Perhaps it was the way Lise had dressed so swiftly with maddening composure, removing herself from him as if he hadn’t just made her climax twice.As if he hadn’t just had the most pleasurable, extraordinary sexual encounter of his life.
With an inexperienced innocent!
And she was trying to leave as though this was any ordinary afternoon.
As though his world hadn’t altered and shifted from loving her to needing her by his side for the rest of his days.
He felt duped.Deceived.She had taken something from him — not merely his body, though God knew she’d had that freely enough — but something far more precious.His heart lay utterly conquered in her soft hands.Yet she was prepared to walk away as calmly as if they’d done nothing more scandalous than drink coffee from the same cup.
Obviously, it was partly due to how well he’d satisfied her.She couldn’t possibly know that acts of intimacy weren’t always so ...well ...intimate.More often than not, they were selfish pleasure.Both parties enjoyed themselves, spent, released, and sighed with satisfaction.But for him at least, they had always taken place in the purely physical realm.
The bawdiest sexual act or even the tenderest one had never before involved his mind and his heart.
Everything about the present situation felt wrong.He was wearing another man’s clothes, hiding like a criminal in a forest, and the woman he’d just made love to —the woman he believed he’d irrevocably claimed as his own— had smoothed her skirts and walked away.
Slipping through the boulders’ entrance, Jonathan caught up to where she stood, motionless.He tried again.
“Let’s return to your father together.I don’t care about the danger.”The words came out rougher than he’d intended.It wasn’t a request.It was his last, desperate attempt at reason.
“No.”
Again, that bloody obstinate word.Taking hold of her arm, he made her face him.“No?”
“No.”Lise’s voice was firmer than before.“Nothing has changed.”
“Everything has changed!”The words exploded from him.He squeezed her arm, firmly enough that she had to look up at him.“You didn’t answer my question.What if you’re carrying my child?”
The longer she stood there, thinking of this predicament, the more unsure she became.The color drained from her face.Her mouth opened slightly as if to respond, then she bit the full lower lip he adored.
For the first time since she’d begun dressing, her composure cracked beyond mere silent tears.It seemed the natural consequence of their passion hadn’t crossed her mind.As though when she sought him out in the forest, Lise had thought no further than the pleasure they would give one another, the memories they would create.
“I’ll love the baby,” she said after a long moment, but her voice had lost some of its certainty.“I’ll raise him or her.”
Jonathan stared at her, his mouth falling open.Of all the responses he might have anticipated, this calm insanity wasn’t among them.Yet he ought to have expected it, after her declaration of eternal fidelity combined with her absolute refusal to let him marry her.She was beyond infuriating.
“That’s ridiculous.”Fool that he was, he’d assumed her arrival at the Great Oak meant he had won.That love would triumph over duty and fear.What’s more, he still couldn’t accept it would be otherwise.He was a damned viscount, and he would get what he wanted.
“We must marry.I thought that was understood from the moment we started undressing.”
“Not by me,” she said.
His hands fell from her shoulders as though she’d burned him.“You’ll be shunned.Your family will disown you.If not your father, then Henrik will be enraged and come to England to kill me.And rightly so.”
“My family will support me,” she insisted.She even lifted her chin as she’d done at the ball the night they met.Her unflappable little movement of defiance.Although this time, he could see a tremor.She swallowed a lump in her throat and added, “Eventually, I’ll tell people my child’s father died in the war.”
Jonathan felt as though he were falling, tumbling off a cliff with nothing to catch him.Nothing to break his fall because of this woman’s harsh resolve.
“And what will you tell the child when he or she is old enough to ask?That same wretched lie?”
Doubt flickered across Lise’s features.Her eyes grew bright with more tears, and she looked past him, focusing on some point beyond his shoulder.“We’re getting ahead of ourselves.”
The evasion ignited something hot and anguished in his chest.“I asked what you will tell our child, and I demand an answer!”
Turning her back on him, her shoulders began to heave.He could hear her trying to stifle her sobbing, her hands coming up to cover her face.
God, he was a bastard.She was crying, and all he could think about was his own sense of betrayal and loss.He reached for her, then let his hand fall.He didn’t trust himself to touch her.Didn’t know if he wanted to pull her into his arms again or shake sense into her.
“Lise.”He forced his voice to gentle, though it cost him.“If you have a son, then he’ll be an earl someday.Would you rob him of his birthright?”
