He might not talk to her again, except for his bleeding translations, a project she’d been dragging out to spend more time with him. What if he woke at dawn and decided to return to London? What if he woke at dawn and decided wenches were much less trouble than obstinate housemaids?
She sighed and touched her lips, still tingling from his kiss. Wasn’t that what she’d told him to do? Leave her to an independent future, a footman who may or may not ask for her hand. A man she considered a friend but nothing more. A man who’d given her nothing more than a tiresome kiss.
She didn’t want to live the rest of her life with tiresome kisses.
Not when there were ones powerful enough to melt copper if she only dared to accept them.
She closed her eyes and swallowed against the sting of tears. The hurt in his gaze had pierced something deep within her.
He was going to be doubly mad that she’d alerted his valet—who looked like no valet Raine had ever seen—to his possibly drunken state out there on the edge of the parklands. Where foxes and grass snakes and she wasn’t sure what else roamed at night. Maybe it wasn’t safe. Maybe he would get cold. The clouds had looked tempestuous like a storm might be rolling in. And…
Damn and blast. This felt like what she’d imagined falling in love would. Astonishing and distressing. Like stripping naked and diving into a calm pond. Glorious, until you looked to the shore and realized you weren’t alone and everyone was watching.
Kit might love her, too. Or imagine he did. That timid girl had made an enormous impression on him. Hard to believe when she’d been so lonely and fearful. But he’d been lonely and fearful, too. Like recognized like. It made her breath catch to imagine that brilliant boy gazing down from his window above and wishing he had the courage to talk to her.
Something he’d said when he met her shimmered through her mind.
So easy, and yet, ten years overdue.
A tear rolled down her cheek, and she scrubbed it away. His odd comment now made all the sense in the world.
If she tried, she could almost picture him. She remembered a young man visiting that summer. Quality clothing covering a gangly body, one in the midst of splendid promise. Beautiful features too big for his face.
Of course, he’d grown into them, into everything, beautifully. Become a gorgeous, talented, thoughtful man. A man suited to a highborn lady, someone who would add every advantage to his life, to his business. Even in Raine’s class, marriage was rarely about love and often about necessity or accessibility, property, or monies. She’d never expected love.
When Kit expected everything.
She snuggled deeper in the bed, her toes chilled, her skin clammy. There were a thousand reasons for her to push Kit away and only one reason not to. If she let herself love him, and someday he regretted his choice, as she assumed he would, she’d curl into a ball and die. Simply die. A marriage of convenience was one thing, but a marriage where only one person was happy…where only one person was in love…
Better to be alone than suffer such torment.
She pressed her face into her pillow, deciding to take the coward’s path.
Christian felt the tip of a boot nudge his hip. At the third nudge, he snarled, “Leave me be, will you? I’ll head back to the house with the sun. Go away.”
“You’re a disaster. I can’t take you anywhere.” Penny dropped to his haunches beside Christian and seized the empty wine bottle with a groan of dismay. “I was afraid of this. Women aren’t clocks. Nothing reliable about them.”
“I tried, can’t you see? Romance. It didn’t work.”
“Perhaps the traditional approach would be better. In London better. Rides through Hyde Park, strolls along Bond Street, two scandalous waltzes in one night, done. Marriage to someone who means something but not everything. Everything is not required, Kit.”
“It is for me.” Christian elbowed to a wobbly sit. A gust of wind whipped in from the east, sending his hair into his eyes. A storm was brewing. He rubbed his aching chest; his argument with Raine had taken a piece of him and shattered it like china against marble. He didn’t feel whole at the moment.
Penny sat next to Christian, stretching his legs out across the wrinkled blanket. “I feared this.”
“Wonderful, add prophecy to your list of talents. Have your flask handy?”
Penny grimaced and yanked the dented tin from his coat pocket, thrust it toward Christian. The etched metal caught a streak of moonlight and sent it shooting across their Hessians.
Christian took a long pull, the Scotch adding weight to the wine he’d consumed in a way he knew would distress him come morning. “She’s not going for it,” he said with a sinking heart. Even with that scorching kiss standing between them, she hadn’t considered it. Or him.
Penny’s blistering gaze swept him, the judgmental cur. “Did you mention marriage?”
“I did,” Christian said with another drink, “and she’s out.”
“Maybe we rehearse, and you can try again. You’re not the best with these things. Remember what you said to Lady Leadbetter about her gown? She stills get pink in the face when we see her.”
“I thought she’d accidentally dressed for a costume ball, I honestly did!” He coughed and shoved the flask in Penny’s direction. “Did you see that silk catastrophe? I was trying to save her from embarrassment. ‘Go home and change before anyone sees you’ type of thing. You dressed for the wrong event.”
“What I’m hearing is that you applied your standard finesse to the proposal tonight.”
“It wasn’t poetic if that’s what you’re asking.”
Penny took a drink and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “Ah, I’ve read this play before. You bumble, then Miss Mowbray says something you don’t want to hear, and boom, a sulking, insolent man appears, stage left.”
Christian stacked one boot atop the other and hung his head back, his gaze going to a sky that looked like it was going to unleash havoc at any moment. “A congenial groom got to her first. Someone by the name of Dash or something. Certainly the more appropriate choice. Another maid told her about that knighthood offer from cracked George, so she believes we’re leagues apart. If she only knew what it was like growing up with a wastrel for a father, a revered vicar the entire household was terrified of. My upbringing was less than noble. Likely less noble than hers in many respects.”
“So she declined because of societal disparity and this illustrious groom…”
“Then I got angry, and that sulking, insolent bloke you mentioned joined the party. It wasn’t pretty.”
“Your temper is truly your downfall.” Penny polished the flask on his sleeve and slipped it in his pocket. “We’re lost if we can’t upstage a humble groom, however.”
“It’s more complicated than that.” He groaned, digging his heel in the soil. His cheeks had gotten hot, always a bad sign. “Remember that girl I fancied? The one at Tavistock House?”
Penny whistled beneath his breath, tilted his head in meditation. “The paragon on the veranda. Yes, I remember, because you bring her up every time we’re deep in our cups. She’s mysteriously ruined every relationship you’ve tried to sustain, if I may be so bold as to judge. Let me guess, she’s in your head along with your lovely bluestocking and you don’t know—”