“I suppose you thought I was just an unpleasant person.” He offered her a slight smile.
Prudence chuckled, relieved to see the tension break, even if it was only slightly. “I never thought that,” she fibbed. “I found you difficult, certainly. I still find you difficult.”
“I am difficult,” he sighed.
“So am I! You’re right to notice it. No one has ever found me easy to cope with,” she pointed out. “Not even my sisters, and I know they love me more than anyone else in the world ever will. I’m so stubborn, so intent on having my own way about everything, and I know that makes me difficult to live with.”
“It’s what’s made me so captivated by you,” he said quietly. “It’s the reason I haven’t been able to keep you at a distance the wayI wanted to. You know, Prudence, the true reason I chose not to go to the country.”
“It’s not that you worried you’d get a telegram letting you know I had done something scandalous?” she grinned.
“It is that. But the thing is, I want to be here when you do,” he explained. “Not to prevent you from doing scandalous things, but because I don’t want to miss out on it. Because life with you seems to be one big adventure, and I want to be here for every moment of it. And I shouldn’t want that. I should be able to free myself from this relationship. It shouldn’t be the first priority I have to think about at every turn.” He shook his head. “I’m saying this horribly, I know. I’m making it sound as though I resent you. As though I resent what you and I have together.”
“You don’t?”
“I don’t resent it; I live in fear of it,” he replied. “What’s going to happen the next time I have a responsibility I need to face and all I can think about is you? How will I balance that? But then, if I put my duties first, how will I ever live with the fact that I’m not giving you the kind of treatment you deserve? It’s wrong of me to let you hope for a future I can never provide.”
“Oh, Leonard,” Prudence said softly. “Please don’t worry. Please don’t separate yourself from me because you’re frightened that things might be unfair to me. It isn’t the truth. I never wanted you to go to the country. I told you that I did. I told myself that I did. But I always wanted us to be friends, to be together in whatever capacity we could. For better or worse, this is themarriage I’ve found myself in, and I want it to be a good one. I want it to be good for both of us. I still believe it can—but don’t push me away.”
She stepped in close and held her hand out, palm up, clearly inviting him to take it. There was no way he could mistake this gesture for anything else.
He hesitated for only a moment then reached out and grabbed her hand.
And she thought that would be the end of it. That they would hold onto one another for a moment and reassure each other that even in the face of everything they were discussing, they were still friends and that whatever they had to do to move forward would be done together.
Instead, he gave a firm tug on her arm and pulled her into his embrace, catching her against his body.
The breath left her lungs. She stared up at him, shocked by what was happening. After everything—after all he had said about how important it was to put up walls between the two of them—this was what he was choosing?
And why here? Why now? Her heart raced. He couldn’t possibly be doing this to make an impression on anyone because there was no one here to see it.
His eyes blazed. “This is what I feared,” he murmured. “This is what I knew would happen the moment you held out your hand to me. I can’t resist you, Prudence. I never could. It was always only a matter of time.”
He dropped her hand and wrapped his arms around her. She couldn’t catch her breath.
His eyes closed, and she knew what was about to happen and knew that this was her only chance to stop it if that was what she wanted to do—but the idea of stopping this now was unthinkable.This is all I’ve wanted.
She leaned in.
The moment seemed to go on forever.
And then his lips met hers, parted them, hungry and needy, and for the first time in her life, Prudence knew what it was to be kissed by a man.
It was impossible to believe that he didn’t care for her. No man could kiss like this if there was no passion behind it. He kissed her as if it was the first time he, too, had done such a thing; he kissed her as if he had been planning it from the first moment the two of them had met.
She got lost in his touch and in his warm, masculine scent. She forgot the fact that the two of them had been arguing, forgot the fact that the ball had gone so differently from how she had hopedit would. Her arms came up and wrapped around his neck, and she wished for the moment to never end.
And then, as suddenly as it had begun, it did end.
He stepped back, holding her at arm’s length once more, his eyes searching hers. “I’m sorry,” he murmured. “I shouldn’t have done that. That’s exactly what I’ve been trying not to do. I didn’t mean to give in.”
“I wanted you to,” she told him. “I’ve been wanting you to do that for a long time. I don’t think I knew it until tonight, but I’ve been longing for this. I’ve believed that you and I had greater potential than we realized, and I’m so glad we were able to see things through. If it has to end between the two of us—if you have to pull away from me, and we can never be close to each other like this again—at least we got this one moment together. At least there will always be this memory.
Her heart was pounding, fit to burst, and she was terrified of what he might say next if he had the chance. She couldn’t bear to wait around and see how he would react to her words.
She turned and fled up the stairs instead, not daring to look back at him, not wanting to see the expression on his face.
Only when she was safely in her room did she allow the shivers that had threatened to take over her body at last.
