Heedless of the flour covering his hands, Nathaniel reached across the table to seize Bess by the arms and drag her up and onto the table. She squeaked and flailed a bit, her skirts dragging in the flour that dusted the surface, puffing up in little clouds all around them.
When he had her close enough, kneeling above him shocked and wide-eyed on the edge of her kitchen table, Nathaniel wrapped his arms around her hips and buried his face in her apron-covered stomach.
After a brief moment, he felt her hands come up to cradle the back of his head. He was surrounded by her, enveloped. He never wanted to let go.
“Don’t tell me the adventure is over, Bess. It doesn’t have to end. Come back to London with me.”
“I…I can’t.” She sounded winded, but her embrace tightened. “My whole life is here, it’s time I return to it. I think I must.”
“You said.” Nathaniel butted the top of his head into her rib cage and struggled not to dig his fingers into her waist. “You said, whatever I wanted. For as long as I wanted.”
“I did say that.” Her voice was taut, shivery and thick with emotion.
“Bess.” He lifted his head and stared up into her beautiful whiskey-brown eyes, swimming with unshed tears, and said, “What if I want forever?”
Her face flickered through a series of expressions too fast for Nathaniel to pin down and study. He waited to see where she landed, his heart feeling as if it would burst from his chest.
“You’re sure,” she said, wary, her gaze searching his face. For what, he didn’t know, but he opened himself up to her as much as he could. “You want…me. Bess Pickford, the coaching inn cook. The farmer’s daughter.”
“You. Bess Pickford, the loyal friend. Caring chaperone. Intelligent, well-read, self-taught pragmatist. My bold, scandalous lover.” He grabbed her hand and kissed the palm, flour and all. “My queen. I want all of you.”
Whatever she sought in his face, she must have found it, for a smile began to dawn, first in her eyes and then brightening her entire visage so that she beamed down at him like a glorious sunrise.
“Then all of me is yours. Oh, Nathaniel!”
Fireworks exploded beneath his skin, stars cascading behind his eyes as he dragged her down and kissed her. She laughed into his mouth, gorgeous and open and happy and his, and Nathaniel could not believe he got to have this.
“I’ll go to the archbishop for a special license,” Nathaniel said between kisses. “We can be married here, if you like, or in London. Or Vienna, Rome, wherever you wish, so long as you are mine.”
He finished pressing a series of hot kisses into her collarbone and went back to her lips, but she stopped him with a hand on his chest.
Nathaniel froze, gazing up at her shocked face. Bess had gone white, so white that the streaks of flour on her cheeks had disappeared.
“Nathaniel,” she croaked. “What are you talking about?”
“Our wedding,” he said stupidly. “You agreed—you said yes. You said you would be mine.”
She drew back, her eyes huge and wounded. “I said yes to becoming your mistress. I thought that’s what you were asking.”
Nathaniel felt it. Slipping through his fingers, like trying to grab hold of sunlight. “No. I don’t want a mistress. I want to marry you. Bess.”
He hated the desperation in his own voice. The naked need. But he couldn’t do anything about it, because now she was pulling back from him, sidling away to swing her legs over the edge of the table and drop down to the floor. Putting space between them where before there’d been only hope, possibility.
Delusion.
She steadied herself against the table and met his gaze, though tears had begun to track through the flour on her cheeks. So brave, his Bess.
“I’m sorry, Nathaniel. But I can’t marry you.”
So. Not his Bess, after all.
Bess watched the light go out of his eyes, turning them from a vibrant green blue like the ocean she’d never seen but only read about, back to their usual colorless opacity.
She hated herself for doing that to him.
She could almost hate him, for making her.
“You won’t marry me.” Nathaniel’s voice was blank. All the life had drained out of him in an instant until he stood before her, looking and sounding like the Duke of Ashbourn she’d first met weeks ago on the banks of the Thames.
