I moved to him. “I don’t know what’s happened, but I’m here. Do you need to walk about the stones? Walking settles me.”
Putting more distance between us, he juggled his handkerchief from his pocket and mopped his face. “I’ve taken a lot of risks in my life, but you, you are, were, the best one. I wish I’d done a better job of showing you how much I care.”
This was goodbye. He stood near. We were alone in a field, but somehow he’d left me. “Felton, I don’t understand.”
He didn’t answer. Instead, he stooped and put his blunderbuss into its case. “Perhaps we should try the larger gun. We need something that will feel natural in your hands. Something you can depend upon when your nerves start to pound. You shook too much for Brown.”
Felton felt something. Some loss that made him run. I knew him, he’d broken free of the thick glass of the lantern and kept going. I needed him to stop so that I could hang on to him and keep him safe.
I sat beside my husband as he cleaned the second blunderbuss and wrapped my arms about his shoulders.
“Cilia.” He put the gun down and patted my fingers. “I’m fine. I’m choked up from the smoke.”
“You’re not fine. Don’t flee from me, Felton. Tell me what you’re thinking, be open with me.”
“That if I hadn’t gone away for Lord Liverpool, we might have had a child. We were so good, then I went on that last mission. I didn’t trust us then. There’s no hope for us now. I don’t know how you’ll ever trust me.”
His blue-black eyes were rimmed with red. His pain came to me, like it hadn’t before. I felt it ripping into my chest, tearing down the wall I’d erected to protect my heart.
“No. No escaping us.” On my knees, I leaned into him and advanced my hold to his neck.
“What are you doing, Cecilia?”
“I think it best you don’t ask too many questions, my lord. Just surrender. Isn’t a spy taught how to do that when he’s caught?”
His eyes held all of the sun, red and orange in the wet sea of black. “Surrender, one of Liverpool’s best? Not sure—”
I kissed him quiet and pushed us flat onto grass that had heady clover. “You’re formerly Liverpool’s. I think that means you’re fully mine.”
He folded me into his jacket. “Just like that, a simple enough plan? Seduce me?”
“Yes.”
Felton lifted his head to mine and took my mouth. His hands slipped under my shawl. He reached for me and my fingers curled into his hair. It was unleashed, wild, splaying about us.
Then we became free—free of his coat and shirt, free of my shawl and a few buttons of my carriage dress. My fingers traced the cut of his chest, then I kissed and connected the red rosette scars on his shoulder.
If he looked into my eyes, Felton should see they never frightened me. They let me know he was a survivor and was tough. He’d get us through any storm.
“After my father’s death and my sister Patience’s disappearance, I feared you dying, of you being taken away. It made me so full of nerves. To learn it could have truly happened because of your service . . . ”
He fingered my nose. “I’m done with that. I’m not leaving you. Does this mean you’re no longer done with us, because I will be if you say—”
I didn’t let him finish. Kisses of surrender needed no explanation. They needed fire.
When his mouth overtook mine and he touched me again, filling his hands with all my curves, I knew he understood. No one was quitting us.
My pulse ramped up. I panted his name. He was here, tasting so sweet. The hunger of his fingertips rivaled mine. I sought his solid back, his trim legs.
Clasping both my hands, Felton perched on an elbow. “Wait. Wait. We’re in a field. Stonehenge. Is this what you want?”
“I want you, my lord. Do you want me too, without a toga or treats?”
He angled my chin and helped himself to lips that needed his, lips that were hungry and pliant. “Yes. You win everything. You’re everything.”
The winning was for us. He reached for me, dividing my corset and chemise. I wanted to close my eyes, but we’d missed so much being apart. Instead, I waited and hoped, begged a little for him to make me his.
His mouth sought my throat. The soft skin of my bosom he teased. I saw no one in my imagination but Felton. He would be there when I closed my eyes.
