Page 57

“Colter?” Alistair huffed a laugh. “Didn’t recognize you. You’re supposed to be dead.”

“Lavinia, tell me this is a joke,” said Andrew.

She shook her head, her heart breaking and she utterly unable to do a thing about it.

Andrew’s expression hardened, and for a moment she thought he might hit Alistair. Instead, he lashed out at her with twelve words.

How long did it take you to jump into Alistair Parkem’s bed?

Now, in his quiet office, it seemed like another lifetime.

“I’m not proud of what I said to you,” he said. “No woman deserves to have her honor questioned like that, no matter how angry I was.”

“Thank you,” she said quietly.

“After all the months of trying to get back to you, something broke inside me when I saw Parkem with you. I wanted you to know what it was like to feel that sort of pain.”

She let go of his shirt, wrinkles pressed into it from the heat of her hands. She liked the thought that when he went to bed, they’d still be there, a little memory of her that he wouldn’t be able to shake just by saying good-bye.

“I have felt that kind of pain,” she said as she stepped back and out of his arms, “but not since before I was married.”

“No?” he asked.

With clear eyes, she caught his gaze and held it, determined not to weaken when she needed most to show him the part of her she never let anyone see. “When I thought you were dead, my world ended. My parents began pushing Alistair on me as soon as we got word that you’d been lost at sea. There were other men too, in case one caught my fancy, but mostly it was him. I refused and refused, but then my parents informed me that the banns had been posted and that I was to wed Alistair. They’d told everyone, and I found myself in an impossible situation with no allies.”

“You could’ve refused,” he said quietly.

“Mamma removed all of my clothing from my room and locked me in. The only time the door opened was when she brought in my meals. She didn’t trust a maid to do it.” He started to open his mouth, but she held her hand up. “Why didn’t I climb out the window like I did when I used to meet you? I had no money. I had no friends. I had nowhere to go.”

He closed his eyes and sighed. “You’re saying you didn’t have a choice.”

“Of course I had a choice. I should’ve fought against them harder. I should’ve refused when I was there in church, saying the words, but I didn’t.”

“If I’d written to you . . .”

“Why didn’t you? Then I would’ve known,” she said.

“I— Part of me couldn’t believe that I’d make it back to you after everything I’d gone through.”

“We both made mistakes.” She spread her hands out, whether looking for absolution or sympathy, she didn’t know. “I’ve had to live with mine my whole life.”

When he didn’t say anything, she pressed her lips thin and nodded. It was time to accept that they were too broken to find each other again.

“Good night, Andrew,” she said with a sigh. “I hope you can find some peace tonight.”

She bent to pick up her cloak from the back of his chair, but her fingers hadn’t so much as brushed the fabric before Andrew’s hands were on her waist, spinning her to him, and his mouth was on hers. Where earlier there had been angry fire, this time it was the white-hot smolder at the center of a blaze, stoked by the intensity of hours of reluctant worry. This kiss was the promise of more than gasping on the floor of her workshop. It was an offer of an evening spent tangled in bed, reexploring what they’d once known, and making up for lost years.

Short though she was, she looped her arms around his neck and dragged her body flush against his. He groaned when the hardness of his cock pressed against her stomach, and she shifted to test that the length of him matched her memory. His fingers stroked down the shape of her from her breasts to the top of her hips, where her corset stopped, before wrapping around to the hidden hooks that kept her bodice closed.

He pulled back, panting for her—because of her.

“I want you,” he growled against the curve of her throat. “That makes me a fool, but I do.”

“I want you too,” she whispered.

He ran a blunt nail down the closures of her dress and brought his chin up so their gazes met. “We spent too many nights in makeshift beds, you and I. We’re not sixteen anymore.”

Disappointment bloomed in her. No, they weren’t. They were thirty-two and should know better than to go rooting around in the past—even when it was as tempting as this.