‘Ah, but I know best,’ he murmured and kissed her hand instead of her cheek as she had been thinking he might. Apparently hands were every bit as sensitive as the soft skin near her ear could be, if only he would linger there instead.
‘Someone will see us,’ she hissed and might have snatched her hand away if it was not so comfortable in his large one that her fingers seemed to have entwined with his without the rest of her giving permission.
‘They will have to find out I am in love with you sooner or later, so why not now?’ he said as if it was as simple as that and if only it was.
‘Because nothing can come of it.’
‘Do you call this nothing, Marianne?’ he asked, suddenly very serious indeed as their eyes met in all that faint borrowed light from other people’s lamps and lanterns. He held up their interlocked hands, brushed the index finger of his other hand over her overheated cheek that was still waiting for his kiss. His eyes held a challenge now as well as so much warmth that she could not even summon up a shiver for the whisper of winter to come behind the gentler autumn night.
‘No, I call it impossible,’ she said just as seriously and felt that chill after all.
‘Where there is enough love there is no such thing as impossible. You should know that better than anyone, Mrs Turner,’ he said with a hint of bitterness in his deep voice because she was giving him less than she had Daniel.
‘And my late husband would tell you I am the most stubborn female he ever came across if he was able to. If you think my Daniel had an easy time of it with me either before or after I was his wife, you had best think again, Lord Stratford.’
‘I envy him never knowing which way you might jump, not being able to expect anything but the unexpected from you, but most of all I envy him the faith and love you had in him when you set out to marry him and never mind any obstacles between you.’
‘And it took me six months to admit I could not live without him and not miss what we might have been every day for the rest of our lives. I did not know then what I know now or it might have been a lot longer.’
‘I will never expect you to forget him, Marianne,’ he said gently, as if the news of that six months had soothed something raw inside him and made him feel better about the effort it was costing him to persuade her in his turn. ‘I am jealous of him, I admit that, but I do not want to jostle him aside and demand all the love you have solely for me. You loved one another for five years, my darling. I honour him for the good life you two made together in circumstances that would have made most ladies run screaming for their mothers.’
‘At least I can safely promise I will not do that,’ she said and saw triumph glint back at her as she realised it had sounded like a promise for their future. ‘No, that was only a perhaps. Stop trying to rush me.’
‘As if I could when you must be the most stubborn and overprotective woman on earth,’ he said rather sulkily. That glimpse of the boy he once was being just plain difficult because he could not get his way made her love him more instead of less.
She was in even more trouble now. So much of her longed to launch herself at him and revel in his lovemaking that a world of warmth and love and sensuality in his powerful arms felt tantalisingly close. Love meant putting your beloved’s happiness first and however much he wanted her now, would he still do so as the years went past and all his roles demanded children to carry them on? And he should have a wife the world respected as his equal, not a vicar’s daughter who had managed to marry beneath her before she netted herself a viscount.
‘You must know I have feelings for you. I do not see how you could escape knowing it when I virtually threw myself at you earlier this evening, but I am about as unsuitable a viscountess as you could find.’
‘You have obviously not looked hard enough, then. You are a respectable widow, love, not a housemaid or a courtesan. We lords and even the odd duke here and there have always married women the world thought we should not and yet the world keeps turning and the aristocracy is still in its accustomed place and love is all that matters in the end.’
‘Maybe, but we can stand here arguing black is white all night long and you still will not convince me I am viscountess material, my lord. Now kindly go away and let me go to bed. You have obviously been here for days winning over my friends and laying all sorts of devious plans for my undoing, but I have had a long journey and I am weary from it and about to lose my temper.’
‘Heaven forbid,’ he said with such a rueful smile inviting her to laugh that she felt her heart melting another degree.
‘Go away,’ she demanded and turned her head away to hide the answering smile that might give her away as a lot less certain she wanted him to than she had managed to sound.
‘For now,’ he answered and used their entwined hands to pull her much closer and snatch an unguarded kiss from her lips almost out here in the street.
It was so brief and hot and unsatisfying that she pouted and shot him a look
