“Does it? I was under the impression we had an arrangement, not an inquisition.”
He did not rise to the bait. “You are what, five and twenty? Six and twenty?”
“Five and twenty.”
“And yet you were still unmarried when we met. That seems… unusual. For a woman of your intelligence and bearing.” He paused, then added, “And before you accuse me of flattery, I am being perfectly sincere.”
She looked down at the path, at her feet moving one in front of the other. “Lady Hartwell wanted to give me a proper season. She offered more than once, but I refused.”
“Why?”
“Because she had already done so much for me. Continued to care for me after my uncle died, gave me employment, treated me as family when she had no obligation to do so. I could not ask her to spend a fortune launching me into society simply, so I could be paraded about like livestock at a fair.”
“That is a rather dim view of the marriage mart.”
“Is it inaccurate?”
“No,” he admitted. “But surely you must have wanted to marry. To have a home of your own, a family.”
Eliza stopped walking. They had reached the edge of the rose garden where a stone bench sat beneath an arbor heavy with climbing vines. She turned to face him, and the moonlight threw his features into sharp relief.
“I did not want to marry unless it meant something,” she said. “Not to my aunt, not to society, not to anyone but myself and the man I married. I saw too many women accept proposals from men they barely knew, barely liked, simply because it was expected. Because the alternative was to become a burden on their families or to fade into obscurity as maiden aunts and companions.” She wrapped her arms around herself. “I thought I would rather be a companion by choice than a wife by obligation.”
“And yet you married me.”
“I married you because the alternative was ruin. That is rather different.”
“Is it?” He moved closer, and she found herself backing up until the bench pressed against the backs of her knees. “You had a choice, Eliza. You could have refused me. Weathered the scandal. Lived quietly with your aunt and let the gossips say what they would.”
“And be forever marked as the woman who was compromised and abandoned? Who could not secure even a forced proposal? That is not a choice. That is merely a slower form of ruin.”
“So, you married me out of necessity.”
“Yes.”
“Nothing more.”
Her heart began to beat faster. She could feel the warmth of him, could smell the faint scent of soap and something else, something indefinably August. “What are you asking me?”
He did not answer immediately. Instead, he reached up and tucked a strand of hair behind her ear, his fingers brushing against her cheek. The touch was so gentle it made her breath catch.
“Does our marriage have meaning?” he asked.
The question hung between them, heavy with implications she did not dare examine too closely. She thought of breakfast, of the way he had asked if she would be home when he returned. Of dinner, of his confession that he did not know if he was ready. Of all the small moments that had accumulated between them, building into something she could no longer ignore.
“I believe,” she said carefully, “it is starting to have a purpose.”
His hand stilled against her cheek. She watched his eyes darken, watched his gaze drop to her mouth and linger there. Her pulse thundered in her ears.
“Eliza,” he said, and her name sounded different in his mouth. Not a title, not a formality but something else entirely.
And then he kissed her.
His mouth was warm and sure, his hands coming up to frame her face as though she were something precious. The kiss was not gentle. It was not tentative or questioning. It was a claim, a demand, a question and answer all at once.
Eliza’s hands found his chest, fingers curling into the fabric of his coat. She had been kissed before—a fumbling attempt by a neighbor’s son when she was seventeen, a too-wet offering from a curate at a Christmas party—but this was nothing like those awkward encounters. This was heat and hunger and a wanting that terrified her with its intensity.
He deepened the kiss, and she made a sound in the back of her throat that she would be mortified by later. His hands slid into her hair, scattering pins, and she did not care. Could not care. Could think of nothing but the way his mouth moved against hers, the way his body pressed close, the way her heart threatened to pound straight through her ribs.