‘Since then, I started to wish for something I’d never thought I wanted before. To belong to someone, other than Gideon. To belong to you.’
‘I want that more than anything,’ he said, raising her hand to his lips. ‘But it cannot be.’
‘Oh, for heaven’s sake, Tom, stop talking such fustian! So, you’ve been a rake. So, your background contains a bit of scandal. I don’t care. I don’t care about any of it. What I do care about is what you think of me. That’s all. Because you’re the only person never to have condemned me. Or tried to order me about. You might even...’ her breath hitched in her throat ‘...be able to forgive the wicked things I’ve done,’ she ended, gazing up at him with eyes full of hope and longing.
‘You couldn’t do anything wicked. I don’t believe it. If you have done something you regret,’ he added swiftly when her face fell and he recalled her saying something about deserving punishment because she’d done something dreadful to Major Flint, ‘I would know that you didn’t mean any harm by it. Or if you did, that you were sorry, afterwards. Sometimes, we all do things, in the heat of the moment, we shouldn’t. That doesn’t make us bad people. Only human.’
‘Well, I suppose at leas
t this has made you stop saying you think I’m an angel,’ she said sadly.
His face worked. ‘Yes. But that doesn’t change what I am. Why do you think Lord Randall selected me to become an officer in his unit? It’s because I’ve always been so good at causing trouble wherever I go. And leading others into it.’
‘The way you formed those village lads, the ones who taunted you with that horrid song, into a gang who followed you into all sorts of enterprising adventures?’ She curled her fingers into his. ‘You are a born leader of men, Tom. Why can’t you see that it’s a good thing? Why do you talk of it as though it is some kind of crime?’
‘You speak of me as though I’m some kind of...’ He shook his head, unable to find the right word.
‘To me, you are, Tom,’ she said with a soft smile. ‘The best man in the world.’
Her words sucked the breath from his chest. Made his legs start shaking. ‘And I can’t bear the thought of you leaving. Please, Tom, don’t leave me.’
Chapter Thirteen
‘I can’t fight you,’ he said, bowing his head over her hand as he pressed it fervently to his mouth. ‘Not as well as my own desire. But it’s wrong of me. If I come back with you now...’ He looked up at her and what she saw in his eyes made her heart thunder. Naked desire. Agonised longing.
For her.
‘Tom,’ she breathed, ‘I’m already as good as ruined. There is no point in you fighting some sort of rearguard action by leaving me.’
She stepped up to him, slid her arms round his neck and kissed him.
And his brain simply dissolved. He couldn’t have formed a rational explanation for why he should stop her from kissing him, had his life depended on it.
‘Disgraceful,’ he dimly heard somebody say. A swift glance over Sarah’s shoulder confirmed it was the same elderly couple who’d walked past a few moments ago. They must have doubled back to make sure they didn’t miss anything.
With a low growl, he pulled Sarah closer into his body and gave them something really worth watching.
He stopped kissing her only when his head began to spin.
‘Take me home, Tom.’
Home. He lifted his head, eyes closed, and swallowed back what felt like a sob. From now on, wherever she was would be his home. And to think she’d spoken of their little room as home, too.
‘I very much fear,’ he confessed, once he could breathe steadily again, ‘you are going to have to take me home,’ he said. ‘My legs are shaking so much.’
‘Oh, I’m so sorry,’ she said, instantly snaking her arm round his waist and wedging her shoulder under his. ‘Come on, let’s get you back to bed.’
They began to weave their unsteady way back up the slope, and on to the Rue Royale.
They said nothing more during their short walk back to the lodging house in the Rue de Regence. Tom hadn’t the breath for it, for one thing. For another, he was too stunned by her declaration she needed him to know what to say.
‘You fought for me,’ he said as he collapsed to the bed, having only just made it up the stairs. ‘You always have done. Right from the first. That is what made me fall in love with you. ‘
‘I will always fight for you, Tom,’ she said, bending over him to plant a kiss on his brow. ‘Because you are worth fighting for.’
‘I’m not. But your faith in me makes me wish I could be the sort of man who was.’
‘I don’t want you to change,’ she said, stroking his cheek tenderly. ‘I love you exactly as you are.’