Page 48
“I confess, I’m quite done in. I’m sure you are too, Vanessa, as you were up with the chickens this morn,” Madeline said, the merest thread of puckishness coloring her voice. The bland stare she leveled Kingston didn’t fool him.
His oldest sister was up to something.
Startled, Vanessa glanced at the clock. The candles’ glow played across her hair, giving her an ethereal radiance.
“Goodness. Is that truly the time?” A wide smile wreathed her mouth as she accepted a kitten from Dorena and nuzzled the calico’s neck. “Good company tends to make time fly, doesn’t it?”
Gareth also stood. “Come, Remus. Romulus.”
With a snap of his fingers, the two puppies yawned and rose, obediently staring up at him. Their pure white tails thumped upon the pink, burgundy, and green Aubusson carpet. A carpet they’d each anointed several times.
“Such are the hazards of having puppies,” Vanessa had said last night as a pair of dutiful maids had mopped up the most recent accident.
A few more moments passed as goodnights were exchanged. Remus and Romulus, plump as piglets, scampered after Paxton and Gareth while his sisters, each carrying two kittens, slowly drifted from the room. Madeline gave him an impish smile as she shut the door firmly behind her.
Only the fireplace’s popping and snapping and the clock’s tick-tock, tick-tock interrupted the weighty silence that descended upon the drawing room. Vanessa made no effort to follow Kingston’s brothers and sisters, as was her wont.
Instead, she tidied the cards and put them away.
The air crackled with tension and electricity as if a bolt of lightning were about to strike at any moment.
Kingston should go.
He scratched his nose and, upon realizing what he was doing, promptly laid his hand on the chair’s arm.
It was the height of folly to remain.
Forcing himself to rise, he cupped his nape and stared into the capering flames. He’d not last another five months of keeping Vanessa at a distance. Of that, he was certain. Perhaps it would be best not to come every day anymore and only check in once weekly.
Even as the thought crossed his mind, he discarded it.
He would not leave his siblings care to Vanessa. She’d already taken on most of the burden, he was chagrined to admit. And he’d not have his brothers and sisters think he cared so little for them that he couldn’t be bothered to visit when Quail Hollow was but half a mile away.
Guilt hollowed his gut at the years of neglect they’d already suffered.
Closing his eyes, Kingston summoned every bit of resolve he possessed.
Go. Leave. Now.
“Kingston?”
His eyes flew open.
Vanessa stood only inches away, her brandy-colored eyes luminous with some emotion he couldn’t identify.
How had she moved so swiftly and silently?
Or was it that he’d been so absorbed in his rueful ruminations he hadn’t heard her?
Her tongue peeked out and touched the corner of her red mouth.
A groan lodged in his throat.
He wanted to touch that sweet, delicate corner with his tongue.
Saints above, Kingston’s mouth went dry as chalk again as lust pounded through him with the force of stampeding elephants. An immense battle fulminated within him. Two sides wrestling for dominance, cleaving him in two. Each convinced their course was best.
For her.
