“Aye,” he said solemnly. “I did.”
She had missed him too.
Her heart gave a pang. She wished she could tell him. Wished she did not have to perpetuate this lie. Wished she were not hopelessly caught between her duty to her family and the feelings she had developed for the man before her.
She rubbed her thumb over the details in the wings. “Thank you. It is beautiful.”
“As are you.”
Their gazes held, his simmering with promise. She could not look away. There was so much she wanted to say. So much she could not.
“I shall treasure this always,” she said softly instead. “You are talented.”
He shrugged his broad shoulders, wincing when his injury must have given him some pain. “Apparently I am. I had little else to do, and Randall gave me a blade and some wood. My hands seemed to have a mind of their own.”
He had remembered how to carve and create. Surely that was a good sign.
“Did you have any other memories?” she asked, hopeful.
“I have one memory which has been haunting me.”
“That sounds promising indeed.” She traced the patterns on the butterfly, unable to look away from Gavin. “What have you remembered?”
“It is a new memory.” He plucked the butterfly from her grasp and settled it on the chest holding her looking glass before turning back to her. He took her hands in his, twining their fingers together before gently tugging her to her feet. “My lips on yours. Do you recall?”
Oh.
“Yes.” The admission fled her in a husky whisper. He had placed her hands on his chest, and she absorbed his warmth and strength, his vitality. “I have thought of little else.”
* * *
Caro’s wordstwined around his heart and held tight, clinging like an ivy vine. They were what he needed to hear. And Caro herself? Good Lord, she was all he wanted.
Kissing her again had not been his intention in seeking her out. But now that he had her in his arms, he could not deny the intensity of the longing coursing through him. It felt like a lifetime had passed since he had last seen her.
“May I kiss you again soon?” he asked, though playing the gentleman was killing him.
A small smile curved the lush fullness of her lips. “You did not ask permission the last time.”
So he had not.
That sobered him. “I ought to have done, Caro. The truth is, I do not know what manner of man I am. I could be anyone. You deserve far better than that.”
“Hush.” She lifted a finger to his lips, laying it against them. “You areyou, and that is all I need to know.”
Humility washed over him.Hell, the way she said it…she made him feel as if he were someone. He kissed the fleshy pad of the digit pressed to his mouth. “Caro.”
Her name emerged as little more than a growl. His restraint was fading. What a surprise the evening had been thus far. He had intended to await her return from whatever business she had been attending. But when the wait had dragged on, his eyes had grown heavier. Lulled into the inviting haven of her bed, he had settled atop a counterpane which smelled faintly of her scent.
Her finger moved, traveling around his lips, tracing in much the same manner she had touched the butterfly he’d spent her absence carving. Had a woman ever moved him the way this one did? He would like to believe he would recall it if she had, that there would be some sort of instinctive, marrow-deep knowledge.
“You have a lovely mouth,” she said.
Christ.
His cock went rigid in his trousers. “Not as lovely as yours.”
He wanted her more than he wanted his next breath. But he knew he could not have her. Not completely. Not until he knew who he was.
