IT WAS A WEEK later, when Lily was exercising her horse, Snowflake, that she spotted Rand running along the bank of the Thames.
He’d avoided her all that time. Or she’d avoided him. Or both—she wasn’t sure. But now, riding toward him, her heart began to race…and it wasn’t from the exertion of the gallop.
She slowed deliberately, both Snowflake’s gait and her own breathing. She was determined to appear indifferent toward him, though she’d given up attempting to feel indifferent. Each day this week, Rose had contrived some excuse to visit Violet. And each day, when Rose had returned from Lakefield looking injured and disappointed, instead of sympathy, all Lily had felt was relief.
That’s how Lily knew her feelings for Rand were real. They’d changed her.
And not in a way she liked.
But as Violet was always telling her—and anyone else who would listen—humans were rational beings, capable of rising above instinct and emotion to make their own decisions. And since Lily loved her family more than anything else on earth, she knew the rational decision was not to act on these feelings. Right and wrong might seem murky to her of late, but, for her own sake if not for Rose’s, family loyalty had to come first.
Not that it was an easy decision. She hadn’t forgotten that kiss.
Above plain buff breeches, he wore a loose white shirt unlaced and open at the neck, the sleeves rolled up past his elbows. Tied back into a queue, his glorious hair streamed on the wind behind him, shimmering in the sun. His unfashionably low-heeled boots pounded along the grassy bank in a rhythm measured and unceasing.
He ran, she thought, like a wildcat, lithe and sleek.
She knew the moment he saw her. There was a telltale stumble in that perfectly smooth motion. And a matching hitch in her heartbeat.
He stopped and leaned over, hands to bent knees, panting hard as he waited for her to ride closer. When she did, he straightened and looked up at her, using a hand to shade his eyes.
His face was flushed; his shirt clung damply to his skin. That piercing gray gaze swept her from her toes on up. When it met her eyes, searching, it seemed almost as though he were seeing her for the first time.
Holding her reins in one hand, she self-consciously smoothed her yellow riding habit with the other.
“Good day, Lily.”
She swallowed tightly. “Good day.”
“I’m finished running,” he said, stating the obvious. But she had the oddest feeling that he spoke of more than exercise. Moving beside her white horse, he reached to help her down. “Will you walk with me? I like to do that after I run.”
There was no harm, she supposed, in walking. But when his hands spanned her waist to ease her to the ground, they caused a disturbing jolt of sensation. And she felt his fingers rest there longer than necessary before he stepped back.
She deliberately looked away, taking Snowflake’s reins and looping them over the branch of a scrubby tree.
A sparrow fluttered from the sky and alighted in the sparse foliage. Rand looked up, then raised a questioning brow. “Lady?”
“Yes. She thinks she’s protecting me.”
“She thinks I cannot defend you without her help?” His laugh sounded strained. “How dare she insult my masculinity.“
To the contrary, Lily suspected Lady was acknowledging his masculinity—protecting her from Rand rather than in spite of him. But she certainly wasn’t going to encourage him by saying so.
They turned and walked along the riverfront, settling easily into a comfortable tempo. Keeping far enough away from him that he couldn’t take her hand, Lily focused on the water. Swans glided majestically, and faint laughter drifted from a river barge whose passengers were enjoying the summer sun.
“Do you run often?” she asked, then realized she knew the answer.
Here was the reason he looked so browned and sleekly muscled. Apparently not all academics spent their days locked away in research.
“Often enough,” he said. “It helps me think.”
Surprised, she turned her head to look up at him. “How can you think while you run that hard?”
“Not during.” Wanting to explain, Rand met her gaze and smiled. “After. Like now. When my body is pleasantly worn-out and I can feel the breeze cooling my skin.”
It had always done that for him, the running. It wasn’t only the speed. It was the strain of pumping muscles, the sound of pounding feet, the delicious gulps of air rushing in and out of his lungs. The rhythm. It all combined to clear his head—to fill his head—leaving no space for worry or concerns. When he was running, he was only running.
And when he stopped, he could always think more clearly. Life seemed simpler. Problems seemed surmountable. Solutions seemed to materialize out of thin air.
But this time, when he’d stopped, Lily had materialized. And he’d thought, quite clearly, that he must be falling in love.
The realization had nearly made his burning leg muscles give way. His heart had hammered against his ribs. Was still hammering against his ribs.
He wasn’t sure he was ready for love, wasn’t sure it was meant for him. Wasn’t he happy the way things were? He’d escaped his personal nightmare and made a life for himself. A good life, a comfortable life, a life in which he didn’t have to answer to anyone.
A lonely life, a little voice whispered.
Lily watched Rand shake his head as though to clear it. ”How long have you been at Oxford?” she blurted out.
“A decade—since I was thirteen. I couldn’t wait to get out of my father’s house, so I jumped at the chance to enter early. He doesn’t approve of what I’ve become, but he cannot tell me what to do any longer.”
