She lifted her lids.
And there was Miles.
“You’re a dream,” she whispered, and promptly closed them again.
“A pleasant one I hope,” this new Miles of her dream whispered back.
“Yes. But you’ll leave. You always do. And then I’ll be in the dark meadow again.”
“No.” His breath brushed the place between her ear lobe and neck, the place that made her shiver and ache and burn. “I’m not leaving.”
And from his tone, she believed him. So her lids opened once more. And there he still was in the lantern’s light.
“Miles… How…”
She should ask why he was here. In her conservatory. She’d merely fallen asleep on her chaise.
But instead she kissed him. With fervour and passion and all the emotions he made her feel.
“Verity,” he mumbled as her hands became busy, stroking his cheek and shoulders and chest. “I came here to say–”
She kissed him again, didn’t want to know, for she knew what her heart wanted. What she’d always wanted.
A deep groan and as his lips trailed down her neck, she opened her eyes full and wide, saw the wood of the conservatory roof and smiled.
Dreaming a dream with eyes wide.
Miles leaned up on corded forearms and she beheld such magnificence: his muscular shoulders, tanned throat and green eyes that glittered in the lanternlight. She breathed in nature and sandalwood melding to a musky spice that spun her wits.
He solely wore a shirt and buckskins and vaguely she noted his greatcoat folded by theFicus carica.
Andshe drew his mouth to hers once more.
“Hell, Verity, we have to stop. I cannot–”
“I’ve waited forever. Since I was seventeen.” She hushed his lips. “And what did you say at Kew. Life is made of brief, fragile moments. We must appreciate each one.”
Courtship could wait.
His lips remained stern and with his hair dishevelled and shirt utterly askew, he looked less like a disciplined soldier than a man waging a losing battle against his desire.
Desire for her.
“I am at your command but…” His lips brushed the swells of her breast above her bodice. “There’ll be no talk of us not being together.”
And in that moment, Verity knew her heart and her mind. In the depths of this night, she knew.
Her recurrent dream had been overcome tonight, the ending rewritten with Miles’ return, and she would not gainsay its portent. Of what was meant to be. The world beyond them with all its complications was a blur, the weight of it left for a daylit hour.
It was just him. Here. And she was breathless with the simplicity of it.
So she raised a finger and placed it in front of her sealed lips.
And Miles growled.
29
“GATHER YE ROSEBUDS WHILE YE MAY, OLD TIME IS STILL A-FLYING.”
