Page 87 of A Royal Kiss & Tell
He caressed her earlobe with his thumb. “You’re right. I came here because I need your help. In fact you are the only one who can help me, the only one I can trust. I need to hide them.”
That was not the sort of help she had in mind. “Where?Here?”
“It’s better than the Clarendon Hotel. Can you imagine the speculation?”
Oh, but she could. “Not here,” she said, her thoughts churning. “Beck—”
“Je, of course,” Leo sighed and bowed his head. “I knew it was asking too much, but thought it worth the chance.”
“Not here. Hollis’s house.”
Leo’s head snapped up. “I won’t involve her, either, Caroline.”
“You can’t take them there, obviously, but perhaps you could send them with one of your guards?”
“Caroline! Hollis Honeycutt knows nothing about this. I won’t do it.”
“You won’t, but I will,” Caroline said. “Hollis will help in any way that she can. And she will because I ask her, Leopold. She loves me as I love her.”
He looked as if he wanted to argue. But he didn’t. He said, “As God as my witness, I have done nothing in my life to deserve you. I do love you.”
He couldn’t possibly know what those words meant to her—more than life itself in that moment. But they were almost too painful to hear. She couldn’t bear to hear him confess his love, then set sail for a marriage in Alucia. “Don’t say that,” she whispered. “Please don’t say that.”
He didn’t say it again. He pulled her to him and kissed her. It felt to Caroline as if the room closed around them, shielding them from the world. She could feel an eruption at the core of her with all the yearning she’d felt for him since that night in Chichester, a tiny volcano of want and need and hope. That was the first time she’d really noticed how handsome he was, how tall he stood, how finely he dressed, how his smile seemed to radiate from somewhere inside him. And then all the yearning she’d had the day Eliza married, when she’d seen him standing so regally beside his brother.
And in these last few weeks, all the yearning she’d suffered every time he’d touched her or kissed her. His lips were the beacon, his warmth the shelter, his strength the fence around them. Here she was again, aroused by all those feelings for him, his lips banishing any doubt or concern or fear in her. Everything faded away but the two of them, and the only thing that remained was a deep desire to hold him and love him. She desperately wanted to love him.
Her arousal scorched her blood. She pressed against him, into the hard planes and angles of his body. She touched the corner of his mouth with her fingers, angled her head so that she could deepen this kiss between them. She could feel his arousal, could feel the tension of his desire in the taut way he held his body, in the restraint that radiated from him.
He held her tightly to him, and part of her hoped he never let go. She hoped they never left this room, never ended this kiss. But Leo did end it. He nipped at her lips, kissed her cheek, her forehead, then lifted his head. “Caroline,mang leift, my love, we can’t continue this,” he whispered. “I have three poor souls waiting for me.”
Everything in her hummed. The caress of his voice, his hand...but she nodded. Her body was pulsing and wet and she felt like she could explode with a single touch, and she couldn’t let that happen.
But neither did she want it to end. Because the moment they opened that door, it could very well be the last time he touched her.
Leo stood up and held out his hand to her to help her to her feet. He kissed her once more, this time with particular tenderness. “It would be the end of you and possibly the death of me if anyone of your household was to find us like this,” he whispered. He dropped his hands and stepped away and walked to the door. He glanced back at her, his gaze full of longing. “Tonight? Eight o’clock?”
Caroline nodded. And then she pressed her hands against her belly and watched him walk out the door.
When he’d gone, she stared up at the ceiling and the papier-mâché scrolls there, blinking back tears. She didn’t hear Garrett come in until he spoke.
“Madam?”
Caroline was a master at recovery, she discovered. “Ah, Garrett, there you are. A cloak please. I’m going round to call on Hollis, and I won’t be home for supper.”
She knew herself well enough to know that she was in desperate trouble. Her heart was headed for collision with reality, and it was going to shatter into pieces very soon, because Hollis was right—she loved Leopold. And now he was going to ruin everything by being a good man.
Her heart would be irreparably broken, she was certain of it. But until the moment of its death, there was nothing to be done for it—she had to help him.
ADAILYMAIDlet Caroline into Hollis’s home. She found her friend in the drawing room, not in her office. Hollis was perched on a chair before the hearth, reading a broadsheet, a serious look of concentration on her face. Caroline took the chair beside hers and looked around the neat room. It was quite a contrast from the clutter of her office. Even the two cats seemed to be in their places, curled up together on the end of the settee. “Where is Donovan?” Caroline asked.
“I don’t know,” Hollis muttered.
Caroline bent forward to catch Hollis’s eye. “Good evening, Hollis! How are you? What are you doing?”
“Reading theDaily News.” Hollis sighed and lowered the broadsheet. “It’s edited by Charles Dickens. Do you know him?”
“I’ve not met him.”
