“Rosalind.”
He kept saying her name because he didn’t know what else to say, how to proceed. They’d never spoken of the feelings between them, never acknowledged them publicly or privately. He took her hands from her face because she shouldn’t feel humiliated. Why, she was brave. For all her demure shyness, she was the one who’d finally admitted to their secret bond. He stroked her smooth, pinkening cheeks. Soft as rosa damascenas, delicate as rosa gallica. “I adore you. I do. Rosalind, you know this. But we can’t be with one another. It’s not possible.”
“Why?”
“Your brother. Your parents. Your future husband.”
She gazed at him, undeterred. “You could be my husband.”
“I don’t think your parents would accept a betrothal between us,” he said, withdrawing his hands. No, she was not for him to marry. Not even to touch. Didn’t anyone care that she was here, so close to him, so close to ruin?
“If I talked to them, if I told them how we felt about one another, they would understand.”
“Your parents know how we feel about each other.” His voice was going sharp again. “They just don’t acknowledge it. You must ask yourself why.”
“I suppose you have a bit of a wild reputation, but it’s nothing that can’t be worked out. Rehabilitated. My brother was an awful rake with no inclination to settle down and marry, and look at him now, how content he is with Jane. Everyone says what a fine man he’s become in marriage.” She blinked at him, at his implacable frown. “I believe we can make them see. Marlow, please. I love you so much. It’s not a passing whim, some girlish fantasy. There is something between us. A pull. A rightness. A destiny. You know it as well as I.”
Every word of her impassioned speech tormented him. It was true, there was a pull, but there could be no match between them because of his wildness and poor conduct. He wasn’t good enough to be worthy of her and that was his own fault. It infuriated him, made him hate himself.
“You must go,” he said, avoiding her teary eyes. He stared at lemons instead. “You shouldn’t be here. We shouldn’t be here alone together.”
“What if we ran away? What if we went to Gretna Green and eloped?”
He took her arm, pulling a stern face. “Don’t imagine such things. It would be a shame on both our families. Nothing must dishonor you. You are pure and upstanding, and you must remain so.”
“And I must lose you.” She gave a very un-Rosalind-like cry of frustration. “It is too high a price.”
She moved toward him, her gaze tortured. He let her come close, meaning to comfort her, but then their lips were an inch away, a half inch, and they were kissing. He was quite sure, when he thought back later, that both of them had done it, had moved forward against fate and propriety and stolen the kiss they should not have. Her lips were intoxicating, soft and sweet, gentle, untutored. He grasped her, one hand on her face, the other around her waist, showing her how to kiss when you could only kiss once, a first and a last time.
He was probably too rough. She was too yielding. It took all of two seconds for sanity to return, for him to pull away. She took a couple seconds longer to remember herself, a couple seconds where she looked avid and discomposed and painfully kissable. She touched her lips as his mind raced. I’ve kissed her. I’ve kissed Rosalind.
He looked past her to the outside. No one looked in at them. Everyone was still clustered around the tables in the garden, unaware this monumental kiss had just taken place. It was the first and last. It had to be.
Their gazes met and locked. Ah, Rosalind. How could he explain to her, make her see how hopeless it was? She still stood too close to him.
“Rosalind, I’m sorry. I should not have…” Should not have touched you. Should not have besmirched you. Should not have allowed either of us this glance into certain madness. “Will you forgive me?”
“For what?” She was still in a dream state. Her first kiss, he was sure of it, saved for him. “You’ll ask my parents now, won’t you? Now that you’ve kissed me?” Her brimming eyes were hopeful, full of light. “You’ll ask my parents if you can marry me? You must. Surely you see now, more than ever, that you must.”
“Are you trying to trap me into marriage? Is that why you kissed me?” He pretended to tease though his heart cracked into splinters.
“No, that’s not what I was doing.” Her delicate expressions changed like quicksilver, from satisfaction to hesitation to worry. “Marlow, we have kissed now, and I can tell more than ever that we’re meant for one another. Aren’t we?” She tried to read his grim features. “Is it that you don’t…don’t want to marry me?”
It pained him that she could even ask the question, that she could feel uncertain of her desirability after what he’d just done to her, the passionate, fleeting kiss they’d just shared.
“Of course I want to marry you, Rosalind. I ache to marry you. Damn it.” The curse shot past his crumbling defenses. “It doesn’t matter what I want. Your parents will refuse me. You’re meant for the Marquess of Brittingham. He’s a fine enough fellow. Much better than me for sure.”
Rosalind made a face. “The Marquess of Brittingham? Surely not. He’s too old.”
“He’s only a few years older than me. And he’s wealthy and powerful, the sort of man worthy to marry the daughter of a duke. Why else do you imagine your parents invite him to dinner so much?”
She shrugged. “I don’t know. He’s a friend of my father’s. Just a family friend, like you. I don’t have any intention of marrying him. Anyway, you are as wealthy as him.”
But not as powerful or honorable. Marlow’s father, the Earl of Warren, was powerful indeed, active in the House of Lords, a politician and noted scion of English society. Daunted by the breadth of his father’s responsibilities—and encouraged by his profligate friends—Marlow had embarked on a notorious bachelorhood given to entertainment and pleasure instead. He’d imagined he could develop the needed couth and respect when his father was of a mind to retire, and then take over his many worthy activities. He’d never meant to marry, never imagined he’d feel such a pull to a woman, certainly not silly, young, pixie-shy Rosalind.
How dare she develop into this ravishing diamond when it was too late for him to redeem himself in time to marry her? His punishment was to watch her be given to someone else.
“I know Brittingham fairly well,” he said. “He will make a worthy husband. Ladies find him handsome. He seems steady and kind.”