Lips pressing to lips, mouths slanting together, claiming. It was the kiss of a man who had nearly watched her die and could not stand the thought of it.
Eleanor kissed him back, fierce and unflinching, because she refused to be the only one who wanted.
For one breathless moment the world narrowed to heat and pressure and the brutal honesty of bodies too close.
Then Graham broke away as if he had been burned.
He took a step back, hands falling to his sides, breathing hard.
Eleanor touched her mouth, eyes blazing. “Is that what you do?” she demanded. “Take what you want and then retreat?”
“No,” Graham said, and the word sounded like a promise he did not trust himself to keep. “I should not have?—”
“You should not treat me like I am incapable of making choices,” Eleanor cut in. “If I wanted you to stop, I would have pushed you away.”
Graham’s gaze held hers, fierce and haunted. “You make me careless.”
“Good,” Eleanor said, voice shaking only slightly. “You can be careful with the truth, but not with me. I am not fragile, nor am I mindless.”
Outside, rain drummed on the cobbles. Inside, the air felt charged, as if the kiss had altered the very shape of the room.
Graham turned away. He collected the bowl, the linen, the tweezers, and set them in the kitchen sink with unnecessary precision.
“We move at dawn,” he said, voice controlled again. “Not by carriage.”
Eleanor’s chin lifted. “Good. I never cared for carriages anyway.”
Graham crossed to the writing desk and pulled a scrap of paper toward him. He wrote three lines, terse and coded the way men wrote when ink was dangerous, then folded it once.
He went to the backdoor, opened it, then whistled.
A boy—small, freckled, the sort who belonged to a butcher’s errand rather than a spy’s—appeared as if he had been waiting.
Graham slid a coin into the boy’s palm with the same motion he slid the note.
“To Lord Highwood,” he said quietly. “Now. If anyone asks, it is a request for biscuits.”
The boy grinned and vanished into the rain.
Eleanor watched, breath tight. “You had him on standby.”
“I have learned,” Graham said, “not to rely on luck.”
His gaze swept over her, taking in the bandage, the stubborn set of her mouth, the courage that refused to bend. Fear threaded through him, sharp and unwanted.
He swallowed it down.
“I will keep watch,” he said.
Eleanor’s eyes softened by a fraction, though she would have died before calling it softness. “Then do it properly,” one corner of her mouth lifted in a faint smile. “Because I intend to be awake tomorrow.”
Graham gave a single, tight nod and took up his post by the window, listening to the rain and the steady sound of Eleanor’s breathing behind him.
Everything had changed.
And the worst part was this:
He did not want it changed back.
