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“So should I,” Ronan murmured, his voice raw and cracked with emotion, an instant before he touched his mouth to hers in an achingly tender kiss.

Their first kiss.

I pray you can forgive me in time, for I love you and do not deliberately cause you pain.

However, I also love Isadora. That is the long and the short of it. I love her. I don’t care that

she makes her living on the stage or that she is a commoner. True love is too precious to be constrained by absurd, antiquated dictates or disregarded as a trivial, passing fancy.

~ Letter to the Marquess and Marchioness of Trentholm from Benjamin Brockman

Posted from Scotland

Grosvenor Square

Pelandale House library

Mercy should’ve pushed Ronan away. She should’ve jumped to her feet and fled the library. At the very least, she should have scolded him for his impudence. For overstepping the bounds.

But she didn’t do any of those practical or logical things.

Sighing, she sank into his embrace, welcoming the merest brush of his mouth grazing hers—back and forth. Back and forth. Back and forth. Intoxicating and seductive.

It was…spectacular. Surreal. Breathtaking.

Mercy floated in a haze while at the same time she’d never felt more vibrant and alive. This union of their lips touched her spirit, and something unfurled within her like a dove opening its wings and taking flight. She felt it, the whoosh, as that nameless thing inside her was set free.

An undefinable something, she wasn’t even aware had been imprisoned.

This was more than a mere kiss. A mere touching of flesh to flesh. Much, much more. It made Mercy giddy and dizzy and the tiniest bit off-balance. She shivered, and he tightened his embrace.

“Mercy,” Ronan murmured against her lips. “Mercy. Mercy. Mercy.”

She understood her name was a supplication and a benediction.

Mercy clung to him, and when Ronan lifted her onto his lap, she melted into his chest, twining her arms about his neck and returning his kiss.

Yes. Oh, yes.

She’d wanted to feel his mouth upon hers for weeks now.

His reverent kisses and lovingly whispered endearments made her feel beautiful and desirable, yes. But they also made her feel as if she were the most precious of priceless treasures.

Unique and exceptional.

All of that with a mere kiss.

“You are a wonder, Mercy,” Ronan whispered into her ear, his voice raw and gravelly, husky with primal, masculine need. “I swear…what you do to me. I’ve never felt this before.”

Ronan didn’t speak down to her, reminding her of her status as a governess. He spoke to her as his equal, even though he knew the truth of her birth. The rarity of his kindness and decency struck her heart. In that instant, that piece became his forever and always.

Mercy suspected the first piece of her vulnerable heart had landed beside his glossy boots that night in the study when he’d drawn her into his arms and soothed her sobs with light caresses and softly murmured assurances.

How could this be wrong?

This feeling burgeoning inside her for this honorable man?

This coming together as if the Almighty had designed them for this very thing.