A smile touched the widow’s lips. Amusement turned her eyes a vibrant shade of blue as she sipped the liquor into her mouth.
Damian watched her reaction—the glint of pleasure as the warm liquid slid down her throat, the wide-eyed shock as it left a scorching trail. He took the flask and downed the contents before replacing the stopper and slipping it back into his pocket.
“Well?” he prompted, for he would not let her escape so easily.
She arched a brow. “You’re right. But how might I hold you to your promise without knowing where to find you?”
Clever minx.
“Though as a man who acts on impulse,” she continued, wearing her champion’s smirk, “keeping track of your movements often proved difficult.”
And finding her had been downright impossible. “And you left the lodging-house like a ghost in the night. After a few months spent searching, I presumed you were dead.”
How was it a man could grieve for a kiss he had never stolen? For the loss of a lover he’d never bedded? A wife he’d never wed?
“You looked for me?” She seemed surprised.
Looked for her? People did not simply disappear. He had been out of his mind with worry, far too obsessed with her welfare. Not that he’d admitted his weakness to anyone.
“A bit of bread and a sack of kindling hardly seemed a fair reward for a woman who saved my life. The landlord contacted the supplier when thieves stole the sack left outside your door. Your sudden departure seemed out of character.”
She remained silent as her curious gaze searched his face. Suspecting this woman had the power to see beyond the fixed expressions he showed to the world, Damian decided on a tactic to unnerve her.
“So you have thought about me many times during the last three years.” His leg brushed hers, his knee coming to rest against her thigh.
The hitch in her breath was unmistakable. “P-perhaps as often as you have thought about me.”
He doubted that.
He thought about her whenever he stripped off his clothes to reveal the jagged scar on his thigh, whenever he slid into the bathtub to ease the aching muscle, whenever a woman straddled him and rode him hard. Many times he had breathed her name as his own hand pumped his throbbing shaft. Too many times he had dreamt about her only to wake and experience the same gnawing emptiness within.
The Lord found novel ways to punish sinners.
And yet …
Fate had forced them together again.
It was time to change the subject, to discuss matters of revenge and murder. Something that did not make his heart stretch and beat against the confines of its prison. A topic that did not make his cock throb and ache to push inside her warmth.
But then the supper whistle rent the air, bringing a horde of hungry revellers bursting through the Grove, heading for the boxes. Waiters in tired-looking livery rushed to lay the covers.
The marquis flounced forward like a strutting peacock, his cortege of obedient pets in tow.
Lady Rathbone noticed the widow sitting in a box and waved, while her grandson gaped and stared as i
f spotting the most delicious thing on the menu.
The Steele siblings were nowhere to be seen. A fact Damian found somewhat disconcerting.
“Are you hungry?” he said, his knee still resting against her thigh. “I find I have lost my appetite.” He’d lost his appetite for food but not for her company and certainly not for the need to slake his lust inside her sumptuous body.
But he wanted to make love to the actress, not fuck the widow.
“Hungry?” She looked confused. “I’m famished. You said we were to take supper this evening.”
“And we will, a little later.” He was aware of Cavanagh and Trent strolling towards them, too, in the company of Mrs Crandell and numerous other patrons from the den of vice on Theobolds Road. “There are too many people here keen to pry into our relationship, keen to spread malicious lies. I’ll not have you make a mistake so early in the game.”
“Me, make a mistake? I have spent two years perfecting this facade.”