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While Sarah socialized in the garden party, she felt his eyes on her. The idea of marrying him too tempting for her to dwell on it. Her love for him had not faded a single bit. Nevertheless, he did not reciprocate it, she knew. For him she had just been a maid he lusted after and now she represented a challenge to conquer. He probably did not even know the meaning of the word love. She wanted to protect herself from more sorrow. She deemed she had had enough of it.
It had been a hard day at the bank and Sarah counted the minutes to get home to a good book. She bid farewell to her secretary, Mr White and left. In the busy City streets, she stepped in her carriage that just stopped there. As she entered it, she saw no less than Lord Hawkmore. She gasped in surprise, as her heart missed a beat. Would he never give up?
“Lord Hawkmore!” Since he last saw her more than a week ago, he had been thinking how he could see her again.
“Lady Wilkins.” He kissed her gloved hand. She dressed an austere grey dress that only made him feel more eager to undress her. “I thought about inviting you for dinner.”
“This looks more like a kidnapping!” Her brows pleated.
“Believe me, my lady, my intentions are…honourable.” Though the fire in his eyes denied it.
“I am sorry, my lord.” Her hands serenely placed on her lap, contradicting her flushed state. “I had a long day and just want to go home.”
“Oh, but you are going home, Sarah.” He smiled wolfishly. “Your future home.”
Surprise dominated her. She dreaded going back to the Hawkmore House and the memories that would assail her there. “I must decline such a genteel invitation.” She replied ironically. Utterly unusual to dine at a widower’s home unaccompanied, unless you wanted the night to end upstairs.
He took her both hands and looked at her directly in her eyes with his dark piercing stare. “Please, Sarah, dine with me.” His velvet voice poured like honey in her ears. “Please.”
She did not want to give in. She tried hard not to. His eyes on hers; his hands squeezing hers, his potently persuasive voice were making it hard for her.
She sighed weary. “Alright, Lord Hawkmore. But I won’t stay late.” She instructed her driver on the new direction.
“Done.” He kissed her both hands. “But tonight you call me Hugh. Tonight and always.”
“Of course…Hugh.” Calling his name torture. In the last couple of years she’d been thinking of him by his first name.
When she descended the carriage at his front door, she stared wide-eyed at the house where she had spent the most ravishing months of her life. She’d avoided passing on that street. She had never seen the house again. How could she forget her former cubicle and the steamy nights they had spent there?
Having her back at his mansion felt like a dream come true for Hugh. It had been empty and cold since she left. In the past couple of years, he had imagined that she would pass by him anytime in her chores. Now she stood here to make it alive again, to make him alive again.
A different butler opened the door. “Mr and Mrs Talcott retired last year.” Hugh explained.
Sarah did not know how she would feel if she had come as a guest to meet her former co-workers. The possibility seemed too remote. No one she knew seemed to be around, though.
When he led her to the dining room, there were two places set, one at the head and one at its right, on the long table. A silver candelabrum stood with lit candles.
The new butler, Mr Murray, helped them seat, served the wine and left.
He lifted the crystal wine glass and drank a pledge to Sarah, looking directly in her eyes. In the candlelight, his eyes took on a mesmerizing fiery quality that made Sarah gape. She drank a pledge back unblinking.
“You got used to wine, I expect.” His grave velvet voice echoed in the room. He referred to the time they were in the cottage and she said she did not want to drink that.
“Oh, sure. But the sweet ones are my favourite.” She smiled shyly.
Hugh could not take his eyes from her. The candles lit her brown eyes, as the fire played in her iris and the reddish reflection on her hair reminded him of how she looked by the gamekeeper’s cottage fireplace. He had spent the happiest days of his life there.
If someone asked Sarah what she had eaten that night, she would not have been able to remember. Delicious, she recalled, but nothing else. In her memory, remained how gorgeous Hugh looked in his dark suit, his sleek jet-black hair shinning in the candlelight, his perfect masculine face and his colourless thin lips on the wine glass.
After dessert, he helped her stand and they went to the library for sherry. A fire glowed in the fireplace, the same as she remembered. She did not want for books anymore, but the moments they were together there, she would take to her grave.
She sat on the couch sipping the sherry and felt a heavy sensuality hanging in the air. She finished her drink and stood up. Time for retreat. “I believe it’s time for me to go, Hugh.”
His name on her lips sounded so terribly seductive. He did not want her to go. Ever again. He had brought her here to seduce her, to convince her to marry him.
He stepped near her and murmured. “No, Sarah. Not yet!” His hands held her face and his head descended on hers.
She watched his lips coming on hers without being able to avoid it. Her lashes closed and all she could do, savour him when his tongue met hers, sweet and heady at the same time. Her hands grabbed his upper-arms. All the intimacy they had once shared resurfaced there and more; as if they had left the past in the past and started building something new. Renewed.
