But they were kissing and Phillipa was burning alive. She lifted against him, the sound of his name muffled on her tongue. His fingers flexed against her back, heated branding she wanted to last forever, to prove this had happened later when she tried to tell herself it was a dream. When he had left her life, never to return.
That thought jolted her from the madness a fraction. She realized they were standing out in the open, where anyone could stumble upon them. The last thing either one of them needed.
And so responsibility returned and she pulled back, her breath short as she stared up at him. For a moment, there was no clarity in his expression, only that animal hunger that had driven them to this in the first place. But slowly, he returned to himself.
And she saw the moment where reality dawned for him.
He backed away, far away, and stared at her. “Phillipa, I-I am so sorry. I don’t know what came over me.”
He wouldn’t meet her eyes. He’d always done so in the past, but now he refused, and her stomach turned. This moment, so powerful and so wonderful…had ruined everything between them. She could see that it had. That he would pull further away because of his sense of duty, because of the weight pressing down on his shoulders.
Kissing her had made it worse, not better.
“Emotions h-have been…high lately,” she stammered, searching for any explanation that would lower this wall he was clearly going to build between them. “And our friendship has become one I greatly value. This was a moment of weakness, of confusion. You needn’t apologize for it. I was as swept away as you were.”
“You are too kind,” he said with a bow, suddenly all formality. “Though I don’t deserve anything less than your censure. I assure you, this won’t happen again.”
The certainty of the words stung like he’d slapped her, and she turned her face so he wouldn’t be aware of the tears that suddenly tingled in her eyes. He wasn’t being unkind. He was being gentlemanly.
And yet he tore her heart out in ways that were too revealing, even to herself.
“I understand,” she said, wishing her voice didn’t have that slight waver to it.
“We should probably go back,” he said, shifting with discomfort. “The others will be ready by now, I think.”
“Of course,” she said, and moved toward the safety of others over the rise. “I’m anxious to reach our destination.”
He said nothing more, but followed her up the hill. She felt his eyes on her as they walked together across the field back toward the carriage. But he said nothing to her as she allowed the footman to help her into the rig for the final leg of their journey.
He said nothing, and that said it all.
Rhys had never wanted his half-brother’s things. All his life, it had been quite the opposite. While Erasmus was showy and bold, Rhys had been quiet, studious, careful. They’d never had the same taste in anything.
And now, as he rode along on this horse beside his carriage, winding down the miles taking him to Bath, all he could think about was how deeply he coveted Phillipa.
For hours he had only thought about the kiss. No, that wasn’t true. He’d thought about the kiss a great deal, of course. How could one not when it had been such a magnificent explosion of mouths and tongues and gripping hands? The kind of kiss that made a man want to forget everything else in the world, something Rhys didn’t often have occasion to do.
But he thought of more than that. He thought of all the places that kiss could have gone, there on the soft grass beside the lake. How if they’d been alone, if she hadn’t pulled away, if…if…if…
Then he might have given in to this dissolute part of himself that he so wanted to hide. He might have taken far more than a stolen kiss.
When he was honest with himself, this wasn’t the first time such fantasies had plagued his mind. Almost since the first moment he entered a room and Phillipa was there with her wild mop of curly hair and her bright green eyes with their flicker of defiance and self-assurance, he had wanted her. Deeply, desperately, wanted her. The kind of want that kept him awake at night, that woke him hard in the morning, that made him breathless when he saw her.
And it was fucking terrible. If he’d met her first, if there had been no Erasmus, it wouldn’t have been. It would have been something wonderful then, perhaps. But there was an Erasmus. And a marriage. And a scandal.
So nothing good could ever come of any of this now. Phillipa was largest on a pile of things he could not have, should not want.
“There, my lord!” the driver said as they came to a rise in the road.
Rhys blinked, pulled from his thoughts, and looked down at the city below. Bath. A bustling resort town, with unique terraced houses and columned buildings and, of course, the famous Roman baths that brought so many there each year.
It didn’t take them long to enter the outskirts of the city, where the bustle increased exponentially. Rhys had always liked the heartbeat of a city. He stayed in London rather than retreating to his country estate during holidays, so the bright, cheerful chaos of Bath was appealing. Although the happy faces of those walking the streets, enjoying their holidays, were almost an insult to the weight he carried.
He frowned and glanced at the carriage. He could see Phillipa’s face in the window. She had pushed the curtain back and was staring intently at the scene around them. Her lips were pursed, her expression lined with concern. Then her gaze slid to him and her eyes widened a fraction. Her mouth parted. The curtain fell and she leaned away back into the carriage.
He frowned as he returned his attention to the road ahead of him. He deserved the distancing Phillipa had just done. It was exactly what he’d demanded by the lake after their kiss. It was what they both needed in order to move forward with the complicated lives stretched out before them.
But he didn’t like it.
They weaved their way out of the town proper and into the more sparsely populated areas on the fringes. At last the carriage turned down a short drive and finally stopped in front of a cottage pushed back from the road. A shrubbery-lined pathway led to the door, and as he slung himself off his horse, it opened.
Two people exited, and older man and woman, and in her arms was a chubby, smiling baby. This was his nephew, the child his brother had abandoned.
In that moment, as Rhys looked at the boy, something in him shifted. It was like the air had been yanked from his lungs and he couldn’t look away as the boy was brought closer. His heart raced, swelling with emotions he had never thought to have for a child.
In that moment, Rhys knew he would do everything in his power to make sure the boy never knew grief, never knew loneliness, never wanted for anything.
No matter the cost.
Chapter 5
Pippa nearly deposited herself on her backside, she exited the carriage so swiftly. But what did a lack of decorum matter when Kenley was right there, just a few feet away? She pushed forward, past Rhys who was standing stock still at the end of the path and raced toward him.
It had been weeks since she saw the baby, but his eyes lit up as she neared and he reached for her, chubby arms flexing as he gurgled his excitement.
She swept him from Mrs. Barton’s arms and cuddled him close, speaking nonsense to him as she drew in deep whiffs of his soft, baby scent. God, they could bottle it and she would make a mint.