Suddenly she wanted to run. From him or from herself, she wasn’t certain. For some reason it felt all of a piece.
She tried another step. She was still unsteady, but she managed to stride ahead of him.
“Do you want to borrow my walking stick, Guinevere?” he called solicitously.
She didn’t turn around.
Little by little, she found her footing again, as she walked ahead of him, and she buttoned up her pelisse. As if in so doing she could seal off forever every inconvenient, dangerous thing she felt.
But when they at last passed through the gates of the cemetery and reached the main road, he drew abreast of her. As luck would have it, a hack was rolling by. Marchand didn’t even need to raise a hand. The driver, catching a glimpse of a gold-topped walking stick and those shiny boots, pulled his horses to a halt at once.
Marchand reached for her waist and swung her up into the hack as though she weighed nothing. As if they did this all the time. As though he’d claimed her.
Her heart knocked against her chest like a fist.
They gazed at each other, silently. He appeared to be deciding what to say.
“I’ve some business to see to that will take me out of London for a day or two. So I won’t be returning with you now to the Grand Palace on the Thames.”
She was stunned.
Her heart plummeted in dread.
He correctly read her expression.
“I’ll return,” he promised. Gently. A little ironically. As if it was ludicrous to think he could stay away from her.
Her heart revived with such a sharp jolt it robbed her breath.
Infinitely reassuring, infinitely maddening as usual, he closed the hack door and vanished from view.
Chapter Fifteen
Marchand paused at the foot of the long drive to take in the rambling, centuries-old house. He dismounted from his hired horse, a patient bay gelding, and loosely tethered him to a shrub. He knew his visit would be brief.
As difficult as it was to intimidate him at the advanced age of thirty-six, the weight of the realization—less a realization than a confirmation—that he and Guinevere Woodville had been raised in different galaxies required a bit of an internal adjustment. It was helpful to be reminded that it was only through some perversion of fate that he’d come to be kissing her nearly senseless in a cemetery.
Every glancing thought of that moment sent twin spikes of lust and fear through him. Hope had no business anywhere near how he felt. But there it was, glimmering like daybreak on the perimeters of his life now, shortening his breath. He couldn’t seem to stop it any more than he could stop the sun from rising. But what would he hope for, anyway?Papa, the sky is green.That was how outlandish it was to imagine a life with her. There was a better than excellent chance that her family and friends would bloody well disown her if they saw her consorting with him, or anywhere near him. And nothing meant more to her than her family and friends. He understood that painfully clearly.
That she rightfully belonged to him and with him felt like an inalienable truth. How could he know that after just a few days? As surely as he’d known he would die for Michael from the moment he’d held him. Truth was truth.
The way she held him felt to him like truth.
The way she looked at him felt like truth.
The way she kissed him felt like truth.
And the way she’d held that baby last night felt like his destiny.
He did not know how to reconcile the ferocity of his possessiveness with the seeming futility of their circumstances.
But what did he really know for certain? He knew he’d only truly loved and been loved by one other person in his entire life, and that was Michael.
The dangers upon which he’d been trained in his youth had mostly been immediate in nature—thieves, violence, hunger. He’d seldom had the benefit of recognizing a danger so far in advance. And yet he’d still been almost helpless to avoid this one. Because just like hope, devastation hovered on the periphery of his awareness, too.
Imagining making love to her sent need coursing through him so violently his limbs all but trembled.
But if he made love to her, it might destroy both of them.