“One more minute?” She whispered into my chest.
“I’ll give you two.”
In the end, we had three. And it wasn’t nearly enough.
Thirty-Five
NORTH ROAD—APRIL 14, 1817
DAVINA
It was better this way,in the long run. A little hurt now to prevent devastation later.
Kit was quiet as night fell, sober as he stared at the passing Scottish darkness. Not at me, never at me. It was quite clear that he couldn’t bear to look at me. And I hadn’t noticed, hadn’t realized, quite how much time Kit spent looking at me.
He frowned at me when I did something I knew he would disapprove of. After every adventure, he surveyed me for injury with a worried brow. And most recently, he looked at me with joy, with love. The emotion was drawn his warm eyes and in the full, lovely smiles I’d earned.
And now… nothing. He glared steadfast out the window. In that moment, I couldn’t help but worry about the smiles. Who would coax them from him now? Would they know how rare and precious they were? Would they recognize the false, quarter smile with the half-hearted lip tilt? Would they learn the blinding magnificence that began in the corners of his eyes and traveled along his cheek to the soft fullness of his lips? Thethought made my heart ache, deep in my chest and all the way to my fingertips.
It seemed unlikely that Kit and I would meet again after we parted. Perhaps we might see each other in passing at a ball someday. But Kit was not my solicitor any longer, not my protector.
Suddenly, I recognized how utterly alone I was. Mother was my mother. There was never anyone first in her mind but herself. Cee had Will now, and while she made time for me, it was not the same. Xander had Tom, his son, and Scotland. I had nothing but my adventures. Adventures that would become a lot riskier without Kit’s dependable rescue.
It was rather a lot oflittle hurtsI was feeling. Between the knot in my throat and the ache in my chest, I was struggling to breathe between surreptitious glances at the back of Kit’s head.
Tears threatened to escape again, but I’d managed to restrain them after he released me. Now they were a silent companion, unobtrusive to anyone but me. My head had begun to throb some hours ago, the way it so often did after a cry.
I’d almost broken again when we stopped to change horses and Rory looked at me, turned to Kit, and then turned back to me and wrapped her arms around me. But I’d managed to choke back more tears.
At some point, late into the night, I must have fallen asleep, because when I woke it was daylight. It was day and I still ached, my head, my throat, my heart, the very center of me. It was all agonizing.
Kit still studied the window. If he’d moved at all, I wasn’t able to tell.
We changed horses again quickly at an inn somewhere north of the border. Kit made no move to get up, so I grabbed a loaf of bread and butter and returned just as Alfie and Rory were finishing the change.
“Oh, lass, we’ll turn off to yer brother’s estate about a mile ahead. Then it’s only ten or so on.”
I nodded, then slipped back inside the carriage. My throat was so tight, I couldn’t actually verbalize my contribution, but Kit turned when I set my offering between us.
“Thank you,” he replied, his voice gruff with disuse and sentiment. He made no move toward the food, instead turning back to the window.
Too soon, we turned off the main road onto a smaller path. Kit gave no indication that he noticed.
A glint caught my eye. Light spilled in from the window, catching the gold of the ring still on my finger.
The tightness in my chest left no room for air. And so, devastatingly breathless, I tugged Kit’s ring off my finger. It clung to my knuckle, begging to remain where it belonged. But I worked it over the joint.
“Kit?”
He turned to me, his gaze catching on the same flash of light, this time from the palm of my hand. His eyes, the color of burnt charcoal, made no effort to hide his sadness. The canyons between his brows were so deep I couldn’t imagine them ever filling again. His lips parted at the sight of the ring before he swallowed thickly. The nod was nearly imperceptible, and the subsequent exhale quiet.
Slowly, with the long, masculine fingers I had so admired, he caught the ring between the thumb and forefinger. Not even for a fraction of a second, did his finger touch my palm.
I watched as he pinched the gold band and worked it between his finger and thumb, studying the ring. After a moment, he slipped it on the littlest finger of his right hand. It got stuck somewhere before the knuckle, but he was apparently convinced of its security because he merely turned back to the window.
I turned back to my own hand, where the third finger sat empty. It should have felt strange when I put the ring on. Twenty years with that finger bare and now it longed for the impossibly familiar metal band.
This, these sensations, were precisely the reason I didn’t wish to enter into a marriage in the first place. They were the reason I avoided attachments. But Kit refused to be placed into the appropriate box and now I had all of these feelings. It was entirely his fault.
