“Right. Before you can overthink it, let us do this.” He spun her around abruptly so her back was to his chest. His arm wrapped around her waist until his hand was covering her belly.
She froze.
No, she melted at the touch. Heat seemed to sear her insides as he held her close, his voice a low murmur in her ear. “Take a deep breath in so you can see my hand rise and fall.”
She did as she was told, too stunned by the intimacy to protest.
“Good,” he murmured. “Now sing.”
She blinked at the shrubbery before her. “Sing what?”
She could feel his shrug. “Anything. Whatever is familiar.”
Shifting a bit she wracked her brain for something that she knew well and settled on an old-fashioned song that her first nurse used to sing to her as a lullaby. She opened her mouth, her throat threatened to choke her.
“Relax. Be yourself,” he whispered in her ear, his arm closing tighter around her in an odd sort of comforting embrace. “I’ve got you.”
With a sigh she began, and the sound of her own voice filling the silence startled her. How long had it been since she’d heard herself sing?
Too long.
Not long enough.
The act of singing awoke a myriad of emotions she couldn’t quite name. While trying to remember the words and stay on key, it was difficult to dwell on these sensations, the old feelings she’d thought she’d buried.
She’d thought she’d killed.
They weren’t dead and they weren’t even gone. They were right here, just under the surface, it seemed. They came to life as she sang and…they were overwhelming. She found herself grateful for Damian’s tight grip, and when he turned her around as her voice trailed off, she was stunned to discover she’d been crying.
It wasn’t until he lifted a hand and wiped away her tears that she realized it.
“Pru…” The tenderness in his eyes was nearly her undoing.
She shook her head quickly with a sniff. “I’m all right.”
“You’re better than all right,” he said with a grin that helped to wipe away the heaviness of the moment. “You were perfect.”
She snorted in disbelief and that made his grin widen. “I mean it. You sounded lovely when you forgot to be a stuck-up goody two shoes.”
Choking on a laugh, she swatted his arm away when he went to brush more tears from her cheeks. “Perhaps I am a bit of a goody two shoes, but I hardly see how that’s a bad thing.”
He laughed. “Don’t you?”
“No.”
He tilted his head to the side to study her. “Tell me, Pru, haven’t you ever once wanted to rebel?”
She opened her mouth to say ‘no’ but it wouldn’t come out. The question threw her more than she wanted to admit. Instead, she sniffed. “You do enough rebelling for the both of us.”
He laughed and she caught a whiff of understanding. He knew what she was doing, he knew that she was deflecting, and he wasn’t going to push her. “You’re probably right. I do like to push the boundaries.”
She looked around at their current secluded surroundings and shook her head with a mix of awe and horror. “What is it about being with you that has me wanting to break the rules, too?”
She felt the change in him. A stiffening or a tension as he gazed down at her. “Do I do that to you?”
She nodded, unable to meet his searching gaze. “You do.”
She wasn’t entirely certain what she was admitting to, but she felt certain that he knew. There was some undercurrent here that made her feel as if she was on shaky ground while he seemed to be more confident than ever.
“You make me want to do the right thing,” he said, so quietly she almost missed it. She glanced up quickly and saw the dark swirl of emotions in his eyes and it took her breath away.
“You make me want to…” He shook his head, tearing his gaze away as he took a deep breath, a familiar teasing smile curving his lips. “You make me want to play the role of savior.”
She blinked in surprise, torn between this impossibly sweet sensation that made her chest ache and a sinking sensation in the pit of her belly as his words registered. “You feel so sorry for me that you wish to play knight in shining armor, is that it?”
Surprise flared in his eyes but he caught himself quickly. “That wasn’t what I meant.”
Now she was the one to look away. Of course he felt sorry for her. She’d seen the way he’d looked at her hands where her aunt had struck her as though she were still a child. She’d seen the way he’d been looking at her ever since she’d fainted at his feet.
As though she were pitiable.
And perhaps she was.
The thought made her more irritated than sad. She hated being pitied. It wasn’t as though she’d been given such a terrible lot in life. Just one without many options.
And that was something a gentleman like him would never understand.
So perhaps it stood to reason that he would feel sorry for her. Maybe to such an extent that he’d feel compelled to help her, to do right by her…
The thought had her fighting tears all over again and this time she definitely could not explain why. “We should head back before my chaperone tells my aunt we have gone missing.”
She headed toward the music room doors without waiting for a response.
10
Damian hurried after her, his head spinning from the moment that had just occurred.
He had the unnerving sensation that in one afternoon his life had been flipped upside down and he no longer knew which way was up and which was down.
Or no, perhaps it hadn’t happened in an instant. Maybe this sensation had been taking root for days now, ever since he’d spotted the now-grown Prudence in her aunt’s drawing room. Maybe it had taken root
