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Five

O
f course he’d done it on purpose.

What could Henry say? He wasn’t prepared for the visceral strength of his reaction to seeing her for the first time in twelve years; he wasn’t prepared for the rush of possessiveness, of guilt, that swept through him at the sight of her alone and lost in the crush of Hope’s ballroom.

He should be hunting down the French Blue. The audacity of the thieves shocked him; it took a set of stones to pilfer a fifty-carat gem in front of five hundred people. He should be staying very, very far away from Lady Caroline, Dowager Countess of Berry, for her sake, and his, too.

And yet here he was, handing her a heady pour of musty red wine in a teacup. (He hadn’t been able to find the proper crystal glasses.)

“Thank you,” she said, turning the cup in her hands.

“Sorry about the cup.” He sipped at his own and winced. “And the wine. Bah, that’s bad stuff.”

Caroline brought the cup to her lips, trying—and failing—not to choke. “How charmingly . . . vintage,” she said, coughing.

“I tried to find something else, but my brother must’ve taken
the decent bottles back to Oxfordshire. I suppose one
does
require a bit of wine when a new baby’s in the house.”

Caroline cocked a brow. “He doesn’t know you’re staying here, does he?”

Henry sat in the faded armchair across from Caroline’s and cleared his throat. “Not exactly.”

She smiled down at her cup. “Is that why we’re taking te—wine in a bedchamber?”

“I’m afraid so.” Henry slurped at his wine. “I haven’t any staff with me aside from my colleague Mr. Moon. He makes for a rather dismal butler, and an even worse maid. This is the only room we’ve managed to turn out. I don’t need much.”

He crossed and uncrossed his legs, rearranging his limbs into an even more uncomfortable position before the pitifully tiny fire. He could not sit still, not with Caroline in the room.

Especially not with his brother’s enormous four-poster bed hovering in the half darkness behind them, an oppressive shadow that, despite his best efforts to ignore it, called out to him like Odysseus’s sirens.

Henry slurped more wine. Desperate times did call for desperate measures, and this wine was desperate indeed.

Caroline set the cup in her lap and looked up, meeting his gaze. His entire being started, heart hammering inside his chest. The lovely familiarity of her dark eyes made his stomach clench.

“I do wish you’d take me home.” She rolled her lips between her teeth. Her voice was low. “It’s getting late, and if my brother finds I’m not in my rooms . . .”

His ears perked up at that. Why would Harclay not have escorted his sister, recently out of mourning, to one of the season’s most infamous—and well-attended—events? He obviously did not want her there. But why?

He decided not to pursue the matter, at least not for now. She’d thwarted his questions earlier, and he did not wish to push her away. This could very well be the last time he would ever have her like this, to himself. He didn’t want to waste these precious few minutes interrogating her; he was weary of it.

“It’s too dangerous,” he replied steadily. “The thieves are on the loose, a priceless diamond in hand. God forfend we
should meet them in the street, for they would shoot our legs off sure as Sunday. You are safer here, with me.”

Caroline’s eyes flashed. “Somehow I doubt that.”

She swallowed; he watched the working of her throat, hypnotized by the smooth skin there, the inviting slopes and sinews.

He shifted in his chair yet again at the ominous tightening inside his breeches. As if the bloody things weren’t tight enough.

He crossed an ankle over his knee so that he might not frighten off Caroline with his worsening—er, condition.

“Who were you looking for?” he asked, as a rather awkward means of changing the subject. “At Hope’s ball. I saw you looking for someone.”

The only light in the room was that put off by a half-dozen tapers strewn about the chamber; even so, Henry could see Caroline’s cheeks burn pink.

“No one,” she said, shaking her head as she looked down at her lap. “I wasn’t looking for anyone.”

A beat of silence passed between them. Henry began to sweat.

“And you. Why were you there? I didn’t know . . .” She was swallowing again. Dear God, was she trying to kill him? “I suppose I don’t know many things.”

“Well.” Henry cleared his throat. He’d lied his way through the past twelve years; deceit was his trade, damn it, so why was it so hard to make use of that skill now?

“Well,” he said again. “Hope and I are old friends. So.”

Even as he said it he struggled not to wince.

“So,” she said.

“So.”

He dug a hand into the hair at the back of his neck, riling his neatly tied queue. His face was burning.

“Your hair’s gotten long,” she said. “How fashionably unfashionable of you.”

One side of his mouth went up in a smile. “I’ll have you know I take great pride in my hair. My brother may have the title, but I have my flowing locks. Poor old chap’s got nary a strand left.”

“I remember Robert.” She bit her lip. He wanted to ask her to stop; it was beyond—
beyond
—distracting. “He finally married?”

“Just last year,” Henry said. “To a girl half his age. She’s
darling, really, and far too good for him. From what information I can gather, they are obnoxiously happy.”

“But you two were so close,” she said, frowning. “You don’t keep in touch?”

Henry’s smile tightened. “I’m afraid the”—he searched for the right words—“demands of my position prevent me from corresponding with my family as much as I’d like.”

“Of course. I can only imagine the adventures you’ve encountered. The things you’ve seen.” For a moment her gaze lingered on his eye patch. The look in her eyes made his heart hurt. God, how he wanted to tell her. Tell her everything.

Of course he couldn’t; the strength of the impulse surprised him nevertheless.

“But you are back.” Her eyes flicked to his lap. “And, from the looks of it, very much alive.”

Panic descended upon him as he followed her gaze; he nearly cursed aloud as he covered the very obvious evidence of his arousal with both his hands, the teacup dangling from the hook of his first finger.

Heavens, he’d forgotten about that wicked tongue of hers. He’d loved that about her, once; her ready wit, the often perverse bent of her thoughts. She may have been an earl’s daughter, and an heiress at that, but she had the mouth of a sailor.

