His blue eyes held hers and his hand wrapped around her wrist, stilling her. “Sometimes,” he said hoarsely, the air between them heating and crackling, “I wonder if there is ever a world where I hold out against you.”
“I hope there is not.” She licked her lips, and his gaze dropped to her mouth for a heartbeat. “And if there is, I pray it is not this one.”
“Why did you bring me here, Louisa?”
There was a pressure in her chest, a sense that she dangled on the very edge of a precipice. This was the point of no return. “Because I love the flowers,” she said. “And because I love the way you look at me when you think there is no one else to see.”
He swallowed, and she was transfixed by the bobbing in his throat. They were close, so close, his hand still fastened around her wrist, her fingers still pressed against his waistcoat. She could almost deceive herself that she felt the pounding of his heart. “How do I look at you?”
“The way the sun gazes at the moon.”
The corner of his mouth kicked up, and a dimple pressed in his cheek, two points of softness in a stern face she had come to adore. “Very pretty. I might almost have thought you’d read some of Comerford’s poetry.”
“You look at me as though you are starving,” she whispered. Her breath caught in her lungs; her heart hammered. “And I feel it too. The hunger.”
He closed his eyes and groaned. “Louisa—”
“Would you kiss me if I agreed to be your wife?”
His eyes flew open, blue gaze shocked. A line creased between his brows. “You’ve asked me this before.”
“Yes, and then you told me no because you can offer me nothing. But I have a question for you. If you were my husband and I was your wife, if we were married, would you allow me to paint?”
His fingers flexed on her wrist, as though the thought of their marriage was somehow unbearable. “How could I force my wife to relinquish something that brought her so much joy?”
“Then I have nothing to fear by marrying you, and nothing to gain by marrying another. Regardless of wealth.”
His thumb rubbed slowly on her pulse point, but although neither of them had moved—she had not thought either of them had moved—they were coming together. The trajectory of their orbit was inevitable: they would soon collide. She hoped stars would bloom in their wake. “What are you saying?”
“I think you know.”
A disbelieving laugh broke free. “You’re asking me to marry you?”
“I’m requesting that you ask me.” She tipped her head back to look fully into his face, her arm now trapped between their two bodies, her skirts brushing his legs. “Ask me to marry you, Henry.”
“You know all the reasons I can’t.”
“I know you have not yet graduated from Cambridge. And I know my mother disapproves of you and would not consent to an engagement. But when I am one-and-twenty, I will be free to marry whomever I please.”
The line between his brows deepened, and she wished she could reach up and smooth it away. “That’s in three years’ time, Louisa.”
“I won’t waver. Will you?”
“That isn’t a consideration.”
“Then ask me.”
“And if you change your mind before you reach your majority?” he asked, which she privately thought was laughable. Evidently he was unaware of the way he moved through the world as though he merely had to command it to obey. At only twenty, his will was stronger than that of gentlemen twice his age.
“What must I do to assure you that my feelings will not change merely because they will be subjected to time’s unlawful demands? Do you want me to tell you that I love you?”
He clamped his other hand over her mouth. “Don’t.”
“Why not?” she tried to ask, but her words were muffled. She flicked her tongue along his palm, tasting salty skin, and his eyes darkened. No longer the summer sky—they were dusk and dawn and stormy grey. His desire was a brand, and she offered her skin to its heat, craving it, savouring the knowledge that right now, as he looked down at her, he wanted her as much as she wanted him.
Slowly, he removed the hand from her mouth, and she licked her lips. “Give me one good reason why I should not tell you how I feel,” she said, her throat tight. “One reason that does not involve me being incapable of knowing my own mind.”
“Because,” he said, the edges of his words fraying, “if you were mine, I don’t think I could bear to lose you.”
