Minerva had no idea how long they stood there entwined in each other’s arms. Time stood still, and there was nothing but her and him and the distant sound of the sea. But as the crashing waves grew louder, once again it was Hugh who pulled away. He let go and stepped back, then paced, raking his hand through his hair, looking completely miserable.
For her, it wasn’t just a physical severing of the kiss, but an emotional one. She could feel him distancing himself from it—from her. As if he regretted it.
“I’m sorry.… I shouldn’t have done that. It was a mistake. A huge mistake. I am not entirely sure what came over me…”
“It was a mistake.” She tried to appear blasé about it. Unaffected rather than wounded by the bitter remorse she could see in his eyes. Eyes that were now too stormy to twinkle with mischief as they usually did. Eyes that struggled to hold hers.
“You have to understand it is an impossible situation.”
She knew it was an impossible situation. Knew it before she allowed him to kiss her. Knew it when she’d allowed herself to develop feelings for him, yet developed them regardless. That didn’t make his rejection hurt less. “Pay it no mind. It was just a kiss.”
Just a kiss.
One that had made her heart sing before it surrendered itself completely to him. What an absolute fool she was. He had never hidden the fact he was a scoundrel, and she had thought herself immune to scoundrels, but she had fallen for Hugh anyway. Seduced by his charm and his easy way. Somewhere over the last week she had forgotten where she came from, forgotten this wasn’t her life at all. It was a fabrication. A construct. An intoxicating break from reality, that she, the proud realist, had lost sight of alongside all the harsh lessons life had thrown at her.
“We should probably forget it happened … shouldn’t we?” Now he looked queasy, which was just plain insulting.
“Probably.” Not that she had forgotten the last kiss, the one that had expediated her growing attachment to him. The one she thought about all the time. “We should also probably head back. It will be dark in an hour or so.”
“Yes … of course … unless you want to discuss what just happened?”
“What is there to discuss? It was just a kiss. Let’s not let it spoil our day.” How she managed to smile, she would never know, when she wanted to weep and howl at the missing moon like a banshee.
“Yes … an excellent idea.”
He held out his hand to help her up the steep bank, and she pretended she hadn’t seen it. She didn’t want to touch him now. Didn’t want to be anywhere near him.
Fool! Fool! “Will it take long to get back to Standish House?” She couldn’t wait to get to the sanctuary of her borrowed bedchamber and lick her wounds in private. What had possessed her to give her heart to another man who had no intention of staying for the duration?
“If the roads are clear, less than an hour.”
Fool!
He was paying her. Paying her to keep him from the clutches of matrimony. There was a glaring clue if ever there was one as to the man’s intentions. What had she been thinking? Had she thought she was the one to change him? Her? A downtrodden woodblock engraver from Clerkenwell, when all of society’s finest beauties hadn’t tempted him to change his ways before?
Of course not!
The sorry fact was, she hadn’t thought beyond the romance of it all and had allowed herself to be swept away. Right from that first day, she should have told him where he could shove his money!
“I wonder how they all coped without us?” Her tone was light and conversational. She wouldn’t allow him to see how much he had hurt her. If he regretted the kiss, she wouldn’t deign to care about it. Let him think it didn’t matter.
“I suppose we are about to find out.” He came around the side of the curricle to help her in, and she thanked her tall ancestors for providing her with long limbs, so she was able to climb up before he could assist, and wrapped the thick blanket about her suddenly chilled body like a shield.
Redundant, Hugh climbed in beside her and began to steer the curricle around, the tension stretched between them like a barricade across the narrow bench seat. Neither said a thing. Minerva racked her brains for something, anything, light and inconsequential to convince him he didn’t matter to her in the slightest, and when nothing came, she turned slightly away, watching the scenery rather than Hugh, grateful his expensive, sporty curricle was fast as the miles sped by.
They had been whizzing along for a good twenty minutes when he suddenly yanked on the ribbons and brought the little gig to a screaming stop. “We need to talk.”
“We really don’t.”
“I am so incredibly sorry about that kiss. And I’m sorry about earlier … on the stairs. And that night outside your bedchamber door.” Beside her she felt him exhale slowly. Saw the tension in his fisted hand still gripping the reins. “To be perfectly frank, Minerva, I’m having the devil of a job not kissing you now despite knowing it cannot go anywhere.”
Cannot go anywhere.
A very polite way of reminding her that engravers from Clerkenwell had no place forming fanciful attachments to earls.
“But I want to clear the air. Bring the Great Unsaid out into the open and find a way for the two of us to come to terms with the issue. We can’t keep ignoring what is blatantly there between us.”
“Between us? I see you are conveniently relieving yourself of all the blame for what just happened. It was you who kissed me. Twice. I do not recall asking you to on either occasion and am quite content never to do it again. Fear not, I have no designs on you, Lord Fareham. There is nothing between us. It was just a kiss. Not my first and doubtless not my last.”
