“I mean it,” she said seriously. “I value you as a colleague. I don’t want to compromise our working relationship over this.”
“If it really bothers you, I’ll quit.”
She knitted her brows. “You would leave my society in order to sleep with me?”
“There are numerous positions available for a fellow with my particular set of skills.” He ran a fingertip along her jaw. “However, there is only one you. And, sweeting, the positions we could try…”
Intrigued by the dark seduction in his eyes, she tilted her head back.
Devlin’s kiss was as she remembered: smooth and skilled, objectively delightful. He took his time, and she appreciated it. Appreciated the courtly pressure of his lips, the practiced glide of his tongue. Yet something was missing, she was vexed to realize. That spark, that feeling of ungovernable hunger that Sebastian’s kiss had always unleashed in her. Perhaps Devlin was just warming up, and she needed to move things along.
Boldly, she slid her fingers into his hair, pulling him closer. He swept his tongue into her mouth, tasting her with undeniable finesse. He smoothed a palm down her neck, her shoulder, cupping her breast. Yet her heart didn’t race, and she didn’t feel as if she’d fly from her own skin if she didn’t get more.
Instead, she was…thinking.
Dash it all. This is Sebastian’s fault. What will it take for me to be free of him?—
The smashing glass jolted her from her thoughts.
An instant later, she was pushed to the floor, Devlin on top of her.
“Stay down.”His gaze was focused and alert. “Until I find out what’s happening.”
“I know what happened.”
Heart thudding, she pointed, and Devlin twisted his head to look behind him. A large rock sat against the pot of a lemon tree, a comet of glass bits in its wake.
Devlin lowered his brows. “Who the devil would throw a rock through the window?”
The answer crashed into Charlie’s head. It shattered her denial, reducing it to shards smaller than those of the broken window. As the truth blazed, she realized that she had always known.
Nine
It was nearing one in the afternoon, and the man sitting on a bench upon the grassy knoll knew the nearby ships, naval and merchant alike, were waiting. Biding their time, just like he was. He’d come every day for the last three days, hoping for a sign. He told himself that if she did not come, she had forgotten him—and he would leave things be. He would continue protecting her from the shadows, staying where he belonged.
Staying away from her was a wise strategy. The right one.
The one his mentor had told him in no uncertain terms that he must abide by.
Unfortunately, when it came to her, he’d been neither wise nor right in his actions. Nor was he particularly good at following rules. Which was probably why he’d ended up on the path he was on.
The ships’ ochre sails formed an autumnal forest as they sat anchored in the Thames, the telescopes of their navigators trained upon the bright-red ball hovering above the Royal Observatory. He’d been seventeen the first time he saw the time ball. Seventeen and so miserable that he’d almost changed his mind about coming, but the family’s kindly gardener, knowing his interests in maps and ships, had urged him not to miss the opportunity.
It had turned out to be the best day of his young life.
Even now, he felt anticipation build inside him as the ball rose halfway up the thin steel mast the way it always did five minutes before the hour. In another three, the ball would rise all the way to the top. Then, at precisely one o’clock, the ball would drop, verifying the time, an essential measurement that allowed navigators to chart their courses.
It was the reliability that captivated him. The idea that no matter how lost one was, how forsaken, one need only find the red ball to right one’s path. Too bad the rest of life didn’t work that way.
The ball climbed to the pinnacle. It was as exposed as he was, quivering in readiness for the fall. In those anxious moments, he doubted everything. All the choices he’d made, the decisions that brought him to where he was now, sitting alone atop a hill, hoping for something he had no right to hope for. For something he’d destroyed. For something he’d longed for every moment, every second of too many years.
The ball dropped, and his hopes plummeted with it.
A couple joined him on the knoll in time to catch the ball’s descent. Husband and wife, he guessed, by the way the gentleman placed a hand on the small of the lady’s back. The domesticity of the gesture pierced him with bittersweet yearning. What he wouldn’t give for the right to stand in the light with his beloved, to have her lean against him with trust in her eyes, a smile on her lips. Before the couple left, they nodded politely in his direction, and he nodded back, careful to keep the brim of his hat angled low, his face obscured. A habit in his line of work.
A new presence stirred his nape. The shadow that fell upon him felt like a caress. He shot to his feet, turning.
His heart thundered as he faced her. It was like staring into the sun, a dazzlingly painful sensation, one that he could never grow accustomed to, not even if he lived to be a hundred. Charlotte Elizabeth Anne Danvers Courtenay was the most beautiful woman he’d ever laid eyes upon, and nothing would change that. Not years, not distance, not even mistakes beyond redemption. Nothing could change a beauty that ran as deep as hers, that was rooted in intelligence, passion, and indomitable pluck.
