Page 60 of The Lady’s Sweet Revenge

“Should I not have come to your room this evening?” she asked.

“Oh, you definitely should not have, but I’m very glad you did.” He raised his head and smiled. Maybe so she’d know how much he enjoyed what they’d done. “I was pacing the room wondering if I should have asked you or if I should go to you…”

“Had you spoken to me today we might have made arrangements.” She smacked him lightly on the shoulder. “Which reminds me, I’m cross with you for leaving me all day with your mother.”

“I’m sorry, lass. It seems the only thing the woman can speak of when I’m in the room is marriage and I can’t take it.”

She sighed. He wasn’t wrong.

“She speaks to me of marriage as well.”

“Aye. I’m sorry about that too. I thought I’d gotten over some of the anger, but seeing her, having her push her demands… The resentment surged.”

“She is a mother who wants what is best for her child. Just like many mothers. She just goes about it much more aggressively. She doesn’t seem to realize she only drives you further from doing what she wants when she pushes you as she does.”

“You have the right of it. If she told me the sky was blue, I would argue it was green simply to disagree with her.”

As she’d guessed. Harlow chuckled. “Both of you are so stubborn.”

“This is not the time to tell me I’m like my mother,” he warned with a cocked brow.

“I wouldn’t think of it.” She snuggled closer to him and he wrapped his arms tight around her. She loved the way he held her and didn’t want him to ever let her go. But she would need to return to her room before they risked falling asleep and being found together in the morning. “I should return to my bedchamber.”

He let out a sigh and squeezed her closer still.

“I don’t wish for you to leave,” he admitted.

She didn’t want to leave him either, but she could feel sleep pulling at her. Perhaps it was penance for having lied about being tired earlier with the countess.

In truth, Harlow wished he could hold her all night. Wake her with kisses in the early hours of dawn and make love to her when they were warm and drowsy before falling asleep for another hour or two. But it was too risky.

Unless she was his wife…

He kissed her temple and then her hair before she rolled away and stood to dress. She wasn’t his wife and since he was adamant about not taking a wife any time soon, she wouldn’t ever be.

He helped her dress, or rather kissed along her shoulder keeping her from pulling her gown up which was the opposite of help. She chuckled as she pulled the shift up once again only to have him pull it down for a third time.

She raised up on her toes to kiss his lips and then pulled back only far enough to look into his eyes. His dark eyes seemed to look deep into her soul. Could he see what she’d been thinking? Could he know how much she wished he’d ask her to wed him for real? She’d not known at that time how very much she would come to want him.

She knew he’d only asked for the sake of propriety, but she wanted him to ask now for a different reason entirely. But he didn’t.

He saw her to his door and stood watch as she rushed down the corridor, glad for the thick rug that hid her footsteps. When she paused in front of her door she looked back and gave a small wave before stealing inside and closing the door with the smallest of clicks.

Her bed chamber felt cold despite the warm night. The chill was not due to the weather but that she missed the heat of his body next to hers.

Reese would not propose again for he knew she didn’t want a marriage of obligation any more than he did. But Harlow didn’t want to spend her nights alone when her time at Slains Castle was over. She would set her sights on finding a husband. Someone kind and funny. Someone handsome and striking.

Someone just like Reese.

*

Reese returned to his bed, allowing his hand to wander over the spot of warmth where Harlow had lain moments before, and wished she was his.

Nay, not just his, but his wife.

As he’d told Harlow, he’d argue against anything his mother said or wanted because he was still angry with her, but in this, he thought he wouldn’t mind so much to give her what she wanted.

Not when it was something he wanted as well.