“I’ve broken things off with Miss Winton. I thought it prudent to leave the vicinity for the time being. I’ll return to my father’s estate and do what I can to fix matters there. Perhaps there’s nothing to be done. But . . .” He rubbed the back of his neck. “I must do what I can.”
“Miss Winton’s fortune would have done much to save your estate,” she said without inflection.
“Perhaps.”
“You would not be the first to marry for convenience’s sake. Nor would you be the last.”
“As touching as your regard for the lady is, drop the subject, Louisa.”
“I’m sorry for her.”
“She’ll fare well enough—she had the goodness to tell me that herself.”
Louisa nodded approvingly. “Then she’s a girl of spirit. Good. I would hate for her to be a ninnyhammer. I hope she has the good sense to find a decent husband who will treat her well.”
It was more likely she would marry a fortune hunter, but then again, had he not been a fortune hunter? Merely one who had balked before securing his prize.
A horrific thought. He could not dismiss it.
“I don’t wish to marry you for your fortune,” he said as the lamp swung and the wheels rattled underneath them, eating away the miles. “And if you would have me, I would have married you now even if you were as poor as the day you asked me. Even if you had nothing to your name.” He nodded, a full stop at the end of his sentence, a gesture of finality. “I wish I had married you that day. I think about that life often, and what we would have faced. Whether after a decade of hardship, we would have still loved each other.”
“Do you think we would have done?” Her voice was barely audible above the sound of the carriage’s endless movement.
“I would have done.” He made a restless movement. “I seem incapable of not wanting you, no matter how hard I’ve tried.”
She shifted, moving closer, her knee brushing against his. “And have you tried very hard?”
“Every second for nine years.”
Raw agony flashed across her face, a lightning strike there and gone. Then she rose, swaying with the movement of the chaise. He caught her hip without thinking, and she sank onto his lap,moving her skirts out of the way. “When we return to London, we will forget one another and the past.”
His arms encircled her, drawing her closer. “And until then?”
“Until then,” she whispered, “we have tonight.”
He could think of no reason to refuse her, save the pain of parting.
But that was tomorrow’s heartbreak, and if he was taking his future’s joy and spending it now, then so be it.
It was madness, foolishness, but love so rarely trod the path of reason.
“I want you,” he said as her mouth pressed a sweet kiss under his ear.I love you. He would not say it.
“I know.” She shifted eagerly on his lap, her desire a visceral thing between them. A lake he could drown in. “Take me. I am here; I am yours.”
Louisa wrapped her arms around his neck as he pushed inside her. Their movements were frantic, the passing of time marked so notably by the movement of the carriage. In an hour or so, they would need to stop and change their horses, but she would not let herself think of the future. There was only now.
There was only him.
They both groaned as she sank down all the way. His hands were on her hips, and she gathered them in hers, sliding her fingers through his and pinning them to the seat on either side of them.
“You are mine,” she said.
“I always have been. Since the moment in the maze.” His eyes held hers, even when she circled her hips and his breath left his body in a sharp exhalation.
He would not be hers soon, and she knew it would be better for them both if he forgot her, but that was a raw thought, jagged and painful as a thorn.
Instead, she fixed her gaze on his face and watched the play of emotion across it. The taut lines as he held back and let her take control, the way his sensuous mouth found hers. Their mingled breaths in the darkness, as the carriage rumbled and swayed and the lamp swung.
