Courtney Milan (29 page)

Her eyes met his. He wasn’t sure how long she’d known, at what point in the story she had figured out the truth. Hell, when he started talking, he hadn’t been sure if she knew at all. His father might have made it plain in their conversation, before Jonas came up with the tea things.

She took a step toward him. “His name is Lucas…Grantham?”

A single, short nod.

“You didn’t tell me you were taking me to see your father.”

“No.” He looked away. “I didn’t. I told him I was bringing you to see him, though.” He smiled. “He gave you his lard-and-rice receipt, which is proof positive that he likes you. He only mentions that to people he approves of. And don’t worry about the sugar in your tea. He hates when I take sugar, too.”

It was all babble. He couldn’t look away from her. She was standing in front of him, looking up at him.

“You want me to tell you what I think of you.” She took another step toward him.

“I wanted to spend time with you, to convince you I wasn’t the ogre you feared.” He looked away. “Little did I know that over the course of these last days, I’d learn more of you, too. That you were brave. That beneath your laughter and your cheer, there lies a solid measure of good sense.” He swallowed. He was babbling still. “You make me happy. And what I most keenly want to know is… Do you think I could ever do the same for you?”

She put her finger on his lips. “Jonas.”

His Christian name sounded awkward on her lips. It was the first time he’d heard her say it. The smell of pine was strong. He couldn’t look away from her. She set her hands on his arms—the curls that hung at her cheeks brushed his jaw. She stood so close, he could almost taste her. She stepped closer still. Jonas bent to her, tasting the sweetness of her breath. Her lips were dizzyingly close. And then…

She kissed him.

Oh, God. For one moment, he was riveted in place by that single, solitary point of contact. Her lips on his—how long had he envisioned this moment? Long enough that he let his eyes flutter shut, let himself fall into the feel of it. That light caress, the brush of her lips against his…

He’d have called it bittersweet, but all the sweetness came from her, the bitterness from him. Her kiss didn’t sweep away the dark anguish he felt in his heart. Instead, it embraced it. It acknowledged it.
This is real,
her kiss said, y
our hurt is real. It is real and important. So let me share it with you.

It was a kiss like dark chocolate, a heady mix of cacao and sugar, each ingredient imperfect on its own, but breathtaking when mixed together. And when he tasted her, when he nipped at her lips and she opened up to him, she was sweet and tart, like cherries in brandy.

He wrapped his arms around her and kissed her more deeply. “Lydia.” Her name was perfect on his lips, perfect whispered against hers.

And God, she knew how to kiss. A man could fall into a kiss like this and never want to leave. Her body molded itself to his, giving up all its secrets. The warm flush of her chest as she slid more deeply into sexual arousal; the perk of her nipples, felt only dimly through the layers of fabric between them. Her hips pressed against his, acknowledging his growing arousal with her own.

He’d wanted a kiss for midwinter. But secretly, he’d wished for this—that she might not only see him, but like him. Maybe love him.

“Jonas,” she whispered, opening up for him. He leaned forward and set his hands on the rough plaster to either side of her head. Pine needles tickled his legs, but none of it mattered. He couldn’t have been more comfortable in a feather bed surrounded by pillows than he was at this moment.

He wasn’t sure when her hands started roaming, when his own moved in response. He only knew that it seemed right to bring his hand to her ribs. He could feel the shape of her corset, the boning, the grommets and laces hidden behind fabric and ribbons. The thick fabric of her undergarment nestled just under her breasts, leaving the shape of her bosom for his exploration. He ran his thumbs along her nipples, until her breath came in gasps, until they hardened to aroused peaks under his touch.

She was so responsive, so passionate. As much as he’d ever imagined, pressing against him, opening her mouth to him, meeting his tongue stroke for stroke.

“Lydia,” he said. “Lydia, darling.”

On those words her eyes opened. They opened wide. Her breath stuttered out from her in little white puffs. How could it be so cold when he felt so warm?

He struggled for the words to give her.

She pulled away. “No.” But he wasn’t even sure she was talking to him. “No.” She took two steps back.

He felt pole-axed with his own lust.

“Don’t tell me this is normal,” she said. “It isn’t. It
isn’t.”

“Lydia.”

She didn’t look at him. Her lips were pressed together.

“Lydia,” he said. “I want to marry you. I want to have you by my side forever. I know it’s far too soon to ask. But, Lydia, darling—”

“Don’t call me that.” Her voice was shaking. “I don’t want to hear it. Not ever again.” She put her hands to her head. “Oh, God,” she said. “Look at me. Just look at me.”

He couldn’t take his eyes from her. Even with the tree glistening with new ornaments, she was the most lovely thing around, her lips still pink from their kiss.

“You can’t walk away from me after this,” he said.

She looked up, and what he saw in her eyes brought him to a standstill. Her eyes were wide, the pupils shrunk to pinpoints.

She took a few steps back. “You’re very good,” she said. “Very good. I had no intention of… But you made me forget.” Her voice shook. “You made me forget what could happen.”

“Lydia. It doesn’t have to be that way.”

He took a step toward her. She flung an arm out at him, pointing, and he halted. “There,” she said. “You’re honest. You’re surprisingly sweet, when you wish to be. And…and I think you could tempt any woman you chose.” He’d thought her so sweet just moments before, but there was a bitterness to her voice now. “So I do see good in you. That was the wager, was it not?”

