“Why did you not tell me?”
“Because your staunch defense of her galled me, and perhaps I, too, was ashamed of my behavior.” Aaron turned to face her, his hands behind his back. “Would you have forgiven me sooner if you had known this?” Charlotte hardly knew what to think. His kiss, both tender and passionate, still burned on her lips, so at odds with the man who stood before her now.
“You ought not to kiss me when we fight,” she said.
A smile, over before it begun, crossed his face. “It seems I cannot help myself when I’m around you. Believe me, Charlotte, I had not wished to kiss you then.” He frowned. “Well, no, confound it, that’s not true, either. I wanted to kiss you ever since I walked into the room.”
Her pulse quickened. That wasn’t a confession of more, but even hearing how much he wanted her—after everything that had happened between them, it acted as a balm to her wounded soul. How could she protect her heart when he persisted in making it so very difficult?
“Yet you only kissed me when we argued.”
“Hearing you say you would rather stay in the inn than here—that you would do anything other than be in my sight—would be enough to drive a lesser man mad. I couldn’t sit back and listen to you say such things.”
“You provoked me,” she said. “I would not have said it if you had not told me to mind my own business.”
“Then we are both in the wrong, and I accept my share of the blame.” He held out a hand with an odd, twisted smile on his face. “Come, must we be at odds? Once we return to London, we can return to the world of glamor and balls and dancing and endless beaus.”
“I would settle for one suitable beau,” she said, caving and accepting his hand. “Besides, I thought this entire charade would end when we returned to London?”
“It doesn’t have to end until you’ve found a husband,” Aaron said. “Unless you are shelving your desire to marry?”
Charlotte thought about Sebastian and shuddered. “No, if you are amenable to continuing this pretense, I should be pleased to use your help.”
“Then my help you shall have.” He looked down at her with another of those odd smiles. Almost as though he wasn’t certain what he was doing, he brushed the back of his finger along her cheek. “You asked me before whether you would be better off married to Sebastian, and you should know that I do not believe that.”
Charlotte reached up and touched his face in return, brushing the features she already knew so well with her fingertips. They were dancing a fine line, never quite sure on which side they landed. He didn’t want to marry her, but there was still this tension between them—tension that bordered on tenderness—and it would not be silenced.
She abandoned all hope of protecting her heart as she reached up, and he met her lips again. This time, the kiss was slow and sweet, saying everything she couldn’t: that the world and the life she’d found here would have suited her perfectly. That she had found a place she could have learned to love—and a man, too, she might have learned to love if she had been granted a little more time.
Aaron pulled away and looked at her, his pupils wide and his breath ragged. “You will be the death of me,” he said, striding back toward the door. “We will leave for London early tomorrow,” he said from the doorway. “Please tell me you intend to stay here tonight.”
She gave a wry smile. “My mother would not condone our removal.”
“Then I have something else to be thankful for.” He nodded at her, the formal gesture almost unsettling, and left the room. Charlotte stood alone in the middle of the floor, her heart still pounding from the moment she had thought he might confess to something more than lust and the taste of him on her tongue.
ChapterSixteen
Aaron was true to his word, and they embarked on the tedious journey back to London the following day. Charlotte had little opportunity to speak with him, and rather than share a carriage with him—which, though she hardly dared admit it to even herself, would have been her preference—she found herself in a carriage with Constance and Edward.
“Edward has told me so much about you,” Constance gushed, placing a hand very briefly on her leg in a gesture of affection Charlotte wasn’t entirely sure she deserved. “I had not known you grew up together.”
Charlotte glanced at Edward, who nodded. “He spent some summers at our Estate,” she said after a moment. “Being very similar of age, we played together as children.”
“I hardly know how we have spent such little time together,” Constance said. “I confess Marcella took up so much of my time that we never spoke. An oversight on my part.”
“Marcella is—” Failing to find anything positive to say about her cousin, Charlotte merely smiled. “You have nothing to apologize for. We came out at very different times, after all.”
“Yes, you must have come out quite some time ago.”
Charlotte pressed her lips together at the reminder. “Four years.”
“And yet you still look so pretty!”
Constance could, no doubt, not conceive either still being unmarried at the ripe old age of three-and-twenty or having any remnants of beauty left, and the artless comment made Charlotte smile. “I have been exceedingly lucky,” she agreed. “But you must tell me how you met. We had no idea you were back in the country, Edward.”
Edward gave a bashful smile. Charlotte’s memories of him—far less detailed than it appeared were his memories of her—were of a sensible boy, destined for life in a serious and reputable profession. Eloping to marry a flighty, irresponsible lady, hardly seemed part of his character.
“That was neglectful of me,” he said. “I had fully intended to call and inform you that I was back from France, but after meeting Constance, and once she requested so earnestly that I keep our meetings a secret, I could not in good conscience see you.”