Needless to say, her comment had the opposite of its intended effect. He was so hard he thought he might burst.

“I’m . . .” He cleared his throat, shifting in his chair. “It’s the breeches, they’re not mine, I stole—I mean borrowed them, who steals
breeches,
really? They’re dashedly tight, you see . . .”

She bit her lip again.

He thought he might die.

“Right, then,” she said.

“Yes, quite.” He lowered his voice, gaze trained on the offending organ as if he might stare it into submission. No such luck.

“And you,” he said. “Are you in London to seek a new husband? I see you’re out of mourning.”

“Heavens, no.”

“I don’t mean—I heard of Osbourne’s passing, you see—terribly sorry, he was so young—”

Caroline scoffed. “It’s not that.”

Henry waited for her to explain; when she didn’t, he cleared his throat, and said, “I am sorry. He was a good man.”

She looked away. “He missed you.”

“I missed him.”

A beat of uncomfortable silence passed between them. “I’m sorry, my lady. I can’t—,” he began.

“I know,” she said.

He looked up from his lap. They met eyes. Hers glowed in the low light like opals, dark, unknowable, full. So full and so powerful, her gaze was akin to an assault. Heavens, but he was almost glad he had only one eye; knowing her with both eyes, meeting the assault fully naked and bare, would have slain him more surely than any foe he’d yet encountered.

He looked and she looked and as the heartbeats passed, something moved between them, something that was at once arousing and painful. The amusement in her eyes faded, as did her small smile; her lips fell apart and so did her composure, and he could tell by the rapid rise and fall of her chest that she was struggling to breathe.

She was open before him. She was lovely.

His heart—his
everything
—felt swollen to twice its size as he looked at her. He wanted to smile at the disheveled, swirling tilt of her hair. He wanted to weep at the hurt in her eyes and in the crease between her brows.

The air rushed out of his lungs to make room for the rising tide of desire, of regret, that moved through him. He was leaning forward in his chair, all but numb to the sharp pain of protest in his bad leg; his cup fell with a clatter to the floor.

Her face. Oh, her face; it seemed impossibly small, impossibly vulnerable. He remembered cradling it in his hands as he’d kissed her that night in the chapel. The desire to run his thumb along the edge of her chin, touch the warm smoothness of her skin, overwhelmed him.

Caroline did not move toward him, but she didn’t back away, either. She sat very still, her gaze watchful and weary, her color deepening as he drew closer. He could smell her perfume, the lilies and that fresh cleanness that was
her
.

Henry reached for her face. He was about to touch her when she winced against a rush of tears. She stood, abruptly,
swiping his fallen teacup from the floor as she did so. He blinked, stunned.

“More wine,” she said. It was less question, more command.

He said nothing. His throat felt tight.

Caroline sidled around the chair to the bureau that was serving double duty as a sideboard. She coaxed the cork from the bottle; wisps of hair, fallen from their pins, trailed down the back of her neck. He watched them move idly in the breeze from the open window.

She set the bottle down on the bureau, suddenly, and placed her hands on either end of its marble top; she sagged against it, her head dipping.

“Caroline.” He was on his feet on an instant and standing behind her. “Caroline, are you unwell?”

She looked over her shoulder. His belly turned over at the expression on her face. Damn it, she was crying.

“Caroline,” he said again.

“Don’t call me that.”

“I’m—I’m sorry, I just—”

She was clutching at her stays then, gasping for air as she turned toward him. “I can’t breathe. Please,” she gasped. “Please, if you could—”

Henry spun her back round, his movements succinct, violent almost, as he tore at the back of her gown with his hands. He felt the sobs tripping in her chest as he tugged free the laces of her corset, coaxing, pulling with his fingers; he winced as her bottom pushed far too invitingly against his erection.

As if the damned thing could give him any more grief. Jesus.

His fingers brushed against the bare skin of her back. He could see the last knobs of her spine rise above the top of her undergarments before sloping into shoulders and neck; the lace edge of her chemise peeked teasingly through the gap in her stays.

Her skin was hot to the touch.

Henry swallowed, hard, as Caroline leaned against the bureau. Now that her gown was open at the back, its sleeves worked themselves farther and farther off her shoulders with every breath she took. After a beat one of them slipped. Her shoulder was bare.

The same shoulder that had been in his mouth when he’d practically mauled her in the ballroom.

Dear God.

He swallowed again.

She breathed against him, and he breathed against her. He wondered how a naked shoulder could be infinitely more erotic than other, more private naked parts.

Her left hand went to her forehead; with her right, she poured wine into her cup and threw it back in a single gulp.

“Henry,” she whispered. The sound of her voice made him feel the burn behind her closed eyes as his own. “Mr. Lake.”

“Don’t call me that.”

She scoffed. “Maybe we shouldn’t call each other anything.”

“Of course. Yes,” he said. A pause. He was holding himself an inch away from her. It was killing him, the impulse to close the distance between them, to press his body against hers. Resisting it was like resisting the end of night, the approach of morning: inevitably idiotic, vexingly futile.

Frustrating. Waiting out the passing of this moment, and then the next, frustrated him to no end.

He wanted to touch her. God, he wanted it more than he’d ever wanted anything.

But he was hurting her. She was hurting, and it was because of him. He closed his eyes against his guilt. He’d married her, claimed her as his own, and left her the next day.

Henry had no right to touch Caroline. He’d lost that right twelve years ago. He’d lost her. He was a cad, a blackguard, a scalawag of the worst sort.

Still, the desire to claim her again glowed brightly inside him.

He stared down at the skin of her neck; that
skin
. His fingers burned with the need to touch her there.

Those stray wisps of her hair were stuck to her glistening nape. Without thinking—without meaning to—he reached up and brushed them aside with his thumb.