“Tell me,” he said, and his voice was so soft, so gentle. She heard his empathy and she saw it, too, as his face continued to change as what she said sank in.
This was not a reaction she was accustomed to. She turned her face and looked out at the lake. “He was a suitor of Charity’s, back in Boston,” she said. “Looking to get her purse, of course. She didn’t want him and she had given him a vicious set down. I felt…sorry for him.”
He nodded. “Of course you did. You’re kind.”
“Too kind, it seems,” she said with a laugh she had been using to cover up her pain for years. “I found him in the garden, angry and pacing. I tried to be sympathetic, to soften what she’d said. I thought I’d helped, but then he grabbed me and—”
She cut herself off and drew a ragged breath as those images she fought so hard to keep at bay came back. That other man’s hands, his mouth, his cruel smile as he took what she did not want to give.
Baldwin’s jaw set. “He forced you.”
She nodded. “Yes.” A tear escaped her eye and she wiped it away. “He took what he desired and he left me in tatters in the gazebo. My cousin found me. She was actually…kind, as she can sometimes be. But once my family found out, it ruined me.”
He wrinkled his brow. “But they knew you’d been assaulted.”
She shrugged. “Whether I gave or he took, they felt I could have been more prudent. Perhaps they were right at that. I should not have followed him.”
“Just as you shouldn’t have followed me,” he ground out.
She jerked her gaze to him in horror. “Don’t you dare compare yourself to him, or what we did last night to what he did three years ago.”
“I’m sorry,” he said, and it was so very clear that he was. “That was cruel of me to do so after what you’ve endured. How did you survive?”
“I cried quite a bit,” she said with a sigh. “I reached out for support and found no one there to reach back. So I learned to depend upon myself. I learned to ride out all the horrible emotions that come out when I think of that night. I learned to forgive myself and to recognize that it wasn’t my fault.”
He tilted his head. “You constantly amaze me,” he murmured, almost more to himself than to her. “You are beautiful and kind and so damned strong. There is no one in the world like you, Helena. No one in any world.”
Heat flooded her cheeks, not just at his compliment, but at the way he looked at her. Like he truly believed she was some singular, wonderful creature. When she was with him, she could almost believe it, too. And that was why what they’d shared mattered so much. Why she didn’t want it to be a regret.
“Last night you said something,” she said. “Something about how everyone else gets to have what they want.”
He ducked his head. “I was rambling, my tongue loosened by one too many drinks.”
“But you weren’t incorrect. It does sometimes seem like the rest of the world gets to have their dreams and that no matter how hard I try, I cannot. My reward for kindness or hope or survival is to trail after Charity, carrying her train.”
He glanced up at her. “I’m so sorry.”
“But I’m not.” She shook her head. “Oh, I’m bungling this. Let me try to be clearer. All of the steps along my path, the good, the bad, the terrible…they have led me to this moment. To this place. To what happened between us last night. I know you are trying to make yourself the villain in those moments where you touched me, but Baldwin, that was the first time I’ve felt alive in years.”
His jaw set. “Do you mean that?”
She nodded. “I do. You didn’t ruin me. And if I had asked you to stop, I have no doubt in my mind that you would have.”
“I wish I had not been so addled by drink,” he mused, “so that my memories would be crystal clear. I want to savor every moment we shared.”
She smiled, this time not forced. He returned the expression, and in that moment they were the only two people in the world. In the universe. She knew only one way to let that stand. Only one thing she wanted more than any other.
Slowly, she scooted toward him on the blanket, holding his gaze as she did so. He caught his breath when she was right next to him.
“You haven’t been drinking now,” she whispered as she leaned up into him.
“No,” he said as he bent his head to hers. “I have not.”
Their mouths met and she let out a low sound in her throat. One that released all the need that had been stoked last night. One that spoke of all the desire still burning in her chest. Desire only he could help her stoke and then extinguish.
He deepened the kiss, angling his head to taste her more thoroughly. She lifted her hands to his upper arms, clinging there as she drowned in him and the pleasure his touch brought her.
Finally he pulled back a fraction, his gaze foggy as he stared down at her like he was only just seeing her for the first time. “Helena,” he whispered. “I still can’t offer you the future you deserve. You know why.”
