The Scoundrel and the Debutante (The Cabot Sisters #3)

She lifted Roan’s arm from her belly and rolled over, into his chest. He lay on his side beside her, his eyes closed, his breathing deep. She kissed his chest twice and sat up.

He had opened one eye and was watching her. “You’re insatiable,” he said, and raked his fingers through her tangled hair.

“I think perhaps I am,” she said, as the thought occurred to her.

She shifted and kissed his lips, then rolled over and swung her legs over the side of the bed. She had been initiated into a beautiful, lovely, tender private world these past two days and she was loath to leave it. But leave she must. Prudence felt remarkably clearheaded about it. She had to return to her life. Roan had to find his sister and return to his promises, and a family who needed him.

Clearheaded, perhaps, but it hurt her heart too much to feel him in her again, and she stood up, afraid that he would touch her and her resolve would crumble. It felt as if the slightest breeze would crush her, and she’d end up begging him to stay, like a poor relation. Like a ward. Like someone with no hope.

Prudence pulled a linen sheet around her. She was quite sore, really, but it was a delicious soreness, something she savored. Every movement reminded her of the magic she’d discovered in his arms.

She moved to her trunk and picked up the dark green day gown with the brown trim.

She heard Roan behind her, rising from the bed. She heard water splashing at the basin, then his rummaging about for the things he needed. She busied herself at her trunk so that he would not see the tears that burned behind her eyes, a peculiar mix of both happiness and sick regret.

Was it possible to fall in love with someone so quickly? Was it possible to find someone so completely compatible by mere chance? How could she ever think of another man with the impression of Roan’s hands on her body? How could she ever look at another pair of eyes and not see the golden topaz of his? How would she live the rest of her tedious life, knowing that her heart was somewhere on the other side of the ocean?

It would be her secret burden to bear, the thing she carried with her always. Prudence could picture herself at family dinners, her heart aching as everyone laughed around her. When matches were made, when babies were born, when Christmases were celebrated, and her sisters gathered their loved ones around them Prudence would think of Roan.

It was unfair, so terribly unfair. And yet, it was.

Roan dressed as Prudence occupied herself with putting on her dress and packing her things. She would not let Roan see her distress, she would not be a mewling debutante, pawing at her lover. She meant what she’d said—she knew exactly what she’d been about when she put herself on that stagecoach. She couldn’t have imagined all that would happen, but she’d known what she was doing, and now she would live with the consequences. By God, she would watch him depart today with her head held high.

Prudence prepared herself to watch him leave, and in fact she preferred it that way, that he go first. She was certain she might hold her feelings at a good distance until his coach had gone down the road. But as her rotten luck would have it, the Bulworth man appeared at the inn before noon, over two hours early.

“I understood you’d not come for the trunk until noon,” Roan said crossly, as if it were the poor man’s fault he’d come early.

“I dunno, milord,” the man said as he kneaded his hat in his hands. He looked to be eighteen or nineteen years of age. He had a scattering of whiskers on his chin and his nervousness erupted into splotches of red on his cheeks. “I just come when Mr. Bulworth tell me to.”

“It’s all right,” Prudence, said, and put her hand on Roan’s arm. He looked a bit different to her this morning, with his hair combed and his jaw clean-shaven. Even more virile, more imposing, a feat she would not have thought possible. But his eyes were different—the shine was gone from them. They looked almost brown to her now, and the tiny little lines of worry around them made him look a bit sad.

“Well,” she said, trying to sound cheerful. “I guess we must say our farewells, mustn’t we?” She smiled at the Bulworth man. “That’s my trunk just there,” she said.

He nodded, donned his cap and picked up her trunk, managing to hoist it onto his shoulder.

Prudence gamely tried to smile at Roan, but she couldn’t manage it. “I’d ask you to write, but it seems rather futile, and I think it will only distress me more—”

He suddenly grasped her hand. “You can still come with me to West Lee.”

“Weslay,” she muttered.

“Listen to me,” he said. “We might say you are my cousin. Cousin Prudence and Aurora’s companion, to see her home.”

“Roan! The moment I uttered a word they will know I’m not an American. And it is quite possible that I will know someone there. Penfors is a viscount, you know. He may have been acquainted with my stepfather, or Merryton.”