Gabriel swore and slid to the right. “Bloody hell. It’s singed a notch in the heel of my boot.”
“But can you get it? We’ll need it. We’ll need...”
Gabriel swore again and bent sideways. He held Ryan around the waist with one hand and stooped for the candle with the other. When the candle was once again in hand, he rested his head against the wall, panting. He opened and closed his eyes. The candle sputtered and jumped but did not go out. Wax dripped to the floor.
For a long moment, they did not speak. They breathed in the stale air of the stairwell and the now familiar scent of each other. They dabbed lips and patted hair and allowed desire to, reluctantly, drain from their bodies. Ryan wiggled and Gabriel lowered his knee and slid her to the step.
“Can you manage?” he rasped. “How is the wound on your leg? Oh, God I’ve not upset it, have I?”
She clung to the wall, trying to put some distance between them. She forced her legs to work.
“I feel no pain, I assure you,” she said. “But theCreweses are waiting. We’re being rude. We should press on.”
“Yes,” he panted, not lifting his head from the wall.
“We’re almost to the door, actually.” She took the candle from his hand. She held it out and the flame shook.
“It complicates our situation when I touch you, Ryan,” he said. “Certainly, if we were to marry, it would be... We couldn’t...”
“Yes, well, this cannot fall to me,” she said, taking up her skirts. “I am many things but ‘complicated’ is not one of them, so please don’t ascribe it. Also, don’t pin me with the burden of ‘not touching.’ Marriage or no. It’s not fair.”
“It’s unsporting, I know—”
“Unsporting? Gabriel, it’s misplaced. I don’t want to be the gatekeeper of whether we touch or don’t touch. On top of everything else. And anyway,youkissedme.”
“You whispered my name.”
“I called you by name. Lock me up and toss out the key.”
He snorted. “I know it’s misplaced. But please. I’m begging you. Will you keep away?”
Absolutely not, she thought, but she said, “I will carry on as I always have.”
One step at a time, she ascended the stairwell. Her body was gangly and uncoordinated; she jangled from their embrace. Was she being obtuse or uncooperative? Possibly. What did she know of kisses and men and complications? No man had ever been so overcome by her mere presence. Before Gabriel, noman had so much as walked her home from church. She was patently ignored by men. So how, in God’s name, wassheto blame if Gabriel seemed stricken by her? Improbably.Miraculously.She was plain and functional, not alluring or diverting. This was not her fault. Keeping away from him would be his problem, not hers.
Ryan’s problem—because she did have one—was heartbreak. This would be the only result of their carryings on. Her vast inexperience did not mean she wasn’t afraid of a broken heart. After some solution could be found for the imposter prince, they would part ways. Gabriel had been very clear about this.
And perhapsthiswas the “complications” he was trying so hard to avoid—heartbreak. But a broken heart, surely, would be worth moments like this.
Almost anything, Ryan thought, straightening her bodice, taking a shaky step, would be worth moments like this. Gabriel was worth the heartbreak.
Chapter Nineteen
If Gabriel expected to be overwhelmed by the grand hall and bright salons of his sister’s estate, he was not.
If he worried he might fumble the delicate utensils used to stir tea and scoop sugar, he was also wrong.
The licking fires in large hearths did not cause him to sweat; nor did porcelain vases shatter when he turned corners or made gestures.
His sister was not as easy to overlook. The strange experience of great familiarity but also “long-lost-ness” was unavoidable. She stared at him almost unceasingly, eyes large, expression disbelieving. He didn’t know if she hoped to catch him in some colossal social mistake or burst into tears.
If only she knew his biggest social mistake to date—committed literally within moments of entering the parlor—had been riding Lady Ryan astride his thigh in a dark stairwell. Kissing her breasts. He’d been half a second from taking her against the wall before his bloody boot caught fire.
What was slurping his soup compared to this? Oh the irony; he was not, by nature, randy, or rakish, ora despoiler of women. And it wasn’t simply that he’d done it, it was that hewanted to do it again.
Meanwhile, Lady Ryan sat primly beside him in her fresh white dress—now fully tugged and smoothed back into place—hands folded in her lap, a look of grateful attention on her pretty face. She gave them all a brief review of Maurice’s arrival at Winscombe, all that he threatened, and his imminent return. Gabriel contributed what he’d known of Maurice as a boy and what his father had told him about the betrothal. Elise—balancing Baby Noelle on her lap—told what she knew of cousins and the family line of succession. Standing near the windows, Killian Crewes listened to all of it, jotting notes in a diary.
When they’d all presented every known detail of the problem, Killian joined his wife on the sofa, leaned back and draped an arm behind her. Noelle crawled into his lap.
