“Because no one can balance on that kind of precipice forever.” She bent her head. “And we both know Phoebe needs me as governess more than you need me as your mistress. So that’s what I must be.”
He frowned. He’d spent his life being careful and prudent, and he knew that what she said was exactly the right thing. But he didn’t want it to be. Didn’t want her to walk away from him and know that it would be forever.
“This was an odd set of circumstances,” she continued as she glanced over her shoulder toward the door. “Your father’s death, our bonding over grief, that horrible day at the lake. And it led to this, and I’m not sorry. But I have to walk away, Kit. Or else I risk so much pain in my future.”
Pain. Yes, he felt that pain right now, low in his gut. The pain of losing her, losing this thing that had built between them, this connection he’d never allowed himself to acknowledge even though perhaps it had always been there.
She lifted up to her tiptoes and brushed her lips over his. When he caught her arms and deepened the kiss, she smiled against his mouth and gently extracted herself from his grip.
“I have to go,” she whispered, then turned and left the room without another word.
He watched her leave, filled with an emptiness like nothing he’d ever felt before. And he wished he knew how to keep things just as they were, and knew he couldn’t because the world didn’t work that way. And now his world was a darker, lonelier one.
Without her, he feared it always would be.
Chapter Seventeen
Kit sat at the desk in his study, leaning back in his chair as he pored over the book in his hand. His father’s journal.
There was a light knock on his door and he started as he glanced up to watch Hugh, Duke of Brighthollow, enter the room. Kit glanced at the clock and shook his head when he realized it was after nine in the morning.
He wiped the tears that had collected in his eyes as he read and stood to greet his friend. “Good morning. Up early, aren’t we?”
Hugh smiled. “I’ve never been one to be idle,” he said. “Drives Amelia mad, and I admit it is much harder to leave a bed when she is in it.”
Kit turned his face, for his friend’s words couldn’t help but remind him of his night with Sarah. That was why he was in his study, after all. He couldn’t sleep after she left and had come down to distract himself from his desire to chase after her and try to convince her to change her mind.
Only he couldn’t do that. It felt impossible.
“Are those your father’s journals?” Hugh asked as he craned his neck to look at the pile of books.
“Yes,” Kit said. He motioned Hugh into the chair across from the desk and returned to his own place behind it. “I’ve been reading for hours. This is the last one I found in his drawer.” He tapped the cover of the one book he hadn’t opened. “Though I’m not certain it belongs in here. Barrymore said my father would file the journals on a special shelf in the library once a year had finished, but what I’ve read filled up this entire year until shortly before his death. So it must be a leftover from last year.”
“Hmmm,” Hugh said, then smiled at him gently. “And what have you discovered by reading all his words?”
“That Sarah was right,” Kit said as he rubbed his tired eyes. “These books are a gift. His last to me, I suppose.”
Hugh’s brow wrinkled. “Sarah?”
Kit jolted. Had he just casually mentioned the woman like that? To his friend who was now looking at him far too closely. Reading him, as Hugh was wont to do. Kit shrugged like it didn’t matter. “She was here in the study discussing some household matter with me just after I found the journals.”
Hugh nodded slowly. “I see. And so the subject came up.”
“Mmmm,” Kit murmured, he hoped noncommittally. He’d had too many conversations about Sarah as of late—he didn’t want to start another when he was so raw about the subject.
Not that Hugh cared. He leaned back in his seat. “It seems you and Miss Carlton are becoming quite close recently.”
Kit bent his head as images of his night with Sarah flooded his mind. Her body lifting beneath him, her sighs of pleasure echoing in his mind. Her expression when she claimed it was a night that could never be repeated. That she could not straddle two worlds and had no expectation that he would offer her more than passion.
“Kit?”
He shook away the thoughts. “I suppose,” he said. “But it is hard to imagine there could be a future there. Look at our past.”
“The past can only destroy if you allow it to do so,” Hugh said, and his lips thinned. “Christ, I tricked Amelia into marrying me. I lied to her for weeks. It isn’t exactly an auspicious beginning, but we chose to overcome it. Thank God she could forgive me.”
There was no doubting his friend’s passion when it came to his wife. Nor his true belief that the past could be overcome. And when Kit thought of it in those terms, certainly his coldness toward Sarah was not so bad when compared to what Hugh and Amelia had gone through. Or Robert and Katherine. Graham and Adelaide. Hell, all his friends had endured their own troubled paths toward the women they loved.
But that was love. Worth any risk. Kit didn’t…loveSarah. Did he? He wanted her. He liked her. He thought of her a great deal. But love her?
