Lizzie couldn’t help her excitement. She clapped her hands together with a gasp of glee. “Oh, Morgan!” she burst out as she pivoted to face him. He was standing just behind her, and she rested her hand on his chest to steady herself.
He stared down at her and then the corner of his lips tipped up in a half-smile. “I’m glad you like it.”
“I do,” she whispered, but she was no longer looking at the gazebo.
His smile faded and his pupils dilated. Slowly he lifted a hand and brushed a lock of hair from her forehead. The brush of his bare knuckles against her skin made her shiver with sensation. What did this man do to her? How could he so easily wrap her up in these desires she’d feared for so long?
He bent his head and all her pretense of putting up a wall between them fell away. Even though she knew it was folly, she found herself lifting to him. Their lips met and her hand gripped into a fist against his chest as she parted her mouth and let him in. He cupped the back of her head, tilting it so he could deepen the kiss. She sank into the feeling, letting her guard drop as she finally got the thing she had been dreaming of for days.
But just as quickly as he’d drawn her in, he stepped back, steadying her before he dropped his hands away from her. “You told me no before,” he said, his voice thick and raspy. “My apologies, Elizabeth.”
She stared at him, shocked that he even remembered she’d told him this was something they could not do, let alone honored the request. One she regretted in this heated moment.
“Don’t apologize,” she said, shoving her shaking hands behind her back. “I know this isn’t a good idea…probably. But…but…”
His smile returned. “Oh, Elizabeth, better not saybutor I’ll kiss you again.”
She laughed at his gentle teasing. The tension between them faded a fraction, though she still wanted that damned kiss more than ever.
He offered her his elbow. “And now, I want to show you something else.”
She blinked. “More than the gazebo?”
His eyes danced with excitement. “A surprise. Come along.”
He drew her away from the framed outbuilding and down a winding path through the garden. They twisted and turned in companionable silence until they reached a corner of the garden that had once been a mass of rosebushes her mother had planted before Lizzie was even born. They had been touched by a frost a few years before and never fully recovered, no matter how Lizzie or the expert gardeners under her brother’s employ tended them.
But now all those half-dead plants were gone. They’d been replaced by a little half-circle of orange trees that surrounded a bench. There was also the base for a small fountain opposite the bench that hadn’t been there before. It wasn’t complete, but she could see how charming it would be in a short amount of time.
Had this little circle of protection existed in any other garden in the world, Lizzie would have been enchanted. She loved orange blossom—she even had her soap infused with the scent—and the sound of the trickling water was soothing and happy, indeed, and she could picture it here.
But thiswasn’ther garden. It was her mother’s garden. And now the late duchess’s dead roses had been removed and their intended place had been filled by something…different.
Tears stung her eyes and she pulled away from Morgan’s arm with a shake of her head. “I-I told you we were to remain firm to the plans I discovered, Morgan! Why did you do this?”
She didn’t wait for his response, but turned away and rushed from the little corner, fighting tears and a looming sense that she had done something wrong, both by allowing this to happen…and by loving what Morgan had created for her.
Morgan stared at Lizzie’s retreating back as she hustled away from the corner of the garden he had specially designed for her. He was utterly confused. She was always so gentle, so bound to please others, even to her detriment. But the moment he changed anything in her mother’s garden, something deep within her snapped.
He saw where she had gone and for a moment he longed to follow. Then he pushed his hand into his pocket and felt the folded missive he’d shoved there earlier. He didn’t need to look at it to know what it said.
You can run, but you can’t hide. I know where you are.
Morgan shook his head. The note was a stark reminder that his life did not, could not, mesh with a woman such as Lady Elizabeth. He should just let her be angry and leave it at that, for both their sakes.
Only he couldn’t. He smashed the letter down deeper in his pocket, as if that could push the past further away, and then he marched toward where he’d seen Elizabeth go. The place where he’d originally found her here days ago, the Persephone corner, as he’d begun to call it.
He entered the space and found she had sunk onto her bench and was staring at the statue of Persephone, her expression blank. At least she was no longer crying.
He took a step closer.
“I’m sorry,” she said before he could speak. She glanced toward him, her expression filled with an expectation that she would be chastised. Only he didn’t want to do that. He just wanted to understand, even though it wasn’t his place to do so.
“You needn’t be.” He slowly sat down beside her on the bench. It was narrow, so it forced them to be close together, closer than he’d imagined when he thought to join her. But it was done now, and he would just have to ignore the fact that her knees brushed his and it made him so aware of her presence.
“You must think me a fool,” she whispered, and her head bent.
He shook his head as he tucked a finger beneath her chin and lifted to force her gaze back to his. “No, not a fool. I admit I don’t understand the strength of your reaction when it comes to this garden, though.”
