He sighed. That would be perfect, wouldn’t it? Taking her inside where his servants might discover them in the middle of the night? Where he’d have plenty of beds and settees and rugs to tempt him to lay her out across them and…
He cleared his throat and motioned to the orangery across in one corner of the garden. That seemed a safer option.
“We’ll have more privacy here,” he suggested.
She followed him, he felt her there at his heels. Rather like the hounds of hell finally coming to collect him for his sins. Only they were lovely hounds of hell. Ones he didn’t want to resist.
He opened the orangery door and they stepped into the warm, humid air. It was late enough in the season that all the trees were blossoming, and she took a deep breath of the sweetness.
“Oh, it’s so lovely,” she said, stepping forward to touch a blossom on one of the trees. “I so wish we had an orangery here in London where I could?—”
Sebastian stepped forward and caught her wrist, turning her gently. “Marianne, what are you doing here? In the middle of the night? Unattended in my garden, throwing rocks at my window?”
She blinked and shifted, her discomfort as clear as his own. “I’m—I’m sorry. I was going to scale the wall, you see, and try to come in the window, but once I got here I didn’t think the trellis would bear my weight. I didn’t realize it was so flimsy. I don’t know if this counts then, but I did want to see you and?—”
He stepped back and interrupted her. “You were going to climb the trellis and try to come in through my window?” he repeated in disbelief.
She nodded slowly. “Y-Yes.”
“Jesus,” he grunted, and ran a hand through his hair at that thought. “Well, it’s a good thing you didn’t. The fall would have killed you.”
“Yes, that was my assessment. Honestly, we are so often of a mind. Anyway, that’s why I threw the rock when I saw your shadow moving around in your study.”
He pinched the bridge of his nose and tried to remain calm. “You are talking about this as if it isn’t something wildly unexpected and out of control.Andyou are avoiding my question, which makes me even more nervous.What are you doing here, Marianne?”
She sighed and clasped her hands before her. “We—we need to talk about what happened last night at the ball.”
He pursed his lips. So it had come to this. “I see. And you couldn’t have simply sent a note requesting a meeting in a more traditional way?”
She tilted her head. “Well, I thought—I thought you might not see me.”
There was a lilt of pain to her voice that tugged his heart far more than it should. He stared at her, this woman who had stood along a wall being unnoticed for so many years. She’d been dismissed over and over again, and so she had assumed he would do the same.
Why wouldn’t she? He had already done so over the years, he supposed. He’d called her friend and had ignored any of her plight or pain or fear or desires until she threw them up in his face and made him see what had always been standing right in front of him.
“Why wouldn’t I see you?” he asked softly.
She shifted and a slight flush entered her cheeks. “You ran off in horror after we kissed, didn’t you? You didn’t even say goodbye.”
“Marianne,” he began.
But now she was the one who held up a hand, demanding she be allowed to continue. He noted how her fingers shook, saw how hard it was to make even this silent demand and so he shut his mouth and allowed her to speak instead.
“I don’t know why you kissed me,” she said. “But I don’t want it to change things between us. That it would make you turn away from my brother or from…from me is my greatest fear. I want you to know that I’m not angry. I also have no expectation that the kiss meant anything to you, nor that you would ever wish to repeat it.”
He stared now, that hunger he had felt for her for over twenty-four hours returning as his shock faded. She was back to her normal clothing, her hair was not done so fashionably as it had been the night before. Yet she was just as beautiful as she had been made up. He still felt the drive to touch her, to memorize the way her breath caught and her pupils dilated.
Even if he shouldn’t.
“You think I wouldn’t want to repeat it?” he asked, hearing the wicked drawl that always entered his voice when he was on the hunt.
She stared at him a long moment. “Why would you?”
In any other woman, that question would have been a playful part of a run and catch game. But Marianne meant it. She couldn’t imagine he would want her. And that burned him down to his core. It made him want to be honest with her, even though he shouldn’t. Even though it would only make this more complicated.
“All I’ve wanted to do since last night is kiss you,” he said, closing the distance toward them at last. “Kiss you and kiss you. All I dreamed about was kissing you, and then much more.”
Her lips parted, temptation in the way her tongue darted out to wet them. “You have?”
