Page 32 of Mail-Order Viscountess

The corners of her mouth curved. “Your brother sounds wise.”

A laugh escaped him despite everything. “Don’t let him hear you say that. His head’s big enough already.”

A sparkle lit her eyes, and the sight of it did something strange to his pulse. When had she gotten so close? He could count her lashes in the firelight, see the exact place where gold met green in her irises.

“You should sleep.” He rose on his elbow and leaned forward just enough to toss two more logs on the fire. Then he sank back down to the cave floor beside her.

This time, when he closed his eyes, his mind didn’t churn with all the worries. He could breathe a little deeper. And the luxurious feeling of Kate’s warmth beside him was his last thought before sleep pulled him in.

CHAPTER 11

Sunlight.

Kate blinked against the golden glow of morning streaming through the ice wall, so bright after the blue-gray dimness from before. The storm had passed sometime in the night, leaving behind a world transformed—the frozen waterfall no longer a prison but a glittering cathedral, light penetrating through the ice in a thousand tiny rainbows.

She lay still for a moment, letting her eyes adjust. Warmth pressed against her back, solid and steady, and it took her sleep-fogged mind a long moment to remember why.

Thomas.

His arm was draped over her waist, heavy with sleep. His breath stirred the hair at the nape of her neck in a slow, even rhythm. At some point in the night, they’d shifted—or she had—and now she lay on her side, snuggled back against him like a child seeking comfort from a nightmare.

She should move. Should pull away before he awoke and realized how tangled they’d become.

Instead, she turned her head. Just enough to see his face.

In sleep, Thomas Balfour looked younger than his twenty years. The tension she’d grown accustomed to seeing in his jaw smoothed away, leaving something almost vulnerable in its place. The bruise on his cheekbone still smudged a dark purple, and the gash above it had scabbed into an angry red line. But even battered, even exhausted, there was a handsomeness to his features that made her chest ache in ways she’d never let herself feel.

His copper-brown hair had fallen across his forehead, and before she could stop herself, her fingers twitched with the urge to brush it back.

What was wrong with her?

She knew better than this. She’d spent years learning not to want things she couldn’t have, not to trust in promises that people would only break.

But lying here, watching Thomas sleep, the familiar warning felt hollow. Like words repeated so often they’d lost their meaning.

He’d kept her warm through the night. Had shared pieces of himself she suspected he didn’t show many people. Had looked at her across the fire and called her extraordinary.

For one moment, she let herself want. Not just the warmth of his body or the safety of his arms—but him. This frustrating, charming, reckless man, who was planning to move to California and leave his entire life behind.

Then Thomas stirred, and the moment shattered like thin ice.

She squeezed her eyes shut to pretend she still slept.

His breathing changed—the slow, even rhythm shifting to something more conscious. The arm around her waist tensed, then carefully withdrew.

She kept her eyes closed, her own breathing deliberately steady while every nerve in her body tracked his movements. The rustle of fabric as he sat up. The soft hiss of pain that escaped when the motion must have pulled at his ribs. The scrape of his boots against stone as he moved toward the fire.

The cold rushed in where his warmth had been, sharp enough to make her want to pull him back.

She didn’t.

Only when she heard him feeding wood to the flames did she allow herself to pretend to wake.

She stretched, making the movement slow and deliberate—as though she’d been deeply asleep and hadn’t felt every moment of his withdrawal. Her muscles protested the hard ground, her hip aching where she’d lain on the stone despite the coat beneath her.

“Morning.” His voice came from near the fire, his tone flat.

She pushed herself upright, wincing as her body reminded her of yesterday’s ordeal. Every joint stiff, every muscle sore. She must look a disaster—hair falling from its pins, dress wrinkled and stained, face probably smudged with smoke and dirt.