He frowned and gripped h
er hand. “I’m coming with you.”
Startled, she tried to pull away. Fear surged. He couldn’t intend to ignite a scandal, could he? Not over this brief affair. It seemed profligate even for the profligate Marquess of Ranelaw.
Her voice shook with urgency and her electric reaction to his touch. “Haven’t you listened?”
His mouth flattened into a grim line. “I heard everything, madam.” He tugged her through the door and toward the staircase. She mustered no will to resist. “I’m not leaving you to go home unprotected.”
“But you can’t just . . .” she said helplessly even as her stupid, traitorous heart rejoiced to squeeze another few moments of his presence from this horrible morning.
He still spoke in that stony voice. “It’s early. Nobody will see us.”
She flinched. He spoke the final words like a whiplash. She wanted to protest, insist she was perfectly fine alone. But she wasn’t so strong.
She looked at him, recognizing that he, too, expected her to object to his escort. With a short nod, she stepped forward.
“Thank you.”
Ranelaw easily found a hackney. At his side, Antonia remained locked away in impenetrable silence.
He fought the urge to harangue, demand explanations, insist she changed her mind. He’d never proposed marriage in his life. When the one woman he asked to be his wife dismissed his offer in such a cavalier manner, it stung like the devil.
His pride, which had taken such a battering lately, forbade him from pursuing the subject. He’d asked her to stay, as mistress or wife, and she’d refused.
Well, let the hellcat hang.
Except when he glanced surreptitiously at her, trembling beside him in the shabby coach, he didn’t want her to suffer. He wanted to take her in his arms and reassure her that everything would be all right.
Whereas of course everything wouldn’t be.
Damn, what if he’d planted a child inside her?
He was blackguard enough to wish he had. Perhaps then she wouldn’t be so swift to refuse his proposal.
Let her see how it felt to beg him to save her from disgrace.
Except he knew to his bones she wouldn’t ask for help. She was the proudest woman alive. She wouldn’t humble herself to her lover, however much the lover longed to rescue her.
They approached the park, and she spoke for the first time since leaving his house. “Please stop here. Nobody will question me if I come from this direction.”
“I’ll see you home,” he said stubbornly, even as part of him insisted if the wench was determined on making her own way, he should bloody well let her.
She turned and studied him, her face set and pale in the shadowy depths of her hood. “It’s not necessary.”
His jaw hardened. “Yes, it is.”
“As you wish,” she said in a subdued voice.
“It’s not as I wish,” he snapped back, tightening his hands into fists on his lap.
“I’m sorry,” she said almost soundlessly.
To his shock, she took one clenched hand in hers. He’d thought she’d never again touch him willingly. He’d thought his anger defended him against her.
Wrong on both counts.
Before his pride prevented him, he laced his fingers through hers in a desperate grip. Her touch was like balm to his roiling grief.