August moved across the carriage before he could think better of it, sitting beside her rather than opposite. He took her hand, and when she did not pull away, he lifted it to his lips and pressed a kiss to her knuckles.
“You survived all that,” he said. “Alone. And then you used your survival to help others who had no one.”
“I did what anyone?—”
“No.” He turned to face her fully. “Most people would have spent the rest of their lives trying to forget where they came from. Trying to bury that past beneath layers of respectability and pretend it never happened. You remembered. You chose to remember.”
She looked at him, her eyes bright with something that might have been tears. “I could not forget even if I wished to. It is part of me. Part of who I am.”
“I know.” He reached up and cupped her face, his thumb brushing across her cheekbone. “And it is the best part.”
He had not planned to kiss her. Had promised himself he would be patient, would let her set the pace. But sitting there with her story still echoing in his head, with the weight of all she had survived and all she had become pressing down on him, he could not help himself.
He leaned in and kissed her.
Not the careful, questioning kiss from the garden. Not the performance they had given at their wedding. This was something else entirely. This was want and admiration and a desperate need to show her that she was not alone anymore, that she would never be alone again if he had any say in the matter.
She made a small sound against his mouth and kissed him back, her hands coming up to grip his lapels. The carriage rocked beneath them, but neither noticed. There was only this. Only her mouth on his and her fingers twisting in his coat and the way she tasted like tea and something sweeter he could not name.
When they pulled apart, they stared at each other in surprise. August did not know what to say, and he suspected that Eliza did not know either.
Twenty-Eight
August’s steps were lighter than they had been in weeks. Perhaps months. He found himself whistling as he walked through the hallway, something he had not done since before his father’s illness. The morning at the orphanage had changed something, shifted the ground beneath his feet in a way he could not quite articulate.
And then there had been the kiss. The second kiss if one were counting. And August was most definitely counting.
He needed to find Eliza. Needed to see her, to confirm that yesterday had actually happened and was not some fever dream conjured by his exhausted mind. He had spent half the night replaying every moment. The way she had looked at the children. The raw honesty of her story. The feel of her mouth on his as the carriage rocked beneath them.
He checked the drawing room first. Empty, though a book lay open on the side table as if someone had just been reading it.The library yielded similar results—her presence evident but the woman herself nowhere to be found.
The conservatory was his last hope. He pushed open the door and stepped inside, breathing in the humid air and the scent of growing things. A book rested on the stone bench near the fountain, and her shawl was draped across the armrest. The tea service on the nearby table still steamed faintly, the cup half full.
She had been here. Recently.
August moved to the bench and sat, picking up the book.Sense and Sensibility. He smiled. Of course, she would prefer Austen to Gothic melodrama. He opened the cover, intending to mark her place, and a folded piece of paper slipped free and landed on his knee.
He picked it up, unfolding it without thinking.
My darling E.,
I cannot stop thinking about yesterday. The way you looked when you came to me, breathless and wanting. The sound you made when I touched you. I lie awake at night remembering every moment we spent together in our sanctuary.
Meet me again tomorrow at the cabin. Same time. I need to feel your hands on me, need to hear you say my name the way you did when we?—
But I should not write such things. Someone might discover this letter, and then where would we be? You, compromised beyond repair. Me, called out by that husband of yours though I think we both know he cares more for appearances than for you.
Come to me. Promise me you will come.
Yours, completely and always,W.
The paper crumpled in August’s fist. He could not breathe. Could not think beyond the roaring in his ears and the ice spreading through his chest.
The way you looked when you came to me, breathless and wanting.
Our sanctuary.
That husband of yours.