But there were other ways to manage that.
He could have gone to London. Endured the stares, the whispers. Made an appearance before Parliament, reassured those who questioned his competence. His sanity.
Julian stooped for his discarded jacket, shoving his arms through the sleeves with jerky motions.
And Angus sat at his side, tail sweeping slowly across the ground, gazing up with an adoration Julian didn’t deserve.
He dragged a hand through his hair, shirt half-buttoned, breath still ragged.
“What the hell was that?” he muttered hoarsely, more to himself than to the hound.
GOOD EVENING, YOUR GRACE
As soon as Rosamund was confident that she was completely alone, she backed into a tree, and then lowered herself to the ground.
HIs command rang in her ears.
“Go back to the house… Now!”
Her cheeks burned—not with embarrassment alone, but with the sharp, unsettled awareness that her siblings had always been right about her. Shedidact without thinking. She always had. She followed impulse. Had a tendency to give in to the tug of feeling before sense could catch up.
She certainly had not been thinking when she kissed him.
The realization came in a slow, mortifying wave.
She hadn’t weighed the moment. Hadn’t decided anything at all.
One moment she had been standing there, feeling all the rawness in his expression, moved by the way his voice frayed when he spoke of the things he carried inside him—and the next, she had simply… done it.
At first, he had gone utterly still.
She remembered that part with uncomfortable clarity—the steel inhis shoulders.
It had startled her, that stiffness. Not rejection, exactly. More like containment.
And still, she hadn’t retreated.
She’d slid her hands along the line of his jaw, smoothing over the roughness of his unshaven skin. An intimate gesture. A gentle one. An absurdly tender one, now that she thought of it.
She’d caressed the rough edges of his scar.
And then?—
Then he had sighed.
The change in him had been unmistakable. His hands on her back had been hesitant at first, then certain.
His walls dropped, and Rosamund had felt his need—quiet, buried. Almost like a cry.
When was the last time he’d accepted comfort from anyone?
Not a kiss, but a gentle caress. The squeeze of a hand. A hug.
I can do that.
But… what was she thinking?
Tonight was to be her last night here. Wasn’t it? And even if…