Page 45 of The Earl's Secret
“Cassandra,” he said, leaning down toward her, stroking her cheek. “That was… that was… everything.”
She nodded slowly, her head jerking into his touch.
“Youare everything,” he said, his words all that she would have wanted to hear the first time they had come together, words that she had never received from him.
Only now could she finally admit that part of the reason the words had never come was because she hadn’t allowed him to share them with her once he asked for the chance.
He eased down off his hands, coming to rest beside her instead, propping his head up on his hand as he stared at her. Seeming to read her thoughts, he continued. “Last time, I didn’t tell you how I felt, was too afraid to let you know what you did to me. But the truth is, Cassandra,” he ran a hand down her arm, “I do not want this to be the last time we are together. I want… more. I want… you.”
She wished, for a moment, that they could stay in this small cottage forever, that the dream of living here, alone with just the lake and nature around them for background, could come true.
But of course, this was but a moment in time. There were brothers, families, treasures, responsibilities to consider.
“Your brother returns tomorrow,” he said slowly, and Cassandra’s heart jumped as she was already shaking her head.
“No,” she said.
“You do not even know yet what I am going to say.”
“You will not tell him of this. Nor of the time before.”
Devon was silent for a moment. “I am not sure that we should continue lying to him.”
“Not telling him something is not the same as lying to him.”
“Isn’t it, though?” he questioned uneasily. “Honestly, Cassandra, I do not know how I can continue to be around you and pretend as though I feel nothing for you. I know that your emotion toward me was far from affectionate, but I do hope something has changed.”
Of course it had. Everything had changed – most of all, Cassandra’s own realization that what she had felt for Devon all this time was not necessarily the hate she’d thought it had been. No, instead it had been something else entirely. She had been so wrapped up in funneling all of her emotion into the fact that he had left her without a word that she hadn’t stopped to consider justwhyit had bothered her so much.
It was because she had cared for him more than she had ever admitted.
“If Gideon knows what happened between the two of us – now or before – he would never forgive us. Especially you,” she said, reaching out and placing a hand over his heart to soften her words. “I know how much your friendship means to both of you. I would hate to be the cause of any discord. It is better that he never know of it.”
Devon was silent for a moment, the only response the ticking of his eye.
“Very well,” he said with some resignation. “But that does not mean that I will not be speaking to him about you. And us. And my intentions toward you.”
“Which are?” she asked, raising a brow.
“That I mean to do right by you, Cassandra. And not just because we have now been together once more and, yet again, there is the possibility of a child growing between us. It is because I cannot see my life without you. Do you understand?”
This had all happened so quickly, the change so abrupt, that Cassandra’s first inkling was to say no, this couldn’t be, she couldn’t have her life upended like this.
But then she looked at Devon, at how he returned her stare, and she knew that if she allowed him to walk away now, she might never have him again.
Just a few weeks ago she would have accepted such a situation – in fact, she would have embraced it. But now… now the thought of being without him was utterly unfathomable.
“I understand,” she said slowly to him. “But Devon?”
“Yes?”
“Perhaps do not say anything right away. We have been here at Castleton for a fortnight, alone together except for my mother, who has been completely oblivious to anything occurring between us, and my father, who believes us to be married anyway. Gideon would know that something has occurred, would he not?”
“He might guess that my feelings have grown for you, but I do not believe he would ever have expected me to act upon them.”
“Nor me,” she said before grinning at him. “We are rather misbehaved, are we not? Perhaps you have corrupted me.”
“Or you me.”
