“We might have been able to if you hadn’t been shot,” she said tartly, but the glimmer of a smile in her tired eyes belied her words. “It was most inconvenient of you, Nate.”
“Believe me, I’m more than fully aware of it.”
She drew her finger down the windowpane, tracing patterns he couldn’t read. “Are you sure going back to London is the best idea?” she asked after a moment. “You’re not yet fully recovered, and—”
“I am not an invalid.”
“No, you merely have a hole in your shoulder.”
“A healing hole.”
“A hole,” she repeated, glaring at him. “Several of them, in fact. And I hardly see what you think you are going to achieve inLondonof all places. The Season is over.”
If he could have persuaded Theo to visit Havercroft without him, he would have done so, and made enquiries in Town. But she would not have gone, and he did not feel equal to the argument that would have no doubt followed. His Theo was many things, but compliant was not one of them.
Had he known the true state of her stubbornness when he had offered for her, he would have thought twice, which only left him to be grateful he had not known. Just a few months of marriage had served to assure him that there was one woman he could love, and she was sitting at the other side of the carriage.
“We would be better off going to Havercroft,” she said. “I haven’t seen the estate since our marriage, after all, and I know it’s beautiful in the summer. Town is odiously hot and dusty.”
“Perhaps after a week or two we could retire there,” he suggested.
Her gaze snapped to his, and despite her exhaustion, her eyes were alive with suspicion. “After a week or two of what?”
“What do you think, Theo?” He sighed, but there was nothing for it. And he supposed, if he was being honest with himself—something he had been forced to do alarmingly frequently over these past few months—she deserved to know the precise situation. “I’m intending to investigate who I believe to be behind this.” Or rather, how he couldprovewho was behind this.
There was only one person who, to his knowledge, had the motive to want him dead. All he needed to do was find evidence of it.
Theo narrowed her eyes and crossed the carriage to him, her knee brushing distractingly against his. His recovery had made it impossible to further their intimate relationship, but there was no denying he wanted to. And the longer he denied himself, the more desperately aware of her he became.
“You are not adequately recovered,” she told him.
“You have been my nurse, and I’m grateful, but I must ask you to trust me to know my limits.”
Her eyebrows rose and she took his hand. “I am to trust the man who once broke his leg climbing a tree that he was warned off by both the groomandthe steward?”
“And my father,” Nathanial said, grinning slightly at the memory. “But I believe, my sweet, you were standing at the base of the tree encouraging me and telling me which branches I should climb next.”
She glared at him, though a smile quivered at the corner of her mouth. “How ungallant of you to remind me.”
“You have always been my partner in crime,” he said, and unable to resist the temptation any longer, slid his fingers around the back of her neck, brought her face to his, and kissed her.
At first, she froze, and he wondered if he’d made a mistake. Over the course of his recovery, she had been careful to keep her distance, and he had never approached her, knowing that giving into something like this was the first step along a slippery slope he did not know he could resist for long. Self-control had never been a problem except with Theo. He had never found it difficult to resist a lady before, because he wanted none the way he wanted her. Desire was in him a hunger, an ache, and the only thing that could ever sate him was her.
He trailed his fingers along the hinge of her jaw, and she softened under him, pliant and yielding. When he swiped his thumb across her cheek, she opened her mouth to him, and the sound she made as he met her tongue with his almost undid him.
Lord, how he wanted her. That need had him tugging her closer, skimming his hands down the line of her body, along her waist and the curve of her hips. There was too much material in the way, and by the time his rational body had caught up with his instinct, he was already running a hand down her leg.
And she was cupping his face in her hands and kissing him with such desperation he might have believed she was starving. Which suited him, because he’d been starving their entire marriage, and she was the feast, the antidote to his hunger.
“Nate,” she whispered against his lips, but he didn’t want to hear what she had to say; some instinctive part of his brain knew it was going to be a suggestion they stop, and he didn’t want to stop. Not now—not when they were so close.
His fingers had found her calf now, and he ran his palm along the soft curve, inching up until he found her knee. He took hold of it and eased her around until she was straddling him. The skirts of her dress were in the way, and he bundled them up and off. He needed to feel her, and she needed to feel him, how hard he was for her. He wanted her to feeleverything.
For a moment, her hips shifted against him, and the sensation was enough to make him groan. But as she did, she leant against his shoulder, and his groan turned into a grunt of pain.
She threw herself off him, eyes wide, hair wild—had he done that?—and panting. Her tongue moistened her lips as she watched him.
Damn. He leant his head back against the seat and tried not to notice how, now the wound had been disturbed, every jostle of the carriage sent spikes of pain through him.
