“The old duke experienced no such qualms. His bullet caught me above my kneecap. ‘I was merciful,’ he told me later. ‘Could have been your heart,’ he said.”
Merciful.
Edgar screwed his eyes shut.
“But something came of my challenge. After that day he changed. Left us alone. He would leave for weeks on end and we had no idea where he was. Drinking himself to death in a squalid gin house, but harming no one but himself. My mother grieved. And she was angry with me for airing our filthy secrets before the eyes of theton. She never forgave me for challenging him to that duel.”
“You had to. You had no other choice.”
“She didn’t see it that way. Mother is made of strong, aristocratic fiber. Bear everything in silence, is her motto.”
“You had to speak out. So that he wouldn’t ruin other lives. You changed him.”
“He changed me as well. After my wound healed, I left London. Renounced my heritage. Even changed my name. I became a foundry worker in Birmingham. I learned a trade. I was never going to return. And then... when my father died, I had to come back because he’d nearly ruined the family, and I wasn’t going to let my sister and mother suffer any more. My mother never forgave me, though.”
“People grow apart,” Mari said, “but they also grow together as well. Like you and the children. There they were, minding their own lives, in their own little patch of sun, seeking roots and hoping for rain, when fate bent them toward you, another seeker, another thirsty soul. And together you form a whole.”
“They’re still growing. My mother and I... it’s too late for us. So that’s my story. Not a pretty one and it doesn’t have a happy ending.”
She lifted his hand and planted a kiss in the center of his palm. “I believe you can mend the rift with your mother. You’re a good man, Edgar.”
She made him feel that he could be good.
That he’d never truly made love with anyone before, that this experience was something so wholly new he didn’t even have words for it.
She kissed the center of his palm again, her lips cool and gentle against his skin. “I wish we could stay here forever,” she whispered. “London feels so far away. Life is simpler here.”
She kissed him again, this time using her tongue, drawing circles on his palm. Which didn’t seem like it should be so erotic, but was making his cock swell and his heart race.
Letting her touch him, caress him, made him so vulnerable, but somehow he didn’t mind.
God help him, he was hers.
Hers to torture. In any manner she might devise.
She placed her palm over his heart, spread her fingers wide.I love you.Could he hear it?
She hoped he could feel, hear, what she couldn’t say.
She was thanking him for telling her the story, so that she understood why he’d fought so hard against kissing her. Because he didn’t want to become his father. Because he was a good, honorable man who had risked everything to protect his family.
She thought: We’re attracted to someone for their strength, their beauty, their perfections... but we fall in love because of imperfections.
Because of the pain they’ve overcome.
He kissed her, and she surrendered to the pleasure, loving how right it felt to be held by him. To have his tongue inside her mouth and then...
He was inside her again. It stung but it felt right.
Pushing inside her with his whole body, propped up on his strong forearms, his hands, palms spread wide, on either side of her, anchoring her to the bed.
Then sinking down on top of her, knotting his arms around her, the hard bulwark of his chest meeting her chest.
Heart to heart.
He rubbed his foot against the arch of her foot. Kissed her neck with soft little nips of his teeth.
“God, Mari. Damn.”