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He grinned. This might be the last time she saw him grin. “Mrs. DeWitt, you are a genius.”
In a single bound, he leaped onto the sill, and balanced there, framed by daylight. An image of virility and strength to hold onto, to remember once he was gone.
“Oh my,” she said.
“Did I impress you? Do say I impressed you. I adore impressing you.”
“I am immensely impressed.”
She slid off the window seat, her mind on her workbasket and the papers on the table, watching as he leaped down and tossed his coat onto a chair.
“I have had the most exciting conversation with Mr. Ridley,” he said, spinning back to face her. “Together, we have been utterly brilliant. Our bridge is going to be stronger and more durable than any bridge in the history of Warwickshire. Oh, and I met Mrs. King—do you know her?”
“She’s the midwife.”
“That’s the one. I told her about that chap we met in London who thinks disease is carried by water and she says it sounds right to her, whatever the fancy doctors say. Indeed, she says she’s sick of fancy doctors telling her about things they know nothing about, like women’s bodies—I tell you, I blushed so hard.”
“You did nothing of the sort.”
“So I think I should invite this doctor down and see what he needs, because if he’s right, we could save all those people’s lives. What do you think?”
He whirled her around in a mad, improvised waltz. She twined her arms around his neck and held on tight. Maybe before she told him, they could make love one more time. One last time.
“I think you make the world a better place,” she said, and kissed him.
It was only meant to be a simple kiss but he turned it into something longer, and when they broke it off, she was breathless. He smiled against her lips.
“I like it when you kiss me first,” he said.
“I like it when you leap through windows.”
“I’d leap through any window in the world if it got me one of your kisses.”
Then she was smiling too. Hedidcare for her. Shewasimportant to him. He enjoyed himself here. He had sought her out. He was learning to see Sunne Park as his home, and her as his wife.
She was worrying unnecessarily. Everything was going to be all right.
“Do you remember that first day we met—I mean, that day in Hyde Park,” Cassandra said. “Do you know what I thought of you?”
“That I was unutterably rude and needed to shave?”
“That too. But you had so much energy, I imagined you had been hit by lightning and the lightning was still bouncing around inside you. And the best part is that when I am with you, that lightning slides inside me too.”
He stilled, for too many beats of her racing heart, and then he cupped her bottom and pulled her against him. “Well, Cassandra, if you want me inside you…”
“Oh! You!”
He feigned innocence. “What? Why do I get the blame when you’re the one saying shocking things?”
His touch and teasing ignited her desire, the potency surprising her given that she was already with child. Yet that desire was maddening too, because she knew what he was doing: He was using it to hide.
He was already running away.
“I have something to show you,” she whispered, reluctantly dragging herself from his arms.
“Mrs. DeWitt! And us in broad daylight too.”
“Hush!”
