She swallowed. “Because of what has happened. You have to go to be safe.”
“I am always safe,” he said with sudden bleakness. “It’s Foster whose life I have played with and lost.”
“You were friends,” she retorted. “Would he want you to die? And in such a way?”
“No. But thenhe’ll be dead and his family clearly want me punished. I can’t blame them.”
“Then go. My father could help... If he is...” She trailed off, biting her lip.
“Sober? He was when I saw him a couple of days ago. Struggling, but sober.”
A smile tried to form on her lips but then the tears started to her eyes. If Papa was sober then it was notallfalling apart. Through the film of tears, she saw him move restlessly, as though drawn to the blackness of the window. She had not drawn the curtains.
“You know, somehow I had fooled myself that you would be more pleased to see me,” he said abruptly. “I never expected you to have left Harwich.”
“I never expected you to come back.”And I heard you were flirting with someone at Lady Hawthorn’s.How trivial that seemed. It was in his nature to flirt.
But he was frowning at her. “I promised I would come back.”
“Words,” she retorted. “You made it clear.”
“Made what clear?” he asked, his brow twitching with genuine bewilderment.
She opened her mouth, realized the impossibility of the words, and closed it. She bit her lip and tried a different approach. “You were escaping again. Fromme.”
He stared at her, then began to walk slowly toward her inexorably, as though drawn by some invisible string. Some new lightness had dawned in his face, though the frown remained. “Thatis what you thought?”
She could not speak. He stood too close, his beloved face warm with understanding and something else that set all those remembered butterflies soaring in her stomach. He raised his hand, which wasn’t quite steady, and touched her cheek.
“You thought I wasrejectingyou?”
She closed her eyes. “What else could I think?”
“That I was saving you fromme. For the first time in my life, I considered someone other than myself. If I had stayed another minute that night...” His voice dropped to an intense, seductive whisper. “Oh, if I had stayed...”
Her eyes sprang open as fresh tumult overwhelmed her.
“And here we are again,” he said, softly caressing her cheek, “alone at night, with your reputation hanging by a thread... I was trying to make everything right, Cara, shoulder my own responsibilities, make a proper home for you so that I could ask you to be my wife with just a little honour. Yet here we are again and still I cannot ask. None of my options are good. I can either run or I can face the consequences.”
“Your...yourwife?” she stammered.
His smile was tender. His fingers trailed over her lips. And yet his eyes brimmed with sadness. “One of the many tragedies caused by my own idiocy. I love you, and for some reason I can’t fathom, I believe you love me. I cannot ask you now.”
“And if I offered?” she blurted, for this changed everything.Everything... “If I escaped with you?”
He let out a groan. He bent his head and for an instant his mouth touched hers and everything inside her leapt. “Cara, Cara, don’t tempt me. That is no life for you. You are content here, valued.”
“I am half-alive.”
His gaze hadn’t left her lips and with an inarticulate sound, he drove his fingers though her hair, sending pins flying in all directions, and took her mouth in a wild, frantic kiss that made her gasp and clutch him for support. She pressed into him desperately and he dragged her so close she felt every glorious inch of his lean, hard person. She stroked the hair at the back of his head, kissing him back with all her love and longing.
He broke the kiss at last, cradling her to him, his cheek warm and just a little rough against hers. “I cannot think when I’m in your arms... But I know I cannot take you with me, give you a disgraced name, divide you from your father who is trying so hard.”
“He can come too. He can sail us anywhere we wish to go, earn a real living away from everyone who knows and judges him. And we can adventure together.”
“Adventure together,” he repeated, and groaned. “Oh, Cara,pleasedo not tempt me. I am not yet sunk so low...”
“Why is it low to court me? In my father’s company...?”
