Awareness returned when warm lips tasted hers. Garrett had long since stilled his hand. He’d been kissing her face and murmuring endearments.
She lay back and relaxed, utterly boneless. She ought to have been embarrassed when she opened her eyes to see him staring down at her. But she was not. She simply gazed back at him, feeling closer than she’d ever felt to any person in the whole world. He now rested his head on his hand, propped on one elbow, still lying on his side.
His other hand remained partially inside her. Tenderly, he removed his fingers but left his hand on her hip in a slow, loving caress.
He looked rather satisfied with himself.
Which perplexed her as she knew he’d not found his own release.
“What was that?” she asked sleepily, in awe.
“The French call itla petite mort.” He smiled and leaneddown to place his lips upon hers. Speaking into her mouth, he said, “The little death.”
Natalie kissed him back, openmouthed. “And now, I am still here. I must be reborn.” She felt reborn, no longer a girl but a woman. Twisting and writhing, she stretched like a cat. He removed his hand and pulled her chemise down to cover her. As he moved to sit up, she could not help but ask, “What about you?”
Garrett shook his head. “I will be fine.” It was then Natalie sensed a change in him. Sitting back from her now, he rested one arm upon his knees and looked away from her, off across the meadow.
His easy smile had disappeared. As though fighting a battle within himself, he grudgingly spoke his next words. “I will marry you if you feel ill-used. But I know it is not something you or your family want.” He forced his gaze to return to hers. “I haven’t much to offer, but what I have is yours, if you wish.”
She had not feltill-used.
Not until he chose to speak to her with all the romance of a mallet!
His words hit her like a bucket of ice water. The closeness vanished. She suddenly, ridiculously, felt alone and exposed. He’d gone from lover to stranger in the blink of an eye.
She would not give him the satisfaction of seeing how much he’d hurt her.
“Have I fallen so low, then?” she asked, with as much disdain as she could summon while sitting on the crushed grass in her chemise. “That I am to consider a proposal, a boorish and grudging proposal, from one such as you? From the Earl of Hawthorne, no less?”
Scrambling to her feet, she gathered her stays about herself. If only she could simply walk away from him. But she was unclothed, and she could not make herself presentable without assistance. “Help me with this,” she commanded. “And don’tlook at me like that, as I’m not about to say ‘please’ or any other such nonsense.”
She clenched her fists at her sides, her fingernails digging into her palms, as Garrett tugged at the laces of her stays. How had he expected her to respond? Nearly shaking in her anger, she barely noticed when he gathered her dress from the ground and brushed the grass from it. Without a word spoken, he dropped it over her head. She pushed her arms into the sleeves, and he fastened it as well.
“I do apologize,” he said. “I had not thought my proposal would be such an offense to your dignity.”
Natalie wanted to put her face in her hands and weep. What a stupid, stupid man! Oh, how she hated him!
“Perhaps, my lord”—she would not look at him—“it was not the proposal itself, but the manner in which the gentleman presented it.” She snatched up her jacket and hat and would have stormed off if only she could locate her boots.
Oh, where were they? She glanced around to no avail.
“Looking for these?” Garrett had a sad little smile on his face as he dangled her half boots by their laces in front of him.
When she went to grab them from him, he seized her wrist and stepped toward her instead. “You know it is not what you want.” He pulled her close and held tight to her as though she were a child in need of comfort. “You are just recently free of an unwanted betrothal.”
Natalie did not know what to say. Should she tell him she loved him? Did she? Upon such short acquaintance was it even possible? Or had the furtive glances and seductive stares they’d exchanged throughout the previous two seasons begun all this long ago?
Could she attach herself to a man judged to be a pariah by society? A man who carried tainted blood? A sob escaped her.
She did not want to cry.
“I do not feel ill-used by you,” she said. “I think you anhonorable man.” He could have taken her completely. She’d offered no resistance and probably would not if he chose to do so now.
She felt his lips move, pressed upon the top of her head as he spoke. “I know you want a love match. I know you wish for a family. It is not possible.” He pulled her down to the ground, into his lap.
“My father was not just an evil man, but a mad one. Something was broken inside of him. As a youth, there were times when I thought he ought to be locked away from other people. But he always returned to his own strange type of normalcy, and all seemed settled.” He rocked her as he spoke. “He could be violent, and he could be oddly tender. There were periods when he would work in his office, drafting bills and documents for Parliament as though the fate of the world rested upon his shoulders, and then there were other times when he would not come out of his bedchamber for days. As a boy, I was terrified of him.”
Natalie understood. “You are fearful that his disease could appear in your own children.”
