He could kiss her... she could kiss him. Her lips parted, her eyes closed and his breath caressed her cheek, warm and sweet. If she just let this happen, it would change everything. Her plans, the school...
The school!
She pushed him away and jumped to her feet. Caught off balance, Sebastian fell backwards. He lay on his back and to her surprise he began to laugh.
‘I deserved that. Please forgive me, Isabel. I would not risk your friendship for anything.’
He held out his hand and she grasped it, not that he needed any assistance in rising.
He rose smoothly to his feet as she said in a voice, husky with her confused emotions, ‘Nothing happened, Lord Somerton.’
For a long moment they stood looking at each other. He swallowed and looked down at their still clasped hands. His fingers relaxed their grip and he ran the hand through his disordered hair.
She handed him back his soggy handkerchief.
‘I am grateful for the loan of your handkerchief.’ He cleared his throat and glanced back the way they had come. ‘I am keeping you from your home, Isabel. Let me walk you back.’
‘I can make my own way...’
He crooked his arm. ‘Please, I insist...’
She looked up into his face, seeing the contrition in his eyes. Once again, that warm rush seeped through her bones and she bit her lip and took a deep breath. She could not, would not, allow these feelings. Not again... not ever.
‘No, thank you, Lord Somerton,’ she said and, turning, she hurried away, before he saw the tears that coursed down her cheeks.
Sebastian watched her go,her proud, stiff back disappearing around a hedge.
‘Damn it!’
He swore and hit his leg with his hat.
What was it about her that aroused feelings in him that he had not felt since… since Inez.
He needed to walk off his frustration and anger with himself, so he turned and strode along the path leading around the lake, following it up to the summer pavilion in the trees. It was a pretty little folly, built of once white marble in the style of a circular Roman temple. A statue of Diana frolicked in its centre and marble benches lined the sides.
He sat down on the steps and looked down at the house, the view obscured by the foliage. Thinking about improving the view distracted him from thinking about Isabel. In a tree nearby, a cuckoo called, and a soft breeze brought the scent of the new mown hay drifting in.
‘What was I thinking ...?’
He had behaved like a boor, like the commoner he was. He had compromised the one person whose good opinion he valued most. What had been done could not be undone and he had to face Isabel again, see the reproach in her eyes.
Her good opinion anchored him to his new life. More than that, it also represented a thread of hope that he could love again—that he was learning to love again—and he had thrown it all away.
‘Do I dare?’ he said aloud, looking up at the few wispy clouds in the blue sky.
Anthony had much to answer for, and the damage he had done to his innocent young wife could never be forgiven, but could it be mended? Did he dare risk his own heart again to woo and win Isabel? It would have to be done slowly. He had seen the fear in her eyes, like a frightened deer that realises the man with the gun is a foe not a friend but, before that, he had seen something else. Yearning? Desire?
There was no impediment to any match between them. They were both widowed, they were both of the same class, whatever that meant. But they were both damaged.
The cuckoo in the trees called again.
‘You’re right,’ he said to the unseen bird. ‘I think it is possible, but I must tread carefully.’
Chapter Forty
Sebastian walked back to the big house, and dispatched Peter Thompson to collect the horse from the dower house.
Entering his bedchamber, he found Connie sitting in his favourite chair reading a report from Bragge that he had brought upstairs to read at his leisure. She looked up and, from her blotchy face, he guessed she had been crying.
