Page 36 of How to Seduce a Viscount
They reached the inn and swung down from the horses, the conversation temporarily stalled. Inside, supper was laid out for them in the dining room where they were the only two diners.
‘I think his contentment had something to do with Ellen Kingsley.’ Wren dropped the remark into the meal between sips of wine.
How observant of her. ‘I noticed it too. The brushing of hands when Ellen set out the tea.’
‘How he’d touch her hand to assure her,’ Wren added. ‘She doesn’t want to lose him. She’s afraid.’
Luce nodded. ‘He’s protecting her.’
You could take away the name but you couldn’t take away a Parkhurst’s honor. His brother might not know who he was, but he was a Parkhurst through and through. A Horseman to his bones, protecting the vulnerable. The lead in his heart eased. He reached for Wren’s hand, thinking too late how alike it was to his brother’s gesture with Ellen.
‘Thank you for being there today. It was difficult and disappointing, but you made it bearable. You gave me the strength to get through it.’ His gaze lingered on hers, letting her see in his eyes how important it was to him that he say those words. She would know how hard it was to say them, too, for he who was so self-reliant, who valued his privacy even when it came to his feelings as she’d so accurately accused the night it all fell apart for them.
The innkeeper came to clear their plates and bring dessert, a dried apple pie with fresh cream. The exchange gave Luce time to regroup and gather himself.
‘A specialist may help; it’s a good idea. But Stepan still has to be warned. He has to accept that there is danger coming for him and by extension, those he cares for.’ That was a predominant worry. If Stepan didn’t want to believe who he was, then he’d not believe there was any danger to him, that Gerlitz’s men were coming. ‘I want time alone with him tomorrow to discuss the Horsemen and the danger. I must make him accept that at least.’
‘I will go with you and with your permission, chat that through with Ellen. She wants to protect him, perhaps she’ll see reason and maybe I can learn what she needs protecting from as well.’
Sweet heavens, they made a good partnership. Luce took a bite of the dried apple pie but he couldn’t have told anyone what it tasted like. All of his attentions were for Wren. ‘We’re a good team. Talking through the day like this, is not only useful butcathartic.’ It was also a subtle slap on his wrists. He’d stubbornly thrown away something beautiful and priceless when he’d ended things with her for the sake of principles. Not that it mattered any more. Their time was over. The thought turned the pie flavourless in his mouth. Losing her was becoming too real.
‘Luce, what is it? Is the pie not good? You’ve only had a bite. Mine was delicious. If you’re not going to eat it, may I have it?’ She smiled, oblivious to his turmoil.
Luce forked a bite of pie and fed it to her. ‘I want to ask you something, Wren. Feel free to say no,’ he said solemnly. ‘Would you come to bed with me?’
Her quicksilver eyes stilled. She swallowed slowly and for a moment he thought she was going to refuse. ‘Is this the Horseman asking Falcon, or Luce asking Wren?’ It mattered, he realised. One of them had forgiven her, the other hadn’t.
‘Both. I can’t change our circumstances, but neither can I stop wanting you.’
Her voice was low. ‘Are you sure it’s what you want, Luce? You had a difficult day. You’re craving connection. Something to fill the disappointment over Stepan.’
‘I’ve never stopped wanting you, Wren. Even when I felt you’d betrayed me, I still wanted you. I shall want you until my last breath. I craveyou, difficult day or not. It is killing me to lose you,’ he confessed. She wanted to see his emotions, well there they were.
She raised his hand to her lips in reward and he felt the cares of the last hours melt away. Of all he’d lost, he’d not lost her. Not yet. There was enormous comfort in that.
‘It will kill me to lose you, too, Luce.’ Then she smiled. ‘What are you waiting for then? Take me to bed, Luce Parkhurst.’
Chapter Nineteen
If this was a penitent, deliberately vulnerable Luce Parkhurst, she’d take some more. They wasted no time upstairs, loosening clothes as they went, tearing them off themselves and each other once they reached their room. They fell to the bed together. Mouths, arms, legs entangled. He was on her, in her. She revelled in it. In him and in the wanting. Tonight she wanted to burn. Wanted to be obliterated, consumed and he did, too. In the fire there could be forgetfulness, the past could be suppressed, the future was non-existent. To burn with him was to be free with him and to soar with him one more time.
She felt the glorious gathering of his body as she clung to him, legs wrapped tight around his hips, arms twined about his neck, hips pressed into his, bodies joined. So connected that it was impossible to say where one started and the other ended. Was she wrapped about him or was he wrapped about her? It would be too difficult to decide. She only knew this; what it felt like, what it meant to be one.
Her own release swept her fast and strong like a rainstorm breaking over a land that had been dry for too long. She gave loud, throaty voice to that deluge, the sound of her pleasure like the roll of thunder across the sky.
Afterwards came the calm. That time of peace when they lay together in a place between who they were and what had happened. Happy. Content for the moment because moments were all they could have. ‘I think we may have shocked the innkeeper,’ Luce said drowsily. ‘I am not sure these walls are used to such sounds.’
Wren nestled closer. ‘It’s not even the most shocking thing about us. What would the innkeeper think if he really knew us? If he knew how we met?’
The idea made Luce chuckle. ‘I’d never thought of it that way before. Howwouldwe tell people how we met? How would we tell our children?’ He cleared his throat and affected the polite drawl of a self-important gentleman. ‘Well, son, how I met your mother was like this: she was stabbing people on my doorstep at midnight in the midst of the first snowfall the Surrey Hills had seen for years.’
‘It’s a good thing we won’t have to tell anyone then.’ She gave a soft laugh in the darkness, glad for its shield. He’d only been joking but there’d been a bittersweet quality behind it, a reminder that they and whatever they’d been together would vanish when she did. There’d be no bond linking them. No remnant to remind the world that they’d been here,together.
‘Is it a good thing, though? For us not to be together? After moments like these, days like these, I wonder if it truly is?’ His hand began to move slowly up and down her arm in a thoughtful caress and she had the sense he was thinking out loud, talking to himself, arguing against his original position that they’d reached their limits. ‘We are good together, as partners, as lovers. We broke the Ottoman code. We found Stepan. We thwarted two of Gerlitz’s men. All in the span of a few weeks. And as lovers—’ he gave a low laugh in the dark ‘—we match each other in appetite and passion to say the least.’
‘Such things cannot last, do not last. We’ve already proven that, too. We’ve reached our limits, as you say,’ she reminded gently. For all their strengths, the possibility between them had been fragile. It had been like crystal—bright and beautiful—and it had shattered at the slightest provocation.
‘We ruined ourselves, Luce. It wasn’t a threat from outside that broke us. It was us. It came from the inside. We did this. There are things you cannot tolerate and they are things we cannot change unless we change ourselves instead.’ She did not want to do this. Did not want to lie here in the dark dissecting what could have been. Absolutely nothing could come of it. But Luce was a puzzle solver and that translated rather easily to problem solver.Hewasn’t performing a post-mortem. He was re-working the puzzle. Where she saw broken endings, he saw pieces to be refitted in new beginnings.
