What if Amanda had not been turning away from her current life? What if instead she had been running from a past one?
* * *
Amanda kept all the drapes open so she could see the night sky through the windows from her bed. She had failed in her plan. That buckle had probably left that go-between, Mr. Pritchard’s home sometime today. Instead of being there to follow it, she had been stuck here instead.
She did not think her mother would be released. If another demand came, she would not even know it.
This day of doing nothing had left her alone with only her thoughts for company, and by the time she climbed into bed, she had reached a sad conclusion. It had been all for naught. The deceptions, the sacrifices, the repulsive crimes . . . and still she had not been able to rescue her mother.
She had embraced her new life that began five months ago when she’d first joined Lady Farnsworth. How triumphant that employment had made her. How sure that she had left her disreputable past far behind. How quickly she had lost what she had achieved.
She pulled up the sheet and tried to find peace in sleep. Instead, her mind moved from image to image, all from the last few weeks. Her emotions had been in chaos for so long that even now, as she resigned herself to her fate, they would not calm.
A sound made her look to the door. It opened and Langford walked in. He wore an open shirt and a long open banyan. She heard no boots on the floor. His hair fell in disarray around his face, as if he had been sleeping.
He came to her and sat on the edge of the bed. “You were correct, Amanda. Pride born of my conceit made me angrier than I should have been.” He gently smoothed the backs of his fingers down her cheek. “I was enraged that you would leave me. I never considered that perhaps you had to leave me for reasons I could not know.”
His words soothed her. His faint touch brought such comfort. “Have you come to demand I tell you the reasons?”
“I started from my chambers with that intention. Now that I am here, I think I came to hold you in my arms so you can forget the reasons and I can forget the anger for this night at least.” He stroked her lips. “Only if you want that too, of course.”
Oh, she wanted that too. She yearned to know the freedom and peace, the pleasure and bliss. She ached to escape from her fears in his arms.
She moved over on the bed to make room for him. She sat and drew off her nightdress. He stood and dropped off the banyan and pulled off his shirt. She fell back on the pillows while he finished undressing.
She filled her arms with him when he came to her. She wrapped her legs over his too, so she bound him against her body. Her soul sighed with relief as the intimacy filled her.
They pleasured each other wordlessly. Their kisses and caresses moved her until joy replaced the dulling emotions she had carried these last days. She welcomed their joining as she never had because she needed it in new ways. She sensed that he did too, and that he also experienced the poignancy that drenched their mutual release.
They lay together afterwards, inhaling each other’s breaths, their bodies sealed together. And in the peace that she so needed and held on to so greedily, she acknowledged that if she could trust anyone in this world, it was this man.
* * *
“So here we are, in the dark again.” Neither one of them had moved and he spoke into her ear.
“Odd that I know you best in the dark. Perhaps because there are no distractions from your touch and voice. From the reality of you.”
He rolled off her and lay by her side. “And what is the reality?”
“I know that you would never hurt me if you could avoid it, no matter how angry you became.”
“I am glad you know that part of me.”
“I also know you are a good man, even if you are bad sometimes. Your badness is about minor things like women and such.”
“I have never thought of women as minor things.”
She laughed quietly. “I suppose not if you devoted so much time to them.”
A man’s life should stand for something, I always say. It was the kind of flippant response he normally would give. He did not want to be that man right now, however.
“You’re an honorable man. That is what I meant. Even when you are a devil, you adhere to certain . . . principles. You were brought up with them, and they are a part of you. I envy you that.”
“Surely you, too, were brought up with rules of behavior, and what you call principles.”
She turned her head and their gazes met. “I was not raised to value honesty and fairness or to be good. My parents were thieves. Criminals. They taught me how to survive and win in their world.”
He absorbed what she was telling him without revealing any reaction.
