“I just want you,” she said. “No matter who or where you are. Professor, baron, marquess, Hawkridge, Oxford…I don’t care. I care only that we’re together.”
He searched her eyes for a long, solemn moment, and then he yanked her against him and crushed his mouth to hers.
This was what mattered, she thought wildly—this pull, this overwhelming need. This longing to share hearts and lives. Where was just a tiny, insignificant detail.
Then she ceased thinking at all. She stopped thinking and just kissed Rand, for a minute, or an hour, or maybe…
“Lily,” a strangled voice said in her ear, “what on earth are we doing?”
Startled from the kiss, she froze. Rand’s surcoat was in a heap on the floor, and her hands held bunches of his shirt—where she’d been pulling it out of his breeches. Shocked, she let go and stumbled back until her legs hit the stool. “I…I don’t…”
“It’s all right,” he soothed, tucking his shirt back in. “We just got a bit carried away.”
“A bit?” She sank onto the stool, trying to catch her breath. “It’s not all right, Rand. Kissing when we’re weeks shy of our wedding day is one thing, but right now we can’t know for sure if we’ll ever be married.”
“What are you saying?”
She bit her lip, gathering her thoughts. “I don’t think we should be close right now. It feels wrong. What if things don’t work out for us?”
“I’ll never let that happen.”
“Never say never,” she quoted softly.
The light went out of his eyes.
They were silent a while, their breathing sounding harsh in the still room.
“No,” he said at last. “This time I say never.”
FORTY-TWO
“HOW IS HE?” Joseph asked, looking up from his book.
Sighing, Chrystabel lowered herself to the plush stool at her dressing table. “Brave, but not a particularly gifted actor. The ankle was obviously still paining him, so I gave him some sack to help him sleep.” She began preparing herself for bed.
“You’re fretting, Chrysanthemum. I can hear it in your voice.” Joseph removed the reading spectacles his son-in-law had given him this past Christmas. “Don’t be such a mother. Rowan will be fine.”
“Hmm?” Chrystabel dipped her fingers in a bowl of lavender water, then dried them on a clean cloth. “Oh, I grieve for poor Rowan’s discomfort, but it’s not him I’m fretting over. Lily—”
“Is with Rose. I’m sure they both arrived safely at Hawkridge.”
“Indeed, that’s just it.” Dampening the cloth, Chrystabel began to wash her face. Was it her imagination, or were those hollows under her eyes? “Lily is off with her betrothed unsupervised, and, given the way his son speaks of him, I can hardly trust Lord Hawkridge to have a care for her reputation.”
“If you’re so concerned, why did you let them go?”
“I didn’t feel I had a choice. Lily was clearly determined, and we did raise our daughters to make their own decisions. But now I wonder if I was rash.” Chrystabel heaved another sigh. “Meanwhile, I cannot account for Rose’s part in this at all. I’m very much mistaken if she’s forgiven Lily, yet she claims to have volunteered to bear her company.”
Looking thoughtful, Joseph chewed on one end of his eyeglasses frames—a new habit that secretly drove Chrystabel wild. “Are you suggesting that Rose may have some other agenda?”
“No—maybe—I don’t know.” She turned from the mirror to meet her husband’s eyes. “I don’t like to think her capable of deliberately sabotaging Lily’s happiness, but she’s definitely hiding something from me.”
“Darling, she’s your nineteen-year-old daughter. Of course she’s hiding something from you.”
Chrystabel almost smiled.
“In any case, haven’t we learned by now that interfering in their squabbles only makes things worse? They’re good girls; they’ll sort it out. Hopefully before one of them maims the other.”
Now Chrystabel did smile. “You’re right, of course. Lily is tougher than she looks, and Rose has a good heart underneath. I must let nature take its course.” The smile faltered a little. “And I must do my best to trust that Lily’s and Rand’s own integrity will keep them chaste.”
“Right you are.” Joseph put his book and eyeglasses aside. “Now come to bed. You’ve hardly paid me any notice all day, you’re so solicitous of our son. You must convince me you like him better than me.”
FORTY-THREE
RAND HAD A restless night.
His mind kept turning over all the possibilities, all the ways their plans could go awry. When he’d left Hawkridge at thirteen, Margery had been only ten. Visits during his university years had been sporadic and infrequent—he’d preferred to spend school breaks with Ford’s family when possible. His last time home, he’d been seventeen and Margery not yet fifteen.
He’d known Margery the child. He’d been acquainted with Margery the girl. But Margery the young woman was a stranger.
What if he were wrong? What if Margery the woman did want to marry him? She’d lived under the influence of the marquess all these years…
Something shifted at the foot of the bed. At first he was alarmed, but then a warm little weight settled across his feet and began vibrating.
Of course Beatrix had found her way to Hawkridge. Ordinarily her presence would have bothered him, but tonight it made him feel like Lily were here.
Soon after, he finally drifted off, a ghost of a smile on his face, his head full of the tune she had learned for him.
LILY SAW NO indication that anyone’s mood was improved the next morning. Lord Hawkridge had breakfasted early and closeted himself in his study before the others came downstairs. And Rose’s surliness made Lily wish she’d done the same. Would every meal here prove an ordeal?
She and Rand were about to rise from the dining table when they heard a vehicle roll up the
