Page 58 of Cocky August Rake

And she had said she wanted him.

So he had believed her.

“You are not free here,” he had told her.

Yet the moment she offered herself, he had found a way to believe she was free enough.

Because he wanted her to be.

Reginald tightened his fists until the old rope scar across his palm burned.

He could not do it again.

He would not.

He would stay at the docks another day. He would meet with Sedgewick and talk of deeds and inventories until the scent of roses was scrubbed from his memory. He would prove that he could exist in London without the gravitational pull of Rose Darling.

And he’d be captain of his thoughts once again, even if he felt like his body was staging a mutiny.

A STAND OFF

Three days passed.

Three long, irritating, entirely wasted days.

Lord Reginald Preston, it seemed, meant to vex Rose by spending as few waking hours as possible at The Domus.

After promising to learn about it.

About them.

If he had been any other man, Rose would have expected him back in that receiving room first thing the following evening.

No other man could have known she was here—willing, waiting—and then stayed away. But Reginald was not any other man.

And although she’d given him exactly what was needed to leave him wanting more, with every day he stayed away, Rose became more certain she had miscalculated.

He hadn’t walked away that night because he’d been ashamed.

No, he’d walked away… angry.

The memory left an unfamiliar ache beneath her ribs. An ache she couldn’t look at too closely.

Because, in those moments, after… Rose had been… shaken. Shattered, nearly.

And now…

He was avoiding her as though she were the danger.

“This changes nothing,” he’d said.

Only.

What if… it had?

Was he avoiding The Domus, or was he avoiding her?

She could not know for certain. Not until he faced her again.