Rounding the table once more, Bess stood beside him and reached to place her hands over his. He stilled beneath her touch, and Bess tried not to notice the heat of him, the leashed strength and vitality of his big, rangy body overwhelming her little kitchen.
“Use the heel of your hands, first one, then the other. Yes, now take the far edge of the dough and stretch it out, then fold it over on itself toward you. Then turn it a bit, and do it again. And again. And again. Like that.”
His big, capable hands caught the rhythm of it, finally, relaxing under her palms until she realized she was still gently cupping the backs of his hands and riding the movement with him. They were even breathing together, in and out, such an unbearably sweet, painful echo of the intimacy she’d mourned earlier that Bess had to force herself to pull away.
“Good,” she croaked, retreating quickly to her side of the table. “Keep going until the dough feels smooth, almost bouncy.”
They worked together in an almost companionable silence for a minute or two. Long enough to lull Bess into a fall sense of safety, so that she startled badly when Nathaniel suddenly said, “When did you first know? That the man you saw at The Nemesis was…me.”
“When did I know?” Her heart was beating so loudly, she thought he must be able to hear it across the table. “From the very first night. The moment I saw you come into the ring, with that cut across your ribs and the strip of my own bloodied petticoat in your pocket.”
His head came up. He stared at her as though she’d lobbed the ball of dough directly at his head. “From the very first night.”
A dry, hitching laugh escaped Bess. “Nathaniel. I always knew it was you.”
Chapter Twenty-Four
In one sentence, she had rewritten everything he’d always assumed about their encounters.
She’d known it was Nathaniel she kissed, and touched, and spoke to so gently. Every caress, every snippet of her past, every time she opened herself up and gave herself so generously—it had all been meant for Nathaniel.
He could hardly comprehend what that meant.
Before he could tell her it was the same for him, that he’d known her at once and wanted her longer than that, Bess said, “But you already know how I feel. You overheard what I said to Lord Phillip at the masked ball. Didn’t you?”
Ashbourn? I would do anything he asks of me and ask for nothing in return. I will never be your mistress. But I will be whatever Ashbourn wants, for as long as he will have me.
The words were picked out in lines of fire in his mind, blazing in the darkness. He would never forget them, as long as he lived.
How he wished to believe them.
“I heard,” he acknowledged, squeezing his ball of dough a little too hard. “I thought perhaps—you meant to put him off, and you knew I would protect you. I wouldn’t hold you to anything you said to that blackguard.”
She took a deep breath and lifted her chin, meeting his gaze with a courage Nathaniel wasn’t sure he could match. “I told you I never lied to you. I never lied about you to anyone else, either.”
Bess had always been the brave one, of the two of them.
“Well. Perhaps I lied a bit to myself,” she amended softly, looking down at her motionless hands. The way she said it—a little wry, mocking. Unsurprised. Accepting. It made Nathaniel want to hit something.
“You didn’t,” Nathaniel said hoarsely. “Bess. Don’t sound like that. Don’t look like that.”
Something was rising in him, a realization that felt less like the discovery of something new than like an acknowledgment of a fundamental truth.
Nathaniel loved Bess.
It was love, this feeling that made him want to see every expression that crossed her face, to hear every word she cared to speak.
Love made it so that he could only truly sleep, restful and at peace, when she was in his arms. He wanted to wake up to her smile every morning, and hear her brisk, pragmatic opinions about everything he was doing, and eat the food she made with her own hands, and lay the entire world at her feet as tribute.
He wanted to give her all of himself, and he thought he might finally be able to believe it was a gift she would cherish.
All this time, he’d thought he wasn’t capable of it—that the need for love, the ability to feel it, had been stamped out of him early and never recovered.
But all along, it had been here, waiting for him. In this little inn.
And it had almost slipped through his fingers.
It might, yet.
