“Then why are you so angry?”
His gaze flickered to the bottle sitting between them. “I haven’t drunk enough for this. And you,” he added, “have drunk entirely too much.”
“I don’t mind it,” she said, leaning into him as he sat up. He caught her too late, and she toppled against his chest. He was solid underneath her, and his waistcoat—a simple but charming blue—was silky under her touch. She pressed a hand against where she judged his heart to be and felt its urgent pounding.
“Sybil,” he said again, though it sounded more like a groan. “You should go.”
“Why?” His eyes looked more like storm clouds now, and she welcomed the gray light that had entered them, because while there was something angelic about blue eyes, there was something edged and sharp against these eyes, and she loved it.
Her entire life, she had been running from a fate that she had always known would be hers. There would never be an escape. Not with a mother like hers, so determined to thrust her only daughter into scandal and depravity. So why not choose the moment herself? Why not cut herself on the blade that had been handed to her and watch herself bleed? At least this way, she could enjoy the pain.
“Is this not the perfect moment?” she asked, looking up at him. “You are a footman and I am a lady, but we are alone and no one need ever know.” Here, she had the power. If he told anyone, who would believe them?
Sybil Wilson would never dream of behaving in such a way. At least, so she had been telling everyone for years.
“I don’t know what you mean,” he said, his voice gruff.
“I think you do.” She did her best to sway closer. “I want you to seduce me.”
He almost shoved her from him. “You don’t know what you’re saying.”
The world spun rather entertainingly, and Sybil lay on the grass for a few seconds, watching the clouds scud overhead and regaining her breath. When she finally looked back across at him, he was watching her with every muscle tensed, as though he was seconds from fleeing the scene entirely.
Hurt crashed over her in a wave of feeling it was impossible to ignore, and she turned back to the gurgling river. Before, when she was giving herself over to despair, she’d exchanged the convent for a quick and easy fate in the river, but now she didn’t see the darkness it could hold underneath; just the transient, gurgling beauty of it.
Beauty that blurred.
If she was pretty like her mother, he might want her. Then at least she could have chosen to have this strange man, whom she’d never have to see again after this day, seduce her. She could discover her body’s secrets, and how much truth there was to her mother’s claims of impalement. Presumably, given her mother’s experience in the matter, there would be a reasonable amount of truth.
He cursed again, using words Sybil had never heard before and took another long pull of the wine. The bottle was almost empty.
“Sybil,” he said again, but this time there was a roughness to his voice that made her insides quiver. “Look at me.”
No, no, she couldn’t look at him yet. She wasn’t done trying to cry, and if she looked at him before she had successfully blinked back all of the tears that were stubbornly trying to fall, she might accidentally weep. All weeping was bad, but accidental weeping was hands down the worst.
“I didn’t mean—” He was closer now, but she still refused to look at him. “Don’tcry.”
Was she crying? She put a hand to her cheeks so she could inform him that she was not, in fact, crying, when she encountered moisture. “Oh,” she said instead, the sound small and woebegone.
Sybilneversounded woebegone. She could be angry, as her mother could attest; sulky, as her mother could also attest; and she could definitely be quiet, but it was more the quietness of trying not to be noticed.
This was entirely out of her comfort zone.
“Why are you crying?” he asked, watching her with the wariness back in his eyes. “Have I said something to offend you?”
“Don’t you want me?” she asked before she could help herself.
His eyes widened. “You’re asking if Iwantyou?”
That was almost certainly a no, then. Goodness, she should have thought this through. Her mother had said men only ever wanted one thing, but clearly, that was forher. Sybil was an entirely different matter, evidently, and this man wasn’t the sort of hot-headed man Sybil had come to expect all men to be… or at least, she wasn’t appealing enough for—
He swore again, this time more vehemently, and caught the back of her neck with one hand, drawing her face to his for a rough, passionate kiss.
ChapterFive
Sybil’s mind temporarily disengaged from the rest of her body, which responded in a way she hadn’t known a body could. Her mouth opened under his command, and he made a low noise of approval as his tongue flashed across her bottom lip.
And oh, Holy Mother of God, it felt so good. In the way that she hadn’t known anything could feel. Perhaps it was the wine—in fact, it was almost certainly the wine—but she felt he was the match and she was the wick, and oh, she was melting under his touch.
