“It’s not midnight,” she said. “Or a full moon.”
“Bollocks. It all could have been so easy.”
With those words, he offered her his arm again and they turned back to the carriage.
On his way back, however, it occurred to him that this present wasn’t so bad.
After all, he was with her.
Chapter Fourteen
When John andCatherine returned to the inn at Lulworth, the innkeeper already had their rooms prepared. The maidservant left with Catherine—or his supposed wife, Mrs. Aster—and showed her up to her lodgings, while John stayed with the innkeeper to order their dinner and dispatch a message to Edington Hall. He wanted to alert his staff to his location and his planned return tomorrow evening. Furthermore, much like the last inn, this one also functioned as a pub, and John desperately needed a pint of ale and the opportunity to reflect on his day with Catherine.
After the innkeeper left him with his drink, he savored the first, blissful sip. He felt exhausted, physically and emotionally. The day had begun with him in agony over Catherine and his decision to leave their room the night before. Somehow, over the course of the day, this torment had been replaced by yet another type of anguish. He had convinced Catherine not to be his lover, but his friend. In the hours since, he had only grown more entranced by her. Before, he had idolized her beauty and her haunting power over him—now he had begun to see her not just as a doomed ideal, but a real person with an actual life. He now saw some of her sorrows, how they were similar and different from his own, and how she had borne them with a breathtaking strength. She had suffered more than he had and handled it much better.
And then there had been the kiss near the cottages, which had been hot and sweet, the prelude to something beyond pleasure. His blood still fizzed from that kiss and the hours of close contact with her. How many times had he wanted to kiss her again? To bring her over the brink once more, as he had last night? How many times had he fantasized about what they could do in the back of that coach? All afternoon, he had been besieged by conflicting emotions. His horror at their shared past, his desire for her in the present, his dawning respect for what she had endured and the skill with which she addressed their present circumstances. It all melded together into an agonizing knot of pain and pleasure.
And none of it gave him clarity about the evening ahead.
She had asked him not to kiss her and he wouldn’t. That said, it would make sense to supper together, in her room—he had given her the bigger chamber—and to discuss the plan for when they returned to Edington the next day.
Even now, after ten minutes apart, he yearned to return to his intimacy with her. He wanted its warmth and tension.
He was aware—all right, he hoped—that, with them so close, in a bedchamber no less, anything could happen. He savored that possibility. He knew he wouldn’t be able to resist her if she broke her own rule and kissed him first. He had resisted the utmost last night—but he wouldn’t be able to now. Not after today.
Then, a familiar voice sliced through his reverie.
And it wasn’t Catherine’s.
“Edington?”
He turned around and his stomach dropped.
Leith.
Of his three best friends, the worst to run into in his present circumstances was Leith. Montaigne and Tremberley were both easygoing by nature, but Leith was significantly more uptight, rigid even, and he didnotlike it when his friends took actions that he disapproved of. He was a particular man, Leith. His best friend was Montaigne and he himself walked out with a new courtesan every week, but if you wore the wrong color cravat or didn’t bow low enough, he wouldn’t let it drop.
“Mate,” John said, trying to crack a smile. “What are you doing here? In Lulworth?”
And then to his total disbelief another of his best friends walked straight into his line of vision.
“Montaigne?”
“Bloody hell,” Montaigne cried. “What in God’s name are you doing here, Forster? Sorry—” he said, correcting himself. “Edington now, I expect.”
John waved his hand to indicate that either title would do. He hadn’t seen Montaigne or Leith since his father’s death. Usually, when a nobleman came into a title, his friends, no matter how close or long-standing, took up this moniker as his new name. John had longed for this change of title since school. In fact, as a boy, on a number of occasions, he had wished his father dead just so that he could have the new name and no longer be known by Forster. Now that it had finally happened, however, he did not feel that long-anticipated relief. Instead, the new name left him numb.
His two friends stood in front of him and John enjoyed how amusing they looked side-by-side. They were so different—Montaigne, blond and mischievous; Leith, dark and conventional—and yet they both had identical expressions.
Of concern.
Bollocks.They knew.
It wasn’t that he thought his friends would betray him—or that he even minded telling them the truth. He just didn’t particularly feel like answering questions at this moment.
Montaigne signaled to the innkeeper to pour him and Leith pints. And then each friend took a seat at his table.
“Sit,” Leith said, too brightly. John obliged with a barely suppressed sigh.