“Hang the wager,” he swore.

“You promised,” she said. “You promised that if I won, you would never talk to me again.”

He swallowed. “Only if that’s what you wanted. Lydia, you can’t mean to kiss me and then walk away.”

“I mean it.” Her voice was shaking, and he thought she was on the verge of tears. “I really mean it. I don’t want to talk to you ever again.”

He took a step toward her. “Lydia.”

She flinched back. “Your word,” she said. “You gave your word.”

But it wasn’t the promise he’d made that stopped his tongue. It was the look in her eyes—that black, dark look, that fear that only intensified as he came closer. He shut his mouth, pressing his lips together, searching for something to say…

There was nothing. He’d promised not to speak to her any longer.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I can’t. I simply can’t.”

She backed away from him. And when she was six feet away, she turned and ran, leaving him alone with the evergreen and the ornaments.

Chapter Eleven

T
HE FIRE IN HER FATHER’S STUDY WAS HOT,
but Lydia could scarcely feel it against her skin. She wasn’t sure why she’d fled here—why she sat here fiddling with the holly on his desk. She felt empty and hollow, and she didn’t
want
to think. Not at all.

“So,” her father said, setting down his pen after she rearranged the ribbons for a fourth time, “am I going to have to have words with Grantham after all?”

She jumped back, stricken. “No! Why would you say that? I don’t want to talk about him.”

He smiled faintly. “I’ve made three errors in this last column, Lydia, and you haven’t caught a single one.”

“I have to get this holly right.” She didn’t look at him.

He didn’t say anything. He wasn’t the sort to
say
things, to cajole her into giving up her fears. He just…was.

“Why didn’t you put me away?” she asked.

His eyes widened.

“You should have. Parwine told you to do it.
Anyone
would have done it in your place. But you act as if nothing happened, as if I were the same person I would be if I’d never met Paggett.”

Her father took his glasses and rubbed the bridge of his nose, where the frame of his spectacles had left a pink indentation. But he didn’t say anything in response.

“Don’t you understand that I’m not your little girl anymore?” she demanded.

“No. You’ve grown older,” he said quietly.

“Grown older? Is that what you think I’ve done? That’s all you think happened to me? That I just
grew older?”

He gave her a helpless shrug. “Well, yes. I do wish it hadn’t happened all at once, the way it did, but…” Another shrug. “I never really thought about putting you away. I suppose almost anyone else would say that was a mistake. But I didn’t want to.”

“You didn’t even give me new rules, no new strictures. You let me walk out with Grantham, knowing that I was the sort of woman who might…”

She didn’t finish the answer. She was the sort of woman who might fall prey to a man like that. A darkly handsome man, possessed of a particularly blunt style of speaking. She might let him touch her, kiss her. She might thrill when he did it and want more.

His eyebrows rose. “I ask again, am I going to have to have words with the man?”

“No!”

He gestured with his hand to his desk drawer. “Because if necessary, I could fetch my pistol and—”

“No!” she exclaimed, horrified. “No. But do you remember who he is?”

Her father frowned. “He’s a doctor. Is there something else I should know?”

“He was with Parwine. When…”

Her father’s face went white. He hadn’t known. Her parents had been so focused on
her
on that day that she didn’t think they had been aware of anyone else. Lydia had been the one staring across the room, glaring at that strange young man who watched her so silently.

Her father’s hand drifted towards his drawer once again. “Is Grantham using what he knows to cause you harm?” His voice was a whisper.

She shook her head. “He wouldn’t hurt me.” In fact, she was fairly certain she’d hurt him. “He only made me realize—”

He’d only made her realize how much she hurt.

“I don’t want to realize anything,” she finally said.

Those words sounded awful spoken aloud. They rang out in the quiet of her father’s study. Lydia put her fingers to her lips, tentatively, testing to see if they’d come from her.

They had.

“Well, now,” her father said. “I guess you know why I didn’t put you away. Once you’re old enough to punish yourself, there’s no point in my doing it, too. And since I wasn’t so inclined, I didn’t.”

T
HE NEXT FEW DAYS SEEMED TO PASS IN A BLUR.
Lydia smiled; she laughed. But she knew it all for lies.

A week before Christmas, she went out for a walk. She wrapped herself heavily, but no scarf, however thick, could keep her memories from her. And with the holiday so close, there was no avoiding those old memories.

Christmas bells reminded her of that long-ago time, the one she tried not to think about. She’d spent years telling herself that it was as if nothing had happened. That she was strong, because she could set aside those months when she’d been so casually used by a man who cared nothing for her. That she had suffered once on that Christmas Eve when everything had gone wrong, but that she’d overcome it. That she’d learned to laugh and smile, and that she had gone on, unharmed by those events.

She’d lied to herself. And she hadn’t understood how deep those lies ran.

Because it wasn’t until a man had kissed her and called her darling, had said he wanted to marry her, that all those old feelings had come rushing back. It had been as if she were fifteen again, naïve and hopeful, believing everything he said. Letting him touch her. It didn’t matter that Jonas had been sincere. It didn’t matter how she felt about him. She’d felt her own physical desire sitting on her like a nauseating reminder of what could happen. Her gut had cramped, and she’d run away.

And now…

Now, she didn’t even know what she wanted.