He leaned forward and braced his hands on the stone wall, confronting her face-to-face. Daring her; daring fate. If she was ever going to recognize him, it would be now.
As she took him in, he did some looking of his own. He drank in the small details he’d denied himself for long months. Her sweet pink frock, with ivory ribbons threaded through the neckline like little dollops of confectioner’s icing. The tiny freckle on her chest, just below her right collarbone. The brave set of her jaw, and the way her pink lips crooked fetchingly at the corners.
Then he searched those clever, lovely hazel eyes for any hint of awareness or flash of recognition.
Nothing.
“You don’t know me,” he said. Both a statement and a question.
She shook her head. Then she spoke what were quite possibly the most foolish, improbable words he’d ever heard. “But I think I’d like to.”
He gripped that stone wall as if it were the edge of a precipice.
She said, “Perhaps we could—”
“No. We couldn’t.”
“I didn’t finish my thought.”
“Doesn’t matter. Whatever you meant to suggest, it won’t happen.” He pushed off the wall and gathered his gelding’s lead, loosing it from the stile.
“You’ll have to talk to me sometime. We do live in the same tiny village.”
“Not for long.”
“How do you mean?”
“I’m leaving Spindle Cove.”
She paused. “What? When?”
“In a month’s time.” A month too late, it would seem.
“Are you being reassigned?”
“I’m leaving the army. And England. That’s what I was doing in Hastings today. I’ve booked passage to America on a merchant ship.”
“My.” Her hands fell to her lap. “America.”
“The war’s over. Lord Rycliff’s helping me arrange for an honorable discharge. I’ve a wish to own some land.”
She moved as though she’d hop down from the wall. By reflex, he took her by the waist, slowly lowering her to the ground.
Once there, she showed no inclination to leave his embrace.
“But we’re only just getting to know one another,” she said.
Oh, no. This stopped right here and now. She didn’t truly want him. She was overwrought from the day, clinging to the only soul in reach.
“Miss Taylor, we kissed. Once. It was a mistake. It won’t happen again.”
“Are you certain?” She laced her arms around his neck.
He froze, stunned by the intent he read in her eyes.
Sweet merciful God. The girl meant to kiss him.
He could tell the exact moment she dared herself to do it. Her gaze lingered on his lips, and he heard her sharp intake of breath. She stretched up, and as her lips neared his, he marveled over every fraction of an instant in which she didn’t change her mind and turn away.
Her eyelids slipped shut. He might have closed his eyes, too, but he couldn’t.
This, he needed to see to believe.
She pressed her lips to his, just as the last wash of sunlight ebbed. And the world became a place he didn’t recognize.
She smelled so good. Not just pleasant, but good. Pure. Those light hints of clover and citrus were the essence of clean. He felt washed by that scent. He could almost imagine that he’d never lied, never stolen, never shivered in prison. Never marched into battle, never bled. That he hadn’t killed four men at distances so intimate, he could still recall the colors of their eyes. Brown, blue, another blue, then green.
This is wrong.
A dark growl rumbled in his chest. He kept his hands on her waist, but he fanned his fingers wide.
His thumbs skimmed upward, skipping from rib to rib until they just grazed the soft undersides of her br**sts. With the little finger of each hand, he touched the gentle flare of her hip. His hand span was stretched to its limits. This was as much of her as he could possibly hold.
He needed every bit of that leverage to push her away.
When they broke apart, she gazed up at him. Waiting.
“You shouldn’t have done that,” he said.
“I wanted to. Does that make me loose?”
“No. It makes you soft in the head. Young ladies like you don’t pass time with men like me.”
“Men like you? You mean the sort of men who rescue helpless young ladies in the street and carry puppies in their satchels?” She gave a playful shiver. “Lord preserve me from men like you.”
A timid smile played at the corner of her mouth. He wanted to devour it. To catch her in his arms and teach her the consequences of teasing a fiercely lusting, barely civilized beast.
But saving this girl was the one decent thing he’d done in all his life. Some nineteen years ago, he’d sold the last bits of his own innocence to purchase hers. He’d be damned if he’d ruin her now.
With firm motions, he unlaced her arms from around his neck. He held her by the wrists, making his hands tight as manacles.
She gasped.
“Have a care for yourself, Miss Taylor. I’ll take blame for the kiss. It was a liberty and my mistake. I let a carnal impulse distract me from my duty. But if you’re imagining tender feelings on my side, they’re just that—imaginings.”