He liked both and everything in between.
But he knew nothing, absolutely nothing, about quiet conversations over tea. Intimate discussions about family and politics and art while thoughts of making someone happy out of bed swirled through his mind. Thoughts about love filling his heart. He’d only loved two people, his brother and mother, and they were both long gone. Maybe three, if he counted Penny, which he felt he could in a brotherly, best friend fashion.
Moonlight slithered across the boundless woodlands as choppy pianoforte chords, compliments of a regrettably untalented Devon guest, flowed over him. Christian sighed and kicked at a patch of overgrown grass. Raine was late, likely not coming. Reading Austen in her narrow bed in the servant’s quarters, tucked in and away from him. Or, maybe she’d taken the book and the length of entirely serviceable silver filigree he’d gifted her on a whim and shoved them under his door, a determined rebuke. A mild breeze ripped through the pitch night, the temperature, for a Yorkshire evening, balmy and ideal. A perfect night for—
Christian halted, flipping the worn compensating balance wheel he’d replaced on one of the duke’s watches from hand to hand. A perfect night for what?
Not an assignation.
As much as he wanted Raine beneath him on any available surface she’d agree to share, he wanted her friendship, her opinions, wishes, dreams, past, present, future, more. He wanted the one person in the universe he felt could ease his loneliness.
The one person he might have a chance to make happy in return. Why he imagined he could, he wasn’t able to explain; he only knew it to be true.
The wheel tumbled from his hand to the grass. With a growl, he went to one knee to retrieve it. This was trouble, even if he welcomed it. Dire and unpredictable. He was in love with the woman in the duke’s study, not only the girl he’d mooned over at his cousin’s estate.
The sound of a branch cracking had his gaze reaching into the night, his body flooding with anticipation.
She was late. But she’d come.
Strolling across the lawn, that unflattering dress whipping her long legs, flaxen hair unbound and flowing down her back, something he’d yet to see. He clenched his hands into fists and rose unsteadily to his feet. This is how she’d look in his bed. A little untamed, a little unsure.
All his.
She appeared nervous when she reached him, her cheeks ashen in the creamy moonlight, her bottom lip tucked firmly between her teeth. Tugging at her threadbare shawl, she gave him a cautious smile, a tilt of her head that said, I’m here, now what?
He extended his hand, watched in trepidation as she glanced at the offering, caught her breath in indecision, then slowly linked her fingers with his. It was a sweetly intimate gesture, and he was unable to remember holding hands with anyone except his mother.
With a smile but no conversation, not yet, he tugged her along, over the stone bridge to a secluded spot on the other side of the stream. The plink of the pianoforte rippled through the night, the only sound aside from their hushed breaths and the distant chirp of crickets.
Penny, a romantic at heart though he’d deny it to his death, had secured the blanket and the candles. Christian had charmed the bottle of wine from the cook, Mrs. Webster, who certainly suspected he planned to use it for nefarious purposes, which for the first time, he didn’t.
Raine moved ahead of him, halted, and he stumbled into her. Bloody hell, her body was warm, soft. He tucked his nose in her hair, his inhalation sending the scent of lavender through him.
“What’s this?” she asked with a searching backward glance.
Christian gave her a gentle nudge away from his body before it provided proof of her ardent effect on him. “A moonlit picnic among friends. I’ll sit on the far side of the blanket, not even the tip of my boot touching the hem of that most unflattering garment Devon has you wear. The candles add a certain sense of propriety, am I right? With those and a close-to-full moon, we’re as illuminated as we’d be in the duchess’s drawing room. You see, I remember my promise.”
A laugh burst from her, sending her shawl fluttering to the ground. “You think two tallow candles will style this a proper situation? Mister Bainbridge, I’m astounded by your lack of prudence and your optimism that the wind won’t blow them out. Also, a gentleman never tells a woman her clothing is unflattering, even if it’s the absolute truth.”
He dropped to his haunches to retrieve her shawl and gestured to the candles that had defied his will and indeed remained unlit. “Go on. Please. You’re ruining the most romantic undertaking of my life. And it’s Christian. Not sir, not mister. I’m neither of those things, not to you.”
“That’s just as well,” she said and wandered to his celebration beneath the stars, arranging herself on the blanket with all the grace of a queen, “because I prefer Kit.”
He hummed beneath his breath, unsure what to say. His nickname on her lips sent a jagged, desirous pulse spiraling through him. Of longing. And strangely, of loneliness. No one aside from his brother and Penny had ever called him Kit. He wouldn’t have allowed it if they had. The name brought too many painful memories, ones he’d sealed in a box and buried deep in his heart. This endeavor, he realized as he settled across from her, was going to test him.
Test that promise he’d so boldly made not to touch her.
Silent, he poured wine into the tumblers he’d guessed would make the trip more safely than wine glasses and handed her one. Rucking his knee high, he dropped his arm atop it and watched her tongue peek out to catch a drop of wine on the rim. His fingers clamped around the crystal as
