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“I would kiss you,” he said. “If you were mine to kiss.”
Her eyes flew open.
“And it would not be as chaste as the one we shared by the lake.”
Chaste? What did he mean by that? The soft touch of his lips had been perfect, and every day they’d spent together she had wished to repeat it.
As Clarissa’s lips parted, his thumb edged closer and closer to them until it rested on the very edge of her lower lip. When he ran his thumb across her lip, a pool of heat filled her very core. She wanted . . .
And then he dropped his hand away, stood back from her and closed his eyes.
“Aidan?”
That feeling . . . when he’d touched her . . .
“What are we doing?” he asked, his voice strained.
She didn’t think he would appreciate “falling in love, again” for an answer. Or maybe she’d never stopped loving him.
“I don’t know how long it will be until we receive word from Dunburg,” she said instead. “And if my father learns of my whereabouts first . . .”
He likely did not even realize that his hand was shifting toward his side. When he was angry, Aidan’s hand crept closer to the dirk that never left his hip. She’d noticed that as they rode here from Theffield—and he’d done the same thing today, whenever her father was mentioned.
“I will take whatever time is given to us.”
Her shoulders sagged with relief. She’d feared for a moment he’d changed his mind. And though it might be easier to part from him now than it would be in a few days, Clarissa could not make herself say the words that would keep him away.
“Meet me on the secret path.”
“It is not so secret to those who live here. How will you explain—”
“I will find a way. Tomorrow, after the sixth hour bell, I will be there.”
“As will I,” she said.
With a slight bow, Aidan was gone.
He strode out of the solar, leaving her standing there, staring after him. No good would come of their meeting again. They both knew it, but Clarissa was as powerless to tell Aidan to stay away as she’d been to stop her father from taking her home from that tournament.
The outcome would be another unhappy ending, but Clarissa no longer cared.
* * *
A sennight had passed since Aidan’s initial visit to Sutworth Manor. Each day had been much the same. Meetings with Graeme and Reid, training with the men, and avoiding Gillian and Allie’s questions about his midday rides. Graeme had not been pleased that first day, and he’d thought to avoid another unpleasant conversation by keeping subsequent visits quiet. They were all becoming suspicious, but while his brother avoided questioning him, his sisters had no such qualms. And so he’d dispensed excuses. One day, he’d claimed to visit Lawrence. Another, the village.
If he felt poorly about deceiving his brother, Aidan pushed those feelings aside. He was not jeopardizing their mission in any way. He’d not tossed Clarissa onto his horse and absconded to Highgate with her—a scenario that consumed his every waking thought—so he refused to feel poorly any longer for his actions.
Even though he knew he should.
So when Allie whispered “Meet me at the training yard” to him at supper, he understood why she wished to speak with him privately—to press him about Clarissa. After all, her skill with the longsword was no longer a secret, and the invitation harkened back to how things had been before, back when they’d kept her developing skill to themselves.
Stopping in the bakehouse first for a few chunks of bread—pried away with difficulty from the covetous baker—he made his way back down the hill and away from the keep, trying, unsuccessfully, not to think of her.
And yet his thoughts lingered on Clarissa’s easy smile. Though she claimed not to be the same since Lord Stanley, he did not believe it fully. The goodness that had attracted him to her still shone through in every word, every smile. Better to think of that smile than the endearing way she bit her lip.
“Over here.”
Though she was dressed for training, the new sword Reid had commissioned for her at her side, it was clear his impulse had been correct. Allie was here to talk and not to train.