“It was more than just a kiss, damn it! It meant something. To both of us.” He reached across the seat and took her hand in his while she digested his words. “Am I wrong? Or is it only me who is afflicted with odd, futile romantic feelings which refuse to go away?”
“‘Romantic’ or ‘romantic’?” Her silly heart needed to know despite the fact that he called it futile.
“Both.” All the color seemed to drain from his face, which took away most of the satisfaction of hearing him admit she mattered. “In the beginning I tried to convince myself it was purely a carnal attraction, but this goes beyond lust, Minerva. Is it just me who feels it?”
She made him wait several seconds before she sighed and flicked her gaze briefly his way. “No.… It’s not just you.” At least he was in turmoil, too. Somehow that made her feel less foolish for pouring her heart and soul into a futile kiss. “Shall we blame the forced proximity? The odd circumstances? The fact we are pretending to be an engaged couple to all and sundry? The beautiful atmospheric abbey, the deserted beach…?”
“You could blame any and all of those things.… However, for me, I shall call it what it is. Attraction … passion … undeniable affection. Something which could be much more if we both took a chance on it.”
Her silly heart soared again, buoyed with forlorn hope. “You … have an affection for … me?”
“Well, it should hardly come as a surprise. You are inordinately nice.”
He smiled without humor and stared at their interlocked fingers. “But I have too much affection for you to indulge my feelings with no consideration of the potential consequences. The Standish male makes for an exceptionally bad husband and I was resigned to never be one. I will not make promises I am unlikely to keep, Minerva, as much as I want to. Not to you. I care for you and respect you too much to pretend to be anything other than what I am. Another untrustworthy man, who will probably ultimately disappoint you in the long run—just like your father and that good-for-nothing Romeo who deserted you.”
“What are you saying?”
“That I am not in a position to offer marriage. Just myself for the time being…”
And there it was.
The offer doubtless many an unsuitable woman received from an aristocratic man—the temporary, insecure, and unbinding commitment of becoming his mistress. She should have expected it, just as she always expected to be disappointed by a man, but it hurt nonetheless—because the disappointment came from him. Her knight. When clearly her knight, like every fairy tale, had been entirely a flight of fiction.
“And I dare not ask you to take a chance to wait and see if I might change as our relationship develops…” He paused and stared at her intently as if he expected her to say something, agree to his insulting offer.
“No.” She forced the word out as she removed her hand from the cocoon of his. She wanted a better life. One independent from the financial and social shackles that bound her. Becoming a rich man’s mistress, as well as belittling all she was and all that existed between them, was as transient and unreliable as her piecemeal woodcutting. In fact, it was worse. With woodcutting there was always hope amongst all the uncertainty. As a mistress, there was no hope, just the certainty that eventual abandonment was inevitable. “Please do not ask me that again.”
He stared down at his lap. “Of course … Sorry I brought it up.… It is doubtless for the best.… I suppose I must accept we are two people who, if I had not been born who I am”—another tactful reminder of the chasm between their stations—“might have been perfect for one another but are doomed to be nothing more than a short interlude in one another’s lives.… More’s the pity.”
“I think I preferred my excuses.” She wanted to leave. Or shout and scream and slap him for wounding her. “They sounded less depressing.” Or callous. She turned away and stared back at the distant sea on the horizon. Even that had lost its magic. “We should go.”
“But we are still friends, aren’t we?” He sounded sad and she didn’t care. “I never meant to hurt you.”
“You haven’t hurt me.” Just cut me to the quick. “I am far too sensible to have ever expected promises from you or be deluded enough to want them.” And she had too much respect for herself to agree to his debasing proposition. “Only a fool falls for a scoundrel, after all, and only an idiot would tie herself to him.”
She thought he was different. Because with him, she was different. Happier, lighter, even younger. But not anymore. He had spoiled something she thought was lovely and turned it vile. Diminished her and all that she was, when she had fought so hard to be something.
Just never enough.
She swallowed past the lump in her throat and blinked the threatening tears away. It was never easy to hear you weren’t quite good enough—an almost but not quite—but to hear it from Hugh, a man she had allowed herself to care deeply for, was somehow worse.
“Minerva…”
“There is nothing left to say, Hugh. You asked, I said no, let us leave it at that.”
She would give him some credit for his honesty. He could have blithely seduced her with empty promises of more and cast her aside, as men of his ilk often did with women who were beneath them. But he had respected her feelings and been truthful about his intentions from the start. And that, too, was so typically Hugh.
“If it’s any consolation, I am truly sorry I cannot promise you more today…” His expression was intense, more serious than she had ever seen it. “But I will promise you one thing today. I will be there for you, should you ever need me. Wherever, whenever … You can always count on me to come to your aid.”
“My own personal knight in shining armor.” The bitterness leaked into her tone.
“At best, my armor is tarnished, but the knight beneath is not all bad, I hope.”
“Nor all good.” More was the pity. She was too angry to look at him. Too disappointed and humiliated and hurt.
“I care for you too deeply to lie to you.”
“I know.” Just not deeply enough to want it all.