She was here with him, in a room adjoining his, and she wasn’t going anywhere. He’d wondered if the Widow Lintel was naughty. Yes, she was very naughty indeed.
“Are you angry or only surprised?” Rosalind asked in a small voice, her cheeks streaked with tears.
“I’m beside myself,” he answered.
“I thought you loved me.”
How young she was, how sheltered from the world. Love had nothing to do with their current situation. “Of course I love you.” He said it because it was honest and true. He stepped closer and took both her arms. “But what are we going to do?”
“We’re going to go to India together and get married.” She wiped her tears with a limp handkerchief pulled from her sleeve. How much had she been crying already, secreted away in her room beside his?
“You waited until we were past the ports at Gibraltar,” he said, shaking his head. “You hid from me so you wouldn’t be sent home.”
“Do you want me to return home?” She blinked at him, her blue-gray eyes dark and stormy. “Why are you scolding me?”
He threw up his hands. “Because you’ve done an incredibly reckless thing. Rosalind, do you even understand—”
He wanted to lecture her. He wanted to embrace her. He wanted to spank her until she cried. He would, he vowed, but not now, while he still grasped for sanity.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “It was the only way I knew to make a life together. I didn’t want to marry that awful Lord Brittingham.”
“Lord Brittingham would have been good for you.” In his high temper, he had trouble holding his tongue. “He’s not awful. He’s a fine man with better prospects than I have, a man who would have suited you in time. Would your parents have chosen a husband who wasn’t the apex of perfection? The perfect match for you?”
“Yes, because they didn’t choose you.”
“You little fool.” He embraced her though he knew it was ill-advised. He could be angry and still gather her against his chest. “You mad little fool.” He clasped her close, resting his chin against her hair. They rocked together with the ship’s motion and he felt her energy fill him, her pure, hopeful virgin’s desire.
“I knew you still loved me,” she whispered against his neck. “I knew it.”
“I adore you, as ever. But you’ve put me in an impossible position. Your father and brother will murder me for this.”
She pulled away, shocked. “Why? It’s not your doing.”
“They won’t believe you could embark on such a caper without my urging. I still can’t imagine how you’ve managed to be here.”
Her face fell. “I made up stories. I lied awfully.”
“Did you leave a note behind? To explain everything?”
“I didn’t dare in case they found it before I was well away. But I knew the groom would confess he took me to the docks. I told him I wanted to join my parents there to wish you goodbye.”
He couldn’t imagine the Lockridges’ chagrin. They must have assumed she’d already eloped with him at sea. These past few weeks, he’d been part of the season’s, no, the decade’s most outrageous scandal and he hadn’t even known it. He and the Duke of Lockridge’s youngest daughter had stolen away to India together. He shook his head at the audacity.
“This black gown. This whole story about traveling as a widow.” He remembered that his father had met his mother while she was dressed in mourning, recently arrived from India. He’d heard the story as a child and now history was circling in on itself. “Your family must be beside themselves. Both our families! Everyone! Rosalind, you’ve done a shocking thing.”
“For us to be together.” She wrung her hands, so delicate and vulnerable even as she tried to appear assured. “I thought you would kiss and hold me, and shout with joy instead of behaving as if the world is ending.”
“Kiss and hold you, the way I couldn’t in England? You’re still a proper lady, Rosalind, and I’m a titled gentleman. Are we to break every rule now because you’ve been naughty enough to run away?”
“Yes, because we love one another.”
“There is a traditional way courtships are meant to proceed.” He scolded because to do what she asked, to hold and kiss her, would lead to her defilement in short order. “You ought to be punished, not rewarded. You deserve to be spanked well and soundly, hard enough that you can’t sit down for a week.”
“What a terrible thing to say,” she protested as he fantasized about walloping her bottom. “Don’t you love me at all?” Her voice rose as high as the color in her cheeks. “Have you only been playing with my heart all this time?”
“I adore you, Rosalind.” He was sure of that. He was also flabbergasted by what she’d done. “I adore you enough to regret the harm you’ve done to your reputation. Even if we marry—”
“If we marry?” Tears spilled onto her cheeks again. “How can it be a question? I thought you wanted a life with me.”