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“How is this my fault?”
“I wouldn’t be down here if you—” Her chest rose and fell again, shuddering on a sigh. “I don’t—don’t like enclosed spaces. After the carriage and all.”
The accident. He stepped closer, reached one hand towards her before stopping himself. “Were you in the carriage with them? When it crashed?”
Her gaze went distant, as if the scene stretched in front of her in a violent tableau. “Yes.”
Mourning ends. Grief doesn’t have to. He needed to pull her out of this. “Stay with me, Bridget,” he murmured. “You’re not in that carriage. You’re here, with me.”
“I’m not any safer with you.”
The statement cut through his ribs and pressed into his heart, an organ he’d thought far too scarred and brittle to feel anything. Worse still, she’d delivered them so plainly, as though her accusation was an established truth.
She wasn’t safe with him, not in that house. Not with what he needed to do. She was a fake and her scheme had to end. But for a few moments in the dark, he could pretend to be someone else as well.
She pulled in another series of fractured breaths. “I don’t want you to see me like this.”
He took her hand, wrapping her fist in his palm once more and repeating the gesture with the other hand. “Why?”
Her throat worked on a swallow. “You’ll use it against me.”
“I wouldn’t do that.” He leaned close to her hair. Sandalwood and spice filled his nostrils.
Her hands lifted to his chest and flattened. Pressure ticked across her palms, from the tips of her fingers to the heels of her hands and back again. Her touch trapped his breath beneath it, as if she controlled even his respiration now. He gripped her hips; he wasn’t certain if he wanted to push her away or hold her close.
She lifted her head, her gaze snagging on his mouth for a long, weighted moment before she met his gaze. “You need to leave.”
“I can’t.”
Her green eyes flared. “You should never have come here.”
He cupped the back of her neck and turned her face up to his. He pressed her tighter against the wall. “Don’t say that.”
At least she wasn’t shaking any longer, and she used the fistfuls of his shirt to pull him closer. “Now you don’t want me to tell the truth?”
He dragged his thumb over her lower lip. Her breath shimmered over the calloused pad. He’d remained in the manor to push her, to urge a confession from her sweet mouth, but he didn’t want to hear about the spirits or her fraud. He wanted a far more compelling truth from her.
“Would you have slept with me, Bridget?”
She sucked in a breath, and he mentally chastised himself. Bridget was young, not jaded and experienced like he was, and he’d likely receive a slap across the face and a verbal lashing to match.
Instead, she said, “Slept? If you were fortunate enough to have me in your bed, you wouldn’t have rested for a moment, and you’d be grateful for it.”
He twisted her plait around his fist, tugged the barest amount to turn her face up to his. “You’re bold. You wouldn’t have accused me of ruining you?”
Her lips brushed against his as she rasped her retort. “Isn’t ruining me precisely what you’re trying to do?”
He couldn’t take any more, and he pressed his mouth to hers, and God—God, he didn’t remember a kiss feeling like this. The press of her lips, hot and unforgiving, the scrape of her fingernails down his chest. Kissing had always been chaste and quick, a prelude to something more pleasurable, a release. This was entirely different. A revelation.
She caught his lower lip between her teeth, and sparks exploded behind his vision. “You shouldn’t kiss me,” she growled, then licked her tongue into his mouth.
“Tell me to stop.” He sucked on the tip of her tongue and plunged his own past her lips, savoring her moan.
She grabbed his backside and pulled him impossibly closer. “I hate you.”
His laugh turned into a groan as his cock pressed against her belly, the pressure threatening to unman him. “You have a funny way of showing it.” He nipped at the delicate skin beneath her chin, down her throat.
“Damn you.” She yanked the tails of his shirt free from his trousers. “Do that again.”
