Page 49 of A Rogue's Rules for Seduction
“On my way out of my room,” she mused, “I saw Gilbert Cransley sneak into Lady Shipton’s room.”
“And I watched Baron HunsdonandMrs. McDaniel go into Longbridge’s bedchamber,” Dom said. “No shortage of nocturnal carrying-on with the nobs.”
“Notallof us nobs,” she replied, stepping around a clump of seaweed. “Unmarried ladies aren’t encouraged to act out a French farce. Yet,” she added, throwing him a glance, “men can do as they please. My brothers are offensively happyin their marriages, so they wouldn’t be part of the bedchamber antics, but you are unwed and at perfect liberty to seek out nocturnal entertainment. Instead, you’re trudging along a beach. With me.”
She tried to speak lightly, as if his reply didn’t matter, and yet her breath held as she waited for his response.
“That bed-hopping tomfoolery is for aristos.”
Her exhalation came out far more loudly than she would have liked, because he shot her a surprised look. She quickly turned her gaze toward the waves rolling to the shore.
“You used to cavort quite vigorously,” she pointed out, still striving for an offhand tone, “with my brothers as company.”
“I played the part of rakehell,” he said thoughtfully. “But all that came to an end when—”
“When what?” she pressed when he suddenly went silent.
“When I met you,” he admitted.
She stumbled slightly, but pretended that it was the sand that fouled her steps. With purposeful carelessness she asked, “Why should that make a difference? Most men continue their sundry trysts and affairs regardless of their more sanctioned entanglements.”
His wide shoulders lifted in a shrug. “No point in it. I’d nothing to prove, especially after we got engaged.”
“Do you regret it now? Not carrying on in your rakish ways, when the engagement came to nothing?”
He stopped walking, and she did, too. They faced each other at the very edge of the water, the sea surging close to their feet, yet she barely heard the waves.
“It wasn’t nothing,” he said in a gravelly voice. “It brought us here.”
“I wish there’d been another way to get here.”
His jaw tightened. “I hate that I hurt you. I’ll curse myself for it until my last breath.”
She did and did not take comfort from his regret. “I haven’t come to peace with it,” she confessed. “And yet... much as I hate to admit it... my brothers were right. The only way is forward.”
He gave a short, clipped nod.
“Though right now,” she added, “I’ve had enough of trudging through sand and need a rest.”
She lowered herself down to the sand, and he did the same, stretching his legs out in front of him. As they sat quietly, watching the water, she picked up a piece of driftwood and turned it over and over in her hands, feeling how the waves had polished it nearly to a lacquered finish. But people weren’t like driftwood, they didn’t get smoother as life knocked them about. If anything, they grew rougher and more splintered.
“I was wrong,” he said abruptly. “Calling youprincess. That’s what I thought you were, high upin your tower, above all of us struggling peasants. It doesn’t fit, though.”
“Witch, perhaps,” she suggested wryly.
“Lioness.”His gaze was warm on her, chasing away the chill of the breeze. “Powerful, yes, but not invulnerable. There’s tenderness there, a deep and feeling soul, and that makes your power all the more incredible.”
Her heart stuttered. “No one’s ever described me that way before. No one eversawme that way.”
It was frightening, and extraordinary. She wanted to flee and she never wanted to leave this beach.
He brought his hand up, slowly. She went still, her breath coming faster and faster as his broad and fever-hot palm cupped her jaw.
The shadows surrounding his eyes deepened and at that moment, he was as dark and forbidding and seductive as Hades, ready to spirit Persephone away to the depths of his underworld kingdom.
“For all that we’re to move forward,” he rumbled, “here we are, pulled together like a tide.”
“A tide that causes ships to collide and wreck.” She couldn’t look away from his mouth, so contradictorily lush in his rough-hewn face.
