She crossed the corridor. “Please don’t.” She wasn’t proud of the things she’d said and done, but neither did she wish to relinquish the memory of that kiss. “Neither of us,” she hesitated, “has gotten much rest. I…” she wet her lips, “…I was about to, well…” She inhaled. “You should be able to sleep tonight.”
He lifted his brows. His hopeful expression made her want to thread her fingers through his hair and clasp his head to her chest. Appalling…and, also, sweet.
“A truce?” he asked.
She nodded. “A truce.”
His exhale was audible relief. And not just any relief, but the relief of a man holding a spent pistol, peering through smoke and discovering his opponent had survived their duel unscathed.
“Where do we stand?” he asked.
“That,” she replied carefully, “remains to be seen.”
He opened his eyes. “A test?”
As if she had any right to test a marquess. “Time for us to know one another, more like.”
His face lit with a promise of knowing that went beyond words. Then, he took her right hand into both of his and placed a lingering kiss against her knuckles—adoration that could and would spread to her body the moment she granted him permission.
Heat and desire urged a budding tenderness to blossom. She turned her hand and cupped his cheek.
“Good night, Lord Bromton.”
A smile ghosted his lips. “Sleep well,” he murmured, “my hellion.” He bowed and then disappeared into the darkness.
His hellion she wasn’t.
But, heaven help her, she wanted to be.
Chapter Five
After a rocky start, Bromton could hardly believe everything had fallen so effortlessly into place. He eased into the sway of the carriage carrying them all to Sunday service and willed away a nudge from his conscience.
He should be pleased, for goodness sake. Katherine had offered time to know one another. Last night, her offer might as well have been a vein of pure gold for all the greedy glee it had roused in his soul.
So, why did he now feel he had triumphed without winning?
He glanced at Katherine. Didn’t the hellion understand that a trap was a trap, no matter how tentative the rabbit? Not that he’d be foolish enough to look a gift horse in the mouth. He drummed his fingers against his knee as the carriage stilled, shunting aside thoughts of Trojans.
Thankfully, most of the village parishioners had already taken their seats within the small chapel. Only the rector and an older woman lingered in the churchyard.
“Ah, Markham,” the rector said, “what a delightful surprise.”
Markham returned the dismayingly cheerful greeting, made introductions, and then inquired after the health of the elderly woman—Miss Watson. The spinster beamed with happiness and then proceeded to regale them with a list of aliments that, if true, would have confined her, not only to home, but to bed.
Yet, if Markham and his sisters found Miss Watson tedious, they did not betray their frustration. Instead, Markham offered solicitous concern, while Katherine and Julia supplied various suggestions.
The old marquess would have been revolted if he had witnessed a noble family exhibiting such familiarity with someone so clearly beneath them. He would have said the Stanleys’ rapport with the spinster bore the marks of gentry.Lowergentry.
Katherine unpinned her shawl and wrapped it around Miss Watson’s shoulders. Markham dismissed the woman’s protests with a hearty chuckle. All the while, the rector looked on with unmistakable pride.
Confounding.
Markham and his sisters—Bromton blinked—were genuinelyliked. Not just esteemed or admired, but liked.
Bromton had been esteemed, perhaps even admired, but, with the exception of Farring—whose affability left one exhausted, truth be told—no one, to Bromton’s knowledge,likedhim, not even the woman who had given him birth. Certainly, the ladies of his parish church had never eyed him with delight the way Miss Watson eyed Markham and his sisters.
Bromton frowned. Markham’s dimples didn’t hurt their perception of him as an affable gentleman. Those dimples misled. Little did these people know the pup had made a marquess quake in the not-so-distant past.
