He froze and turned. Coming down the hill was Katherine, her stride filled with purpose and her face lined with emotion. There was no doubt she was coming down here to lecture him. Her expression said that even before she spoke something more than his name.
And he was not in the bloody mood.
“Lady Gainsworth,” he growled, picking up another stone and making a second attempt at skipping it. Failing again. “What is it?”
She stopped three feet from him and folded her arms. “We need to talk.”
Chapter Ten
Robert tried to contain his suddenly bubbling emotions as he pivoted and glared at Katherine. His breath caught despite everything. Why did she have to be so beautiful? So alluring? So tempting? Why did his pursuit of her have to feel so…different? Beyond just the fact that she pulled away from it and from him, the way no other woman ever had.
“You know,” he snapped, “for a person who wants me to leave her alone, you certainly keep popping up next to me enough.”
She blinked at the aggression in his voice and stepped back a fraction. For a moment, he thought she might run. And part of him knew that would be better for them both. Something dangerous was happening here. For her. For him. Cutting it off would be best for all involved.
But she didn’t run. Instead, she swallowed hard and an intriguing steel entered her expression. A strength that increased her beauty even more than her smile had earlier. Something that made him lean in a fraction, against his will.
“You and the Duke of Northfield were having an intense conversation,” she said. “I think I deserve to know if you told him about what you and I…what we saw last night.”
Her hands were shaking, despite her strength. Her voice, too. But beneath her fears and the courage to overcome them, he saw something else. Her gaze slid over him, her cheeks pinkened.
Desire was there. Crackling between them despite his annoyance at being seen at this vulnerable place and her refusal to surrender the prize he desired.
“You want to know if Graham is aware that you and I made a show out of him fucking his wife?” he clarified, enjoying how she blushed dark before she turned her face at his crude description. “Or that you rode my tongue to completion afterward?”
She caught her breath. Her gaze refused to return to him. “I supposeyesto both. My reputation relies on some secrecy being maintained about what we…shared.”
He shook his head. Herreputation. Her bloody reputation. Fuck,hisreputation. He was tired about talking about any of it.
“You’ll be pleased to know that you did not even come up in conversation, my lady. Nor did our little observation party in the parlor last night.” He sighed. “Graham wanted to talk to me about what a disappointment I am. Which has been true since long before you returned to Society.”
As soon as he said the words, he wished he could take them back. They were laced with a pain he’d always kept private. A fear he didn’t reveal to anyone and only allowed himself to feel in the most private of circumstances.
Now he had laid it bare, and from the way her expression shifted, she understood what he meant. Understood what was beneath his words. He felt more stripped naked than he ever had with any lover. Revealed on a core level that could never be unseen.
“Oh,” she said, the pepper gone from her tone now. Replaced by something softer.
“Is that all then?” he asked, turning away from her and picking up another rock. He pitched it and it sank like all the others. Somehow that made this worse.
She cleared her throat. “I’m—I’m sorry if you quarreled with your friend. I can imagine that is difficult, considering how close everyone knows you are.”
He squeezed his eyes shut at that observation. “They are close to each other,” he muttered. “They tolerate me.”
She caught her breath, and suddenly her hand closed around his arm. He opened his eyes and glanced down, staring at the fingers that now clenched his forearm, denting the line of his jacket. Slowly, he lifted his gaze to her face and found an expression he’d never seen on her face. At least not when she looked at him. There was no disdain. There was no wall there between them.
There was only empathy. As if she could understand being cut away, feeling like an outsider with the only people he’d ever considered family.
“I’m certain that is not true,” she said, her voice soft in the quiet by the lake. “Roseford, every person in your circle who has spoken to me about you has done so with greatlove. You must know that and not feel that whatever upset they may be experiencing about you now and again is not a permanent affliction.”
He hated how those words soothed him, hated that a little peace entered his wild heart when she touched him as she was now.
As if she sensed that, she pulled her hand away and he was briefly bereft.
She bent and picked up one of the rocks by the shore. He stared as she threw it and it skipped once, twice, three times before sinking beneath the surface.
She glanced over to find him staring and shrugged one shoulder. “My cousins taught me when I was a girl.”
He arched a brow. “Perhaps Emma could arrange a rock skipping contest. We’d enter you as a ringer.”
