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Not at all one of the many sentences he had foolishly hoped she would say after he had just bared his heart. ‘Enough to know that Jim’s grandmother died in the same poor house he will return to if nothing else turns up.’ As the silence stretched, he could feel her eyes on his back, hear the cogs of her mind turning. The intense weight of the significance of the moment. When he could bear it no longer, he twisted to find her watching him, not so much warily as in question. ‘Why?’
‘No reason.’ She shrugged and worried her bottom lip as if she were in two minds about saying something.
About doing something.
Until her expression shifted again to one which he could not decipher. One which could have been either fear or anticipation. It was most disconcerting.
‘There must have been some reason, or you wouldn’t have asked.’ Whatever it was, good or bad, he needed to know. Needed either the kindling to feed the glimmer of hope inside which stalwartly refused to die or to snuff it out completely.
‘It is just that Jim said something quite profound before that...’ As her uneven, wary footsteps brought her slowly closer, the air in the narrow, empty, clinical hallway seemed to shift and change. ‘He called me out on something...and he was right to.’ She stopped a foot away from him, allowing Jasper to see every bit of indecision and uncertainty in her lovely eyes before she smiled shyly. ‘I can hardly lecture others about gripping life by the lapels if I am too scared to do it myself, now can I?’
Jasper had no clue what that meant but nodded, a knot in his throat and a bigger one in his gut. ‘I suppose so.’
As the world slowed to a standstill and the charged atmosphere crackled around them, he watched her palms reach out to smooth his lapels. Her touch so gentle he barely felt it, yet bizarrely also felt it everywhere. He held his breath as she finally gripped the fabric in her fingers, his heart racing because whatever was going on felt so profound. Almost as if this was one of those defining moments where the path of his life was about to drastically alter.
For the longest time, she stared resolutely at his chest. After an eternity, her eyes finally lifted, and she tugged his face towards hers slow enough for him to consider all of the reasons why he should put a noble stop to this and discount every single one. And because while his spirit was willing to be the knight in shining armour she deserved, his flesh and his heart were too weak to do what was right by her, he sighed against her mouth in surrender as she tentatively pressed her mouth to his.
Her lips were soft but deadly, overwhelming him from the outset and firing his blood. In one last futile attempt to be a gentleman and a friend, Jasper fisted his hands at his sides and tried to restrict himself to merely tasting her rather than devouring her. That deprivation lasted seconds before he lost himself completely in a kiss so tender and honest, the emotion floored him. Because Hattie felt like home—or at least the part of his which he hadn’t realised was missing until this moment.
Still not daring to touch her he deepened the kiss, and it changed instantly into something else. A desire he could not control or wanted to. When her arms looped around his neck, his snaked around her waist, pulling her closer until her heart beat against his. Exactly where he wanted it. Strong and steady and so right his swelled in his chest.
After that, all reason was gone and he was glad to be rid of it, feasting on her mouth as his greedy hands explored the shape of her curves.
Hips, thighs, bottom...
Later, he would have a vague recollection of lifting her while he staggered backwards towards the wall, her hands in his hair, her tongue dancing with his before approaching voices in the distance dragged them both back to reality.
As they jumped apart, and because she looked every inch like a woman thoroughly ravished, he had had the wherewithal to neaten his hair, tuck in his shirt and do up his waistcoat, although he had no memory of how it had become undone. But by the way the skin beneath still thrummed from her touch, he knew her hands had explored his flesh beneath the barrier of his clothes.
‘How is our patient today, Lady Harriet?’ If Dr Cribbs noticed Hattie’s kiss-swollen lips or Jasper’s erratic breathing as he came around the corner reading his notes, his expression leaked no clue.
‘Thanks to Lord Beaufort’s timely interference, Jim has agreed to have the operation.’ To Jasper she looked as guilty as sin, as well as like rumpled sin incarnate. All his doing because he had been unable to control himself. If the physician hadn’t disturbed them, he shuddered to think what sort of a state she would be in as he had been seconds away from unlacing her gown and pulling the pins from her hair.
‘That is splendid news. Well done.’ The doctor consulted his notes again and the long list of things he had to do. ‘How about I schedule it for tomorrow around ten?’ He searched Hattie’s guilty face and as if she realised her aroused nipples strained against the soft fabric of her bodice, she folded her arms to cover them, her gaze briefly darting to Jasper’s and her cheeks colouring because they both knew she had moaned her pleasure as his thumbs had teased them.
‘The sooner the better.’
‘I am assuming you will want to be here when it happens?’
All the colour drained from her face as Jasper witnessed the flash of fear in her eyes, which typically she covered before she steeled her shoulders.
‘Of course I want to be there. Jim will need someone with him who cares.’
‘Ten o’clock sharp then,’ said the doctor jotting that down. ‘Shall we explain everything to him together now?’ He smiled at Hattie and she nodded again.
‘Yes...of course. Let me just show Lord Beaufort out first.’
‘Of course.’ Doctor Cribbs began walking forward with purpose once more. ‘I shall check on some of the others while I wait.’
She watched him leave, her arms still tightly folded, gently worrying her bottom lip as if she could still feel the brand of his on it. When she finally turned back, she was deliciously awkward. ‘That was close.’
Undeniably a little too close and guilt swamped him. Another five seconds and she would have been ruined and all the choice in her future taken away. ‘I lost my head... I’m sorry.’
She stared at her shuffling feet. ‘I think we both did, so please do not apologise. Besides...’ her gaze lifted to his, shy but defiant ‘...I started it.’
‘But I allowed it to get out of hand when I should have exercised some restraint.’ Good grief he wanted to kiss her again. Haul her into his arms and to hell with the consequences. Unfortunately, as they would both have to live with those consequences, and her worst of all, he had to be sensible. Had to put her needs above his no matter what his selfish soul wanted. ‘I am a wing and a prayer from potentially the mother of all scandals, Hattie, the last thing I want to do is embroil you in another alongside it.’
The arms folded again. ‘What does that mean?’
