It wouldn’t be, though. Not for her. She knew that without question. “No,” she whispered. “No it shan’t.”
He stroked one hand down her bare back, sending a shiver of awareness through her. “It shall have to be.”
“You don’t have to marry her,” she said, softly, hearing the plea in the words. Loathing it.
“But I do, lovely,” he said, the words soft and firm. “You’ll be destroyed if I don’t. And I won’t have that.”
“I don’t care. You could marry me. If I am able to choose the earl whom I marry, then—”
“No.” He tried to cut her off. She pressed on.
“—I choose you,” she said, her voice breaking on the words.
He held her close, kissing at her temple, whispering her name again before saying, “No you don’t. You don’t choose me.”
Except she did. “Why not?”
“Because you choose Castleton.”
It was somehow truth and lie, all at once. “Just as you choose Knight’s daughter?”
Even as you lie here with me?
His hands stilled on her skin. “Yes.”
“But you don’t know her.”
“No.”
“You don’t love her.”
“No.”
Do you love me?
She couldn’t ask him. Couldn’t bear the answer.
But he seemed to hear the question anyway, hand coming to her jaw, lifting her to meet his gaze . . . his lips.
Yes, she imagined he meant.
He rolled her to her back on the bed, keeping them joined as he settled between her thighs and made love to her mind and soul and body with everything he had, moving in her with quiet certainty, holding her gaze with undeniable intensity. Kissing the swell of her breasts and the column of her neck and worrying the soft lobe of one ear, whispering her name in a long, lovely litany.
There was nothing brute about this. Nothing beastly.
Instead, it was slow and seductive and he moved for what seemed like hours, days, an eternity, learning her, touching and exploring, kissing and stroking. And as pleasure washed over her in lush waves, rocketing through her until she could no longer hold it, he captured her cries with his lips, finding his own release, deep and thorough and magnificent before speaking again, whispering her name again and again, until she no longer heard the word and instead heard only the meaning.
The farewell.
They lay together for long minutes, until their breath was steady again, and the world returned, unable to be refused or ignored, coming with the dawn in great red streaks across the black sky beyond the window.
He pressed a kiss to her hair. “You should sleep.”
She turned away from time and its march, curling into his heat. “I don’t want to sleep. I don’t want it to end. I don’t want you to go. Ever.”
He did not reply, instead wrapping her tight in his arms, holding her until she could no longer feel the place where she ended and he began, where he exhaled and she inhaled.
“I don’t want to sleep,” she repeated, the threat of slumber all around her. “Don’t let me go to sleep. One night isn’t enough.”
“Shh, love,” he said, stroking one wide hand down her back. “I’m here. I’ll keep you safe.”
Tell me you love me, she willed silently, knowing he wouldn’t, but desperately wishing for it anyway.
Wishing that, even if she couldn’t have him, she might have his heart.
Have his heart. As though he could pluck the organ from inside his chest and hand it to her for safekeeping.
Of course, he couldn’t.
Even if it felt as though she’d done that very thing herself.
Even as she knew it wasn’t safe with him.
It couldn’t be.
He waited a long while before he spoke again, until she was asleep. “One night is all there is.”
When she woke, he was gone.
Chapter Seventeen
There are times for experiments that make for blinding, unexpected outcomes, and there are times for those that are directed by the hand of the scientist.
Cross Jasper A great man once told me that there is no such thing as chance. Having come around to his way of thinking, I find that I am no longer willing to leave my work to chance.
Nor my life.
The Scientific Journal of Lady Philippa Marbury
April 2, 1831; three days prior to her wedding
Pippa and Trotula walked the mile to Castleton’s handsome town house on Berkeley Square two days later, as though it were an entirely ordinary occurrence for a woman to arrive on the steps of her fiancé’s home with none but a dog as a chaperone.
She ignored the curious glances cast in her direction outside the house just as she ignored the surprise on the butler’s face when he opened the door and Trotula rushed into the foyer, uninvited, even as Pippa announced herself. Within moments, she and the hound were ensconced in a lovely yellow receiving room.