His hand grabbed her rump to press her closer – not close enough – and another hand clasped her nape, lips returning to clash and demand. He had to–
Laughter gushed as the French doors opened and glacial reality slapped his cheeks.
He stepped back, breath panting, arms dropping to his sides.
Hell and bloody damnation.
“That is what it reminds me of, Charlotte.” His fists clenched, nails biting into his palms, as he willed his body to calm. “But no one can go back,” he hissed. “So leave the bloody past where it belongs.” And he marched off to the corner of the terrace where steps led to the courtyard and the awaiting coaches.
Charlotte was akin to fire – incandescent, giving and everything he was not. He would only quench her flame with his cold heart.
FANNING HERSELF WITH A HAND,Charlotte watched Marcus stomp off, her skin rampantly hot, mouth tender, body pulsing.
What on earth had just happened?
Not that she’d minded in the least but–
A hushed sprinkle of snow drifted before her and she stared up to the heavens, watched the way the scant flakes began to fall within the realm of the lantern light like diamonds from the darkness.
“He’s right,” she whispered to the night, “the past should stay where it belongs. That cannot change or waver. But the future… That is anyone’s to embrace.”
CHAPTER FIVE
“We must copy nature in her simplicity and in her majesty, in her smile and in her tears, in her tranquillity and in her phrenzies...”
PRIVATEEDUCATION:APRACTICALPLAN FOR THESTUDIES OFYOUNGLADIES.
ELIZABETHAPPLETON. 1815.
Acrisp wind gusted through the cobbled streets of Ambleside, sweeping it clean of the smattering of snowflakes.
Having concluded the appointment with his man of affairs, Marcus briskly stomped past the clattering hosiery mill, which had been rebuilt fifteen years previous with modern machinery. The noise of industry, although profitable, was damn deafening.
His pace held, cane swinging, despite a tip of hat for a lady and a nod for an acquaintance, but his boots did pause by the ancient slate-roofed Bridge House. Once an apple store, the minuscule dwelling was built upon an ageless bridge spanning the Stock Ghyll beck, the waters that were the lifeblood of Ambleside. He recalled how he and Charlotte used to dash through its tiny doors to the far bank.
Now a family lived there.
With a grimace, he hastened on up the gently sloping street. As a rule, his man of affairs would come to the manor, but today Marcus had felt a need to depart the house – to escape the scent of heliotrope, to avoid the holly that twined the bloody banisters and to flee the seasonal piano music that drifted from the schoolroom that he’d yet to relocate to the third floor.
The town bustled like a well-paid housekeeper, the mills and market employing a goodly number of workers, and although he attended St Anne’s Church each Sunday, he rarely walked the Ambleside streets anymore or attended the fairs. He’d even missed the Rush Bearing Ceremony in July, when they gathered sedges from the lakeside to replace the old with the new upon the church floor. In fact, it had been at least…hell, six years?
The chill wind fluttered his greatcoat capes while the sky threatened with lucent white cloud. Would it snow further, he wondered? Would he be snowed in and unable to leave for Carlisle?
And if that happened, would he be able to resist kissing Charlotte again?
Damnation, he should never have touched her.
All it had done was stoke the fire within that he’d thought extinguished. Now his imagination was not required to know how she’d feel in his arms, so vibrant and alive, twisting like flame.
But they could not go back.
He was a different man.
Although one who must apologise, for though he’d purged all sentimental emotions long ago, he was still a gentleman. The uncomfortable deed of an apology to Charlotte, however, would be akin to birching the bare soles of his feet.
The Salutation Inn lay ahead, a stagecoach impatiently waiting in the yard for the passengers to embark, but Marcuspassed the main door with the somewhat frail lintel proclaiming the establishment’s birth of 1656 and made to collect his horse from the stables.
If he didn’t dally, there’d be time for the quarry ledgers as they were merely clawing a twenty per cent profit and further value could be added by…