“Did he expect you to assist him with his estates?” She knew that Rowan would do that someday, but it was different for Rowan—someday he’d be Lord Trentingham, while Rand would never be more than Lord Hawkridge’s younger brother. “I can understand why you wouldn’t want to do that, or live the life of an idle gentleman. You’d be wasting your talents.”
“I’ve no idea what he expected, but I doubt he harbored dreams of keeping me home. My leaving for Oxford was the only thing we ever agreed on. The old goat was as happy to see the back of me as I was to turn it upon him.”
He grinned as though that was supposed to be amusing, and she smiled in return. But she found it unbearably sad that he’d had to finish growing up by himself—and she sensed it made him sad, too.
No matter what, she’d always have her family and their support. She’d never realized how lucky she was. Rand had pursued his dreams, but he’d done it alone.
No one should have to be alone.
“How did it happen?” she heard him ask, and looked up to find his gaze fixed on where she was absently rubbing the back of her hand.
Swallowing, she hid the hand behind her back. “It doesn’t hurt anymore, if that’s what you’re wondering. It happened long ago.”
He stopped walking. ”But how?” Gently, he retrieved her hand, and she was too embarrassed by its ugliness to protest.
She stared down at the thin white lines. The proof of her imperfection. “A cat. Not Beatrix. And it wasn’t his fault—I was teasing him. I learned to respect animals after that. All animals.”
“I cannot imagine you disrespecting anything.”
Something in his voice made a nervous laugh bubble out of her. “I try not to,” she said, “but I’m far from perfect.”
“You’re close enough to perfect for me,” he said very seriously. His thumb drew circles on her palm, and she shivered. Her lips tingled with remembered sensation.
She licked them. “Rose…”
A puzzled frown appeared on his brow. “Rose? What about her?”
She hesitated. They were standing beneath a tree, and a flutter of wings heralded Lady alighting above them. But Lily’s sparrow friend couldn’t protect her from her confusing feelings.
She suddenly felt very tired. Tired of lying, tired of resisting, tired of the excruciating guilt. She couldn’t do it anymore. This tug-of-war had to end.
She pulled her hand away. “Rose is the reason I shouldn’t be here with you, Rand. She wants you for herself.”
“Ah, so you’re being a good sister, is that it?” To her irritation, his lips curved in a smile. Did he take this for a jest? “Let me tell you, Lily, Rose may very well want me, and I’m sorry to hurt her feelings. But I want you.”
He couldn’t, she thought.
Maybe he did. But he just couldn’t.
While Lady twittered, Lily took a step back. “You’re so like Rose. You both sing, the languages…”
Her words trailed off. Lady flew to a lower branch.
Rand seemed to consider that line of reasoning for a long moment.
When he finally spoke, his tone was laced with quiet conviction. “Maybe I am like Rose. But I don’t want someone like me. I want someone to complete me.”
His words were so earnest, his relentless gray eyes so sure, that he melted her. When he moved closer, when his hand curled around the back of her neck, when he lowered his lips to hers…all she could do was give in.
And giving in felt entirely too right.
Slowly he backed her against the tree, his mouth gentle in the beginning, like it had been the first time. But when she felt the rough bark meet her back, his lips slanted, and she found hers parting, and then, well…
Lily knew about this kind of kiss—she was, after all, the youngest of three sisters. It had sounded rather messy and not entirely pleasant, no matter that she’d been assured otherwise.
There had been no need to worry.
Her eyes drifted closed and her hands crept into his hair, feeling its silky strands damp with his sweat. That should have been unpleasant, too, but it wasn’t. He tasted of salt and somehow smelled clean and musky at the same time, and he overwhelmed every one of her senses.
“Lily?” he whispered against her lips.“I fear I’m falling in love with you.”
Her eyes fluttered open.
”You cannot be,” she said, numb with shock—and afraid it was the same for her. She tried to pull away, fought to gather her wits. This was wrong. “We…we haven’t known each other long enough for you to know that.”
“Four years.”
“No,” she argued, biting her lip. Tears threatened, but she blinked them back. This couldn’t be happening. “Not four years. Not even a month. A couple weeks four years ago, and nine or ten days now. Most of them spent apart.”
“Well, then,” he said quietly, so guilelessly she knew he believed it, “it must have been love at first sight.”
Love? The short word was far too big and real for Lily to manage. It made her heart knot and grow heavy in her chest. Blood pounded in her head, filling her ears.
If he loved her, Lily, then he’d never marry Rose, would he? What was the point of keeping her promise if Rose’s hopes were destined to be dashed either way?
For one single moment, she wanted, more than she’d wanted anything in her life, to break a promise to her sister. Then she gasped, appalled that she’d even had such a disloyal thought. Her family meant everything to her. Rand’s feelings didn’t change that.
“I have to leave,” she said, echoing her words from a week earlier. And she turned toward Snowflake and ran, Lady flying after her.