Lord Sitwell and Mr. Cathcart also got to their feet to make her a bow and she turned and fled from the room, willing herself to walk, not to break into a panicked run.
There was air in the hallway, air that would blessedly fill her lungs. She paused briefly, closed her eyes, and drew in a deep breath of it. And then she hurried to the stairs and up them. But she was only halfway up when there was a buzz of noise as the dining-room doors were opened again, and quietness as they were closed.
“Rosamund?” a voice said.
She closed her eyes and stood where she was.
“Where are you going?” He stood looking up at her.
“To bed,” she said. “I am tired and I have a journey to make tomorrow.”
But instead of continuing on her way up the stairs, she looked down into his blue eyes. He could not have had his hair cut since they were in Northamptonshire, she thought irrelevantly. It was now decidedly longer than was fashionable. Her knees felt rather as if they were made of jelly.
She had no idea how long the silence between them lasted. But finally he moved. He rounded the bottom of the staircase and vaulted up the stairs two at a time until he was level with her.
“Let’s get out of here,” he said. “Dress warmly and come out with me.”
“Justin ...” she said.
“I’ll knock on your door in ten minutes’ time,” he said. He stood beside her, one foot on the stair above, looking very directly into her eyes.
She felt enormously weary. He had but to crook a beckoning finger and she would come running. It had been that way from the start. “I want to make love to you, Rosamund,” he had said, and she had taken him into her bed. And now he wanted to take her out into the darkness to tumble her once more before sending her on her way.
Had she no pride?
No conception of the pain she was inviting all over again when she left him again the next day?
“Please, Rosamund?” He touched the back of one of her hands with his fingertips.
“Ten minutes?” she said.
“Yes.”
She nodded and continued on her way up the stairs and along the corridor to her room without looking at him again.
And she stood inside her room, her hands behind her on the knob of the closed door, her eyes tightly closed for a whole minute before crossing to the wardrobe and pulling out a long-sleeved woolen dress and her warmest cloak and hood.
It had been a warm day for early March. The night was cool, but not cold. The Earl of Wetherby took Rosamund’s hand in his as the doors of the house closed behind them, and turned her in the direction of the lake.
They had not spoken a word since he had tapped on the door of her bedchamber and she had stepped outside, wearing the same cloak as she had worn when he first saw her trudging along a snowy highway with red cheeks and nose and chattering teeth.
And they continued to say nothing, though the silence between them was not uncomfortable.
He had acted impulsively. It had been bad-mannered to leave the young lady he had led in to supper, and reckless to leave a ball at which he had been unwillingly the focus of much curious attention. It had been unwise to invite Rosamund out of doors. It might have been better, under the circumstances, to invite her into the library or some other room not in use that evening.
What was he proving by bringing her outside and taking her to the lake—was that where he was taking her? She had known and he had known that he was asking her just as badly as he had asked her at Price’s hunting box to come and make love with him. It was a purely physical relationship, she had said a few days before. It had certainly been that at the start. Was it to end that way, too?
Was there to be nothing else between them? Could they express their mutual attraction only through their bodies? He was afraid to hope for more. It was a foolish fear, he supposed. Without undue conceit he could still say that over the past eight or nine years he might have had almost any bride he had cared to offer for. He had his land and his title and his fortune. Rosamund, he was well aware, was on the fringes of poverty, only her position as daughter of a viscount and widow of a baronet making her eligible.
But he was afraid. Afraid to take anything for granted and therefore afraid to hope at all.
He should have taken her into the library and made her a formal offer and been done with it.
Rosamund, walking silently at his side, assumed they were on their way to the lake, probably to the very spot where Josh had surprised them together a few days before. There they would do what they had both wanted to do on that occasion.
And then, what? Would one encounter satisfy his appetite for her? Would he want her to go away with him for a few weeks? And would she go?
She would not! She could not so demean herself. Tonight was different. Tonight was the end of an affair, a final goodbye. But not the beginning of anything. Not the beginning of a sordid affair. And certainly not the beginning of anything else. He had ignored her all evening.
