Nothing in him doubted that her desire to help was genuine, and she’d never once used their growing feelings for each other to persuade him not to sell her aunt’s home.
And yet, he still couldn’t stomach the idea of her having any connection to Beck. Perhaps she was right. The man was more bluster than a real threat, but now there was every chance he knew about Lucy, and that chilled him to the bone and twisted in his gut.
Protecting her came before everything else.
He sensed her frustration with him. When hemade no reply to her advice, she’d taken out her sketchbook and busied herself laying down light strokes with her pencil while holding the side of the sketchbook up to shield her work from his view.
“You still won’t let me see?”
“These aren’t very good. I’m not terribly good at drawing people.” She shifted her gaze his way, then back down to her book, and let out a sigh. “All right. You may look.”
Rather than merely drop her arm, she handed the sketchbook to him. The image she’d drawn was of her view from that tearoom window, and while the people were mostly blocked-in figures moving down the thoroughfare, the details of the buildings struck him as brilliant.
“You’ve captured so many details on the buildings’ facades.”
“I’m good at buildings. Landscapes, I suppose you’d say. Maybe because I mostly practiced my skills with still objects around the house. People seem ever in motion, so changeable.”
“May I?” he asked before flipping pages to look at her other work.
She bit her lower lip and finally nodded. “If you must.”
He found he couldn’t resist, and he smiled at each new page. Each new revelation of the things that caught Lucy’s eye. She’d drawn items at Invermere. A teacup. The stairwell. Her aunt’s bow and arrow at rest against Lady Cassandra’s intricatelypatterned wallpaper. Then another pattern with buttons.
“Is this my...?”
“The blue waistcoat.” She shrugged innocently, but he didn’t miss the spike of pink along the arc of her cheek. “I liked the pattern. And the color is the same as your eyes.”
“Is it indeed? You have a good eye and more skill than you let on.”
She retrieved her sketchbook before he could examine more pages. “I’m still learning. I thought perhaps Aunt Cassandra would teach me a bit.”
Her tone suggested that she no longer considered that a possibility.
“And now?”
“We’ll arrive later than we’d planned. She may already be there now.” She blinked and pressed her lips together. “I can only imagine what she’ll think to find that I’ve gone off on the day she was to arrive.”
“And with me.”
“And with you. I came on this journey to take control of my fate, to make my own choices. And there is no place I would rather be than here. With you.” She reached out to run her fingers along the edge of his jaw, then swept one fingertip along the seam of his lips. Tenderness, trust, affection—she continued to give him as much of her attention, show him how much she desired him, even after he’d told her what a fool he’d been, what a failure he’d become.
Lucy saw through his charm and whatever facade he projected. Perhaps she always had. And now, he could see, no, he could feel it too, that nothing had changed between them.
If anything, he wanted her more.
He took what she offered, kissing the pad of her finger, then pressing her wrist against his mouth to feel her pulse, to kiss that spot where her heart beat as fast as his. He licked at the tender flesh, savoring the sweet and spice taste of her.
Somehow, she was his. Perhaps only for this moment. Like it had been on Calton Hill, a warning in him sounded that it might be just this moment. Perhaps only for the next few hours, but right now, she was his. And he was hers. The flash of heat in her jade gaze told him she knew it too.
Impatiently, she leaned in and pressed her mouth to his jaw, nuzzling the same hard edge she’d traced with her fingers.
James waited, forcing himself to let her take her time. He expected her to kiss him, but she dipped her head, pressing her lips to the taut muscles of his neck. Then her hands worked, even as her mouth hovered, heated breath singeing his skin.
She tugged at his necktie, then slipped the button of his shirt. The first. Then the second, and immediately stroked her fingers gently along the base of his throat.
“This spot,” she breathed against his skin. “I think of it often.”
She flicked her tongue against the base of histhroat, at the spot where his pulse jittered wildly because of her nearness. Her heat.
