She shook her head. “No, I-I’d like to be in the cooler air a bit longer. I’ll return shortly.”
“Very good,” he said, then turned away from her and walked into the ballroom, leaving her alone on the terrace.
She slipped away from the main area, around the corner of the house to a darkened corner outside an unused parlor. There a small table and chairs were set. She sank down into the seat and rested her arms on the table. Then she put her head down and began to weep.
Simon shut the terrace door behind himself, then sucked in a great gulp of cool air. Since his conversation with Kit, he had felt this weight pressing down on him, crushing him. He hardly recalled the last twenty minutes. Hardly recalled the dances or his partners.
He didn’t recall anything except for the pounding refrain that echoed in his head.Margaret. Margaret. Margaret.
He deserved to be called out for his obsession. He deserved to be abandoned. And yet he couldn’t stop himself from thinking about her.
“I should leave,” he murmured. “Go away for a few months or a few years.”
He’d often thought that same thing, but he never followed through. Maybe it was time to finally do what was right. He bent his head and stared at his fingers, clenched against the stone wall of the terrace. He’d have to make a good excuse to go. He certainly couldn’t tell Graham and James that he was desperately in love with Margaret.
He was still pondering that notion when he heard a faint sound echo from another part of the terrace. He turned, looking around as he did so. He was alone out here, or at least he’d thought he was. But now that he was attending, he heard more sounds. Sounds of…weeping.
He moved forward, toward the dark part of the terrace that was away from the windows and doors, around the corner and away from where anyone would easily find a person.
“Hello?” he called out as he stepped into the darkness and stopped, allowing his eyes to adjust now that light no longer filtered from the house. When they did, he gasped.
A woman sat at a table in the shadow of the house, her head resting down on her arms, and she was crying.
He rushed toward her. “I say, are you all right?”
For the first time, the unknown lady seemed to recognize his presence. She jerked her head up, turned her face toward him, and he screeched to a halt.
“Meg?” he whispered.
She didn’t rise, but just stared up at him, her eyes unreadable in the half-dark. “Of course it would be you,” she said, her voice thick with tears before she set her head back down.
He should have walked away. He should have gone inside and found her brother or her fiancé and let one of them comfort her as was appropriate.
But Meg had always been his friend as well as his obsession. And he wasn’t about to walk away in her time of need.
He took a seat at the table, sliding it closer so that their legs brushed beneath the tabletop. Slowly, gently, he slid an arm around her shoulders and guided her toward him until she rested her cheek against his chest.
She let out a shuddering sigh, and the feel of her moving against him shot through him, waking every nerve ending, forcing him to face how desperately he wanted and adored her.
“What is it?” he asked, shocked he could form words when he was so damned aware of her in his arms.
She lifted a trembling hand and rested it against his heart. She could probably feel it pounding, even beneath all the layers of his clothing. He certainly felt the pressure of each and every one of her slender fingers.
“It’s nothing,” she said, her tone a little calmer now. “I was just overwhelmed for a moment.”
He looked down at her and caught a whiff of the honeysuckle fragrance of her hair. God, how he loved that smell. He’d planted fourteen honeysuckle bushes around his estate in Crestwood five years ago just to have a tiny piece of her there with him.
“Did someone say something untoward to you?” he asked. “Because I’ll go in there and—”
She tilted her face up toward his and his heart stopped. Her lips were three inches from his. Close enough that he could feel the faint stir of her breath against his mouth. Close enough that kissing her would be easy.
Hewantedto kiss her. He wanted to do more than kiss her.
She swallowed, her eyes going a little wild as she gently extracted herself from his arms, stood and walked out of the dark and into the safety of the light from the house.
“No one said anything,” she whispered, her voice barely carrying.
He should have thanked her for moving them back into safety. What he wanted to do instead was catch her by the velvet sash around her waist and draw her back into the corner.
