As though she oughtn’t to be held responsible for what happened when she couldn’t see straight.
“What you said when you found me at the posting inn,” she explained. “Were you really worried? About me?”
* * * *
Worried?
His heart had begun hammering the moment Felicity had told him what Camellia had done. As the old coach had crawled toward the posting inn, he feared she would already have left.
At the first glimpse of her in the public room, he had expected to feel relief. Instead, his heartbeat had turned frantic at the sight of her alone, among the riffraff who traveled on the stage. Desperate to gather her in his arms and never let her out of his sight again, he’d settled for creating a distraction and getting her away.
His plan all along had been to surrender the coach to her at the first opportunity. She could then travel in reasonable comfort. Alone, yes, but the burly coachman would see to it that she came to no harm. And he had fully intended to hire a maid from one place or another, to lend an air of respectability.
When she’d clearly expected some explanation for his being on the road, something other than following her, he’d given Stoke as his destination. Perfectly plausible, though he had no intention of actually going there, of course. Even had he wanted to, which he did not, he needed to return to London and answer his uncle’s accusations. Still the mere idea of an excuse to spend three more days in her company, along with—no, he had refused to tempt himself with the thought of as many nights—had done nothing to return his heartbeat to normal.
He’d settled for an hour or two, just until the next change of horses. Seated across from her in the confines of a carriage, however, so close that their knees bumped whenever the body of the coach was jostled by the rutted road, which was all too frequently, he had found his desire to touch her had not abated. So he had contrived a way to get closer.
Certainly, he had not meant to fall asleep with her in his arms. In fact, he’d pinched himself to stay awake merely for the chance to watch her. Knowing such a pleasure ought never to be his, and delighting in it all the same.
Then he’d awoken to the sight of her sprawled against the cobblestones, apparently lifeless, and for a moment, he’d been certain his heart meant to stop for good. Cradling her against his chest, washing her, skating his fingers along her soft skin…extraordinary intimacies. He thought he’d known what it was to touch a woman. He had been wrong.
Worry? No, that wasn’t the half of what he felt. He could deny it, of course. Continue to be glib, to use wit as a shield—to protect her, as much as himself. He’d been doing that most of his life, after all. But sheer exhaustion had worn down his defenses.
She was studying him intently, as she so often did. How much could she see? Despite her missing spectacles, he felt stripped bare by that look—and not in the way he longed to be.
He turned away from the door and walked toward her. When he stopped beside the bed, just inches away from her, she rose to meet him. With anxious eyes, he searched her face for some flicker of discomfort, but he saw none. Instead, her pupils flared wide until her green gaze was nearly black. Desire.
“Yes. I meant it,” he answered at last. Setting his hands on the curve of her shoulders, he lowered his mouth to hers.
She did not immediately return his kiss. Her palms slid lightly up his chest along the silk of his waistcoat. Neither pulling him closer nor pushing him away. “I cannot…” she whispered against his lips. “We must not. Felicity.” The name was barely a breath.
Raising his hands to either side of her head, he lifted her face, made her feel the weight of his stare, so there could be no misunderstanding. “I will not be marrying your cousin.”
His words were met with a long silence while she absorbed their significance. He could see other questions forming in her eyes. Wondering, perhaps, what had changed. At last she said, “What about Stephen’s debt?”
“Forgiven.” He hesitated another moment. “But only after she’d cut me loose and told me to come after you.”
A certain tightness—guilt, perhaps—eased from her, and she sagged into his grip. But her breath came more rapidly. He watched her breasts rise and fall. Oh, she wanted him, perhaps almost as much as he wanted her. And one barrier had come crashing down.
It was not, however, the only thing standing between them. “Don’t misunderstand me, Camellia,” he said firmly. “I am not a free man.” Uncertainty streaked across her expression. No matter what happened between them tonight, he did not dare promise to do what society would call—wrongly, in this instance—the honorable thing. “I cannot marry…anyone.”
“I don’t—” Hesitation caught her next words, held them back. He could sense a war waging within her. “I don’t want to marry you, Gabriel,” she said finally, watching her fingertips flutter against the folds of his cravat. “I just want—”
“This?” Dropping one hand to her lower back, he brought her hips flush against his, leaving no room for doubt. Crude, but then, he had never claimed to be a gentleman.
She snagged her lower lip between her teeth, then eased it free. “Yes.”
Had he imagined his heart raced before? A wild, primal beat pounded inside his chest, almost drowning out the soft knocking, deeper still, of something that might have been disappointment, a flicker of longing that there could have been something more, something lasting between them. Resolutely, he ignored that quiet sound. He could not plan for the future. But he could give her what she wanted in the here and now.
Even positioned as they were, with his erection cradled against her belly, he could not
