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‘I am enjoying speaking with you.’ He spoke softly. ‘But if you don’t leave soon, someone might see you. I’ll walk you to your room. I don’t want my dressing gown left about for the maid to see so I’ll return with it.’
‘We did nothing wrong.’ She pulled the clothing tight around her, tying the belt. ‘Except I did cut your hand.’
He moved to the door, waiting to open it. She stopped beside him. His hair had been finger combed and his shirt, rumpled, hung loose from his trousers. She reached, smoothing the sleeve, pressing a hand against it, but the wrinkles were fixed firm. ‘You look like you have been in a war.’ She didn’t release his arm.
‘It will certainly not be perceived as innocent if it is known you spent the night here. The talk would rumble about for the rest of our lives. You in my room. My hand slashed. Tales could get quite grand about that. Even I would have trouble believing it all innocent and I am here to see that it is. It might be assumed I attacked you. Or that you meant to hurt me and I had to restrain you. I don’t know what would be said, but it would not be good. You’d be ruined. Quite ruined.’
She wouldn’t admit the thoughts running through her mind, but she didn’t care if she were ruined. She didn’t. But for his sake she didn’t want any tales put out about her hurting him and people speculating on what had really happened. She didn’t even want to remember the night because of the pain she’d caused him and the fear that he might become feverish.
‘I am so sorry,’ she said.
He cupped her cheek in his hand. ‘I see it in your eyes. You don’t have to tell me.’
Everything shifted and it was as if his spirit stepped behind her, beside her and all around her.
‘I’m leaving Harling House soon,’ he said. ‘And this will be the only chance I have to tell you goodbye.’
‘You would vanish without taking your leave of me?’
‘Yes. I would and I should.’ He leaned forward. He brushed a light kiss on her cheek. ‘I won’t forget you.’
‘You can’t. I’ve put a mark on you.’
He moved, pressing another kiss on her cheek, lingering this time. His lips touched her as he spoke. ‘You certainly have. Deeper than you know.’
He did not say he cared for her, though, and the knowledge washed over her in the same way a winter wind entered the cracks in the wall and enveloped everything inside. She had to make the feeling of unease disappear. She had to warm herself and only by stepping closer to him could she find any comfort at all.
She examined his eyes and he did not move, just looked back at her. Brown. Chocolate. Aged wood. Perhaps not as dark as the men on Melos. But a gaze softened by his lashes. He stood patiently, not speaking, and he didn’t smile, but the small lines at the corners of his eyes relaxed.
Then he did smile. ‘You shouldn’t examine a man so closely. It does things to him... It is the same as if your fingers had swept over me.’
She reached out, putting her palm over his heart. The fabric didn’t prevent her from feeling the strength of the man beneath, of the skin covering taut muscle.
He reached up, taking the barest grasp of her fingertips. He shut his eyes and pulled her hand up so that her knuckles brushed against the roughness of his cheeks.
No clock ticked. No sound from beyond the walls reached them.
He snaked the other arm around her waist, using the strength of his forearm to hold her against him, sending shivers into her that she could feel every place her body had ever touched anything and all those senses changed into something burning inside her.
His kiss was her first true kiss. His tongue, warm and hungry, took her, tasting her, melting her into his body and swirling her from her feet and giving her the feeling of when she swam just underwater and sunlight heated her back, only stronger.
He turned her, the door at her back, holding her up and himself, not ending the first kiss, but changing it to a treasure trove of smaller ones, moving to her jaw, her ear and burrowing down her neck, his left hand pulling open the top of the dressing gown, heated fingers pushing the barrier away to make a path for his lips over her skin.
He pulled back, released her, and her knees almost gave way, but as her body seemed to dip, his arm kept her upright.
His eyes stayed on hers, but when he opened his mouth, it took a second for him to speak.
‘I am not myself.’ His voice roughened, the words barely reached Bellona’s ears. ‘I do not know what is the matter with me.’ He gave her a tight bow of his head. ‘Forgive me.’
Bellona muttered. ‘You have marked me, too.’
She stepped to the door, stopping only long enough to throw the dressing gown back into the room as she left.
