted his head to the side, looking her up and down. She felt as if those eyes pinned her to the spot.
