Page 81 of The Heiress Gets a Duke
“Yes, I don’t care to watch us leave, but there’s no reason you can’t.” Max had come in earlier from the suite adjoining hers to invite her to go up onto deck with him, but she had refused him. The last thing she wanted was a final glimpse of the place that had upturned her life. The sooner they left it behind, the better. “I won’t need you again until it’s time to dress for dinner.”
“Yes, miss.” She hurried from the room so fast that the door didn’t quite click closed.
Several voices in the corridor outside rose as if a group of three or four people were talking all at once. After several nights of terrible sleep, August’s eyes felt grainy and tired, and she had been irritable all morning. The last thing she wanted was a disturbance because of noisy neighbors.She sighed and closed the door, locking it just as the commotion was dying down.
The cabin was small but well-appointed with dark wood furniture and fabrics in emerald green with gold trim. She eyed the bed with longing but opted to do a little work at her desk instead. Papa had been so angry that she was leaving, he had sent a small trunk of tedious reports with her that she was to read through and make recommendations. All of them about various manufacturing interests in the British Isles. She supposed she should be ecstatic that he had not gone through on his threat to cut her out of Crenshaw Iron. She wasn’t. She was sad and heartbroken.
She had hardly settled herself into her chair when a knock sounded at the door from the adjoining cabin. Not Max’s cabin, but the one on the other side. Thinking it must have been accidental and related to the earlier commotion, she ignored it and picked up the first document. The words blurred on the page. Perhaps Papa had been right and running home had been the wrong thing to do. Perhaps she should have simply ignored Evan and faced Society.
The knock came again, and this time more insistently.
“For heaven’s sake,” she grumbled. Crossing the few steps to the adjoining door, she said, “Hello?”
A knock was the response.
Irritated with having to deal with inconsiderate neighbors on top of her heartache, she unlocked and wrenched the door open. “This is very inap—” The words died on her tongue. His hair was tousled, and it appeared he had not shaved that morning and might even be wearing his clothing from the day before, but Evan stood before her. For a moment she was too stunned to react. Her heart gave a thump, and it was as if her body came alive for the first time since that night in the library. There was no gray, or gloom, only Evan. The intense joy that coursed through her veins was frightening. How could she be so willing to forgive him? Instead of answering that question for herself, she slammed the door in his face.
“August.” It swung so hard that it failed to latch and bounced back open. He stepped into her cabin and closed the door behind him. The room was hardly wide enough totake more than ten steps in any direction. With him in it, it shrunk to half its original size.
“What are you doing here?” In a panic she glanced out the window to see that they had pulled even farther away from shore. Too far to swim if she somehow managed to get him up on the deck and pushed him off.
“I came to talk to you.”
“To talk? You’ve boarded an ocean liner bound for New York!” Did he expect to talk to her and then have the entire ship dock so that he could disembark?No!It suddenly became clear to her exactly what had happened. The commotion next door was because he had forced some unknown couple out of their cabin. “You made that poor couple move to another cabin?”
He grinned. “What else was I to do? Besides, they are hardly poor after the amount I was forced to give them to accept second-class accommodations.”
“And you wonder why you have financial troubles,” she said, crossing her arms across her chest.
He laughed. “God, I missed you, August.”
“Don’t say that. You hardly missed me when you had Madame Laurent to replace me.”
“I know that you saw her kiss me, but I turned her down.”
“Lie. I saw how you looked at her.” Her heart twisted as she remembered that look. How could it still hurt so badly?
He shook his head and approached her slowly, like a wild, cornered animal. Good. He had hurt her terribly; she wanted him to be afraid. “I do not know what you think you saw. She kissed me and asked me to spend the night with her. I told her I wanted you. No more, no less.”
He stared at her with such earnest devotion, she wanted to believe him, but she couldn’t forget his mouth on hers.
“I did not come all this way to lie to you,” he continued. “After you agreed to break the betrothal, I thought it was because you were relieved. I thought that perhaps I could go back to how things were before we met, a man with no responsibilities. But I am not that man anymore. I want you, August. I want the life we had planned. Every moment Ispent away from you was a moment I spent thinking about you, wanting you, loving you.”
She gasped at the word and stepped back, afraid to believe because it was so close to what she wanted.
He kept stepping forward, until she came to a stop when her back came up against one of the posts at the foot of the bed. “Are you running from me?” His voice was too damn soft and gentle, intimate in the small space between them. He didn’t touch her, but he was so close she could see his chest rise and fall with his breath.
This was almost too much to take in at once. “No... I... How did you find me?”
“Violet. She told me everything after she called me a few choice names.”
August couldn’t help but smile at the thought of Violet yelling at him. “You must have won her over.”
“I want to winyouover.” He bent his neck to meet her gaze directly. “I want to marry you, August.”
“Why didn’t you say as much when you told me about the mining interest, then?”
“Because I was afraid you would be too happy to have your freedom back.” That admission stole her heart. “If you had said you wanted to keep up our courtship, I would have agreed. I thought that giving you your freedom was what you wanted. I thought it was the right thing to do.” He touched a lock of hair that fell in a curl over her ear. Her scalp prickled in pleasure when he gave it a light tug. “Itwasthe right thing to do. Did you enjoy your freedom?” His warm breath drifted over her lips. They very much wanted to kiss him. His gaze was soft, but worry lurked in its depth.
