“I’ll be quite comfortable, Fräulein,” Anna said.“No need to check on me until morning.”
The implication couldn’t have been clearer.Jonathan ought to have felt like a scoundrel, but Lise was the one who’d suggested Anna take the small room by herself.And her maid had gone along with it.
Females, these days!He was almost scandalized.
Jonathan stood in the small parlor situated between the bedrooms.It was the only room in the little structure that had a fireplace, which was blazing with glowing coals.He’d put some in the maid’s warming pan and then put a few in another, which he’d slid under the bedclothes in the main bedroom.
But wickedly, he wasn’t too concerned about being cold that night.
Lise joined him at the hearth.She looked up at him, blue eyes merry, and bit her lip.
He groaned, and the last of his saintly patience evaporated.Taking her by the hand, Jonathan led her through the door to the innkeeper’s own bedroom, where he’d already lit a lantern beside the bed.
Decorated much like the room he’d slept in the previous night, a four-poster bed and a bureau, it felt clean and cared for.He would make a point to thank the man’s wife if he saw her in the morning.
“I know I should behave properly,” he told Lise, his tone solemn.“I should leave you to sleep with Anna.I should bid you a chaste good night.”
He should do many things he had no intention of doing.Instead, the moment he’d closed the door behind them, Jonathan had her in his arms again, kissing her with all the pent-up longing that had grown since the Great Oak had witnessed their passion.
She melted against him, clasping her fingers behind his neck, her soft sounds of pleasure spurring him on.
Sinking his fingers into her hair, he slowly drew her head back, exposing the slim, pale column of her neck.
“I tried to resign myself to never seeing you again,” he said against her throat.Then he nipped her there.She shuddered, and Jonathan kissed the red mark he’d made.
“When I believed I’d lost you forever,” he added, “I thought I might go mad from the loss.”
“I was such a fool,” Lise whispered.“Thinking I could go back to living my life without you.I’ve been nothing but a shadow.When my parents decided we would emigrate, I started to weep so hard at the dining table, they thought I’d lost my senses.But that moment, I felt hopeful for the first time in a long time.”
He lifted his head and framed her face.“No more noble sacrifices.We stay together now, do you understand?Whatever comes.”
“Yes,” she breathed.“Yes.”
He kissed her again, slower this time, savoring, sucking on her full lower lip as he pulled back just far enough to say, “You’ll marry me.Not a request, Lise.I’m not giving you a choice this time.”
A smile curved her lips.Her beautiful, mischievous smile he’d been starving for.“What if you’d gone to Eutin and I was there, and I refused you again?”
“I was prepared to kidnap you.”He meant it too, and from her expression, she knew it.“I told my parents as much.If I couldn’t convince you, I was ready to carry you off by force.Whatever proved necessary.”
He watched her cheeks pinken.
“You told Lord and Lady Castleton that you were going to ...”Trailing off, she shook her head.“You should never have thought of going back to the Continent, knowing the danger.Yesterday and all night in the coach, I was terrified.It was not good of you to scare me like that.”
“I would have walked through hell itself to reach you.”He stroked her cheek.“Two months, Lise.Two months of feeling nothing but your absence like a wound that wouldn’t heal.Obviously better to die trying to get you back than to live an utterly empty existence.”
Tears spilled down her cheeks, but he kissed them away.“No more tears tonight, for there’s nothing to cry over.”
She nodded.“I know.But this seems like a fantasy.”
“May I undress you?”he asked.
“You may,” she said, then a final sob that sounded like her hiccups from earlier, before she managed to smile at him.
He undid every ribbon and fastener, helping her out of her traveling gown that had long since dried.Then her petticoats and her stays, letting his hands brush over her curves, feeling her tremble beneath his touch.
When he got to her shift, he hesitated.And made the disingenuous offer.“Ought we to wait until we’re married?”
Lise gasped, then rolled her eyes.“Much too late for that, my lord.And I believe you’re well aware.”
