What if this was your only chance?
Ignoring the hysterical voice in her head, Gemma gave her sister a narrow look.“I’m quite alright, and Sir Gilbert is leaving.Thanks in part to your amateur theatrics.”
Completely unrepentant, Lucy threw an arm around Gemma’s shoulders.“You’re welcome!Good gracious, what a crank.Poor Bess may never recover from the insult to her cooking.At least now Sir Gilbert will be someone else’s problem.The poor sods in Bath won’t know what hit them.”
Gemma knew she should check Lucy’s language, at the very least, if not give her a proper dressing down for the part she’d played in the charade that led to Sir Gilbert’s departure.But she simply didn’t have the energy.
Pressing her fingers to her throbbing temples, Gemma blew out a sigh.“Lucy, I know you were only trying to help, and I understand why you felt it was right to step in.”
“Because Sir Gilbert is atrocious,” Lucy stated, unequivocally.“And even if you could bring yourself to marry him, I couldn’t possibly bear to put up with him for even one more day, so honestly, Gem, he had to go.”
“Yes, I said I understood,” Gemma repeated, trying not to laugh.“But Lucy, from now on, no interfering!No matter how atrocious you deem my prospects to be.I know what I’m doing.”
Giving her an arch look, Lucy asked, “Are you going to tell that to Hal, as well?Because it was all his idea.”
Her headache throbbed to life once more.“Oh, I’m well aware of that,” she muttered just as the door to the best room in the house opened and Sir Gilbert all but fell out of it in his rush to escape whatever plague he was now convinced he might have.
“Ah, my sweet Muse,” he panted hurriedly as he jogged toward the stairs, “I must take my leave of you, but the memory of your beauty, your grace, your—ack!”
He’d caught sight of Lucy, who instantly fell into a dramatic swoon, the back of her hand to her forehead and her lips parted on a guttural moan.She minced sideways until she could fall conveniently into Hal’s waiting arms.
Gemma said, “Oh, for heaven’s sake,” but Sir Gilbert was already gone, his heeled shoes pounding a rapid tattoo down the stairs, with the long-suffering Higgins following behind bearing his luggage.
The entire party was loaded into the carriage and the coachman was whipping the horses out of the courtyard in a cloud of dust before Lucy could even make it down to the door to bid them good riddance.
There goes your future, the insidious voice whispered,and what a lovely one it would’ve been, too.The relief she didn’t wish to feel had Gemma rounding on the man who’d cost her that future with anger burning in her belly.
“I hope you’re pleased with yourself,” she hissed, her throat constricting with rage.“I had him, Hal!I had a baronet, a gentleman with a title and a fortune, ready to propose at any moment, and you ruined it!How could you?”
He had the audacity to look surprised and offended by her accusation.“How could I?How couldyou, Gemma?How could you pretend for an instant that you could shackle yourself to a man like that.”
“You mean a man with enough money to care for my mother in her dotage?And give my sister the London debut she deserves?”Gemma inquired acidly.“Hideous prospect indeed.I ought to be thanking you for my narrow escape.”
“You should, in fact.”Hal stepped closer, the force of his personality and the raw, intense vigor that poured from him seeming to fill the entire hallway.“Admit it, Gemma.You’re relieved.Sir Gilbert was not the man for you.”
“Oh?”She hated how breathless she sounded, but couldn’t do a thing to change it.“And who is the man for me?”
His chest heaved once, as though with some great emotion, but the dim light of the corridor concealed all but the roughest planes and angles of his handsome face…and the glittering heat of his gaze.A bold recklessness took hold of Gemma, and she closed the distance between them until they stood toe to toe.
Poking a finger into that broad chest was like poking a brick wall.“I told Lucy this, and now I’m telling you.No more interfering, Hal.You can’t sabotage every chance I have at securing a brilliant match for myself.You must promise to leave me alone.”
One of Hal’s large hands came up and captured her smaller hand against his chest.He held her there, his eyes on hers.“Is that truly what you want?”he rasped.“To be left alone?”
Say yes, her mind screamed,just say yes and everything will be so much simpler!But her body was softening, melting, as she breathed in his familiar pine forest scent and soaked up the heat of his muscular body.
“What I want,” she murmured, her gaze dropping to his lips.“What I want…”
Hal did not wait to be asked.He kissed her, and it was nothing like an apology.
It was audacious, and fierce, and tender, and wild.It was a claiming kiss.Gemma speared her hands into his hair to hold him close and kissed him back with every ounce of the frustrated anger, reluctant relief, and pent-up passion inside her.
She moaned when he pressed her up against the wall, and shrieked when that wall turned out to be the door to the finest room at the inn and it opened behind her, depositing them both on the mattress still lying on the floor.
Breath knocked from her lungs, Gemma gaped up at Hal, who blinked owlishly down at the mattress beneath them and then said, “I take back everything I said about Sir Gilbert.The man is clearly is a genius.In the future, I expect everyone will be putting their mattresses on the floor.”
Gemma hauled in enough air to laugh, feeling as though her lungs were compressed by a too-tight corset.“Oh yes, terribly convenient!”
“Very,” he murmured, bending that wicked head to nip at the hinge of Gemma’s jaw.The silky bristles of his beard brushed over her sensitized skin, making her shiver.
