Page 63 of The Reckless Love of an Heir
Yet you did!The accusation charged through her as it did each time any thoughts of Henry began circulating in her head. The kiss was a betrayal.
‘Lord Henry Marlow, my lord.’
Susan turned and looked back as she heard Henry announced to the Baron.
He was here.
Her heart leapt, skipping into a sharp beat – pleasure. Happiness. It lanced through her, no matter that she knew she should not be happy to see him. The emotions he stirred inside her would not be silenced. It was the reason she had dreaded him coming, because she knew she would feel like this, and she was ashamed of it.
He bowed to the Baron and his wife, then turned in the direction of Susan’s father and mother with a smile. Her father smiled stiffly back. He was still angry with Henry.
Susan turned her back and watched the couples gathering forthe next dance. If Henry spoke to her she would not know what to say.
Alethea’s gaze focused upon the Earl. They were not dancing, but standing together on the far side of the room. She had not noticed Henry’s arrival.
‘Uncle.’ Even his voice, as he acknowledged her father, sent tremors of emotion through Susan. It was a voice belonging to the man her heart craved, and when he spoke it called her to respond. She could not.
‘Have you come alone?’ her mother asked.
‘I have. Papa, Mama and the others are at John’s.’
He was alone. Had he come to battle Stourton for Alethea? Or to court her…
‘I will tell Alethea tonight, I have decided against a match between her and I.’
‘Good evening, Susan.’
She had no choice but to turn and answer Henry.
‘Henry.’ She nodded her head slightly in acknowledgement and gave him a very shallow curtsy, her gaze on his polished shoes, then she straightened and looked up into his brown eyes. His eyes asked her a hundred questions, and they made it very clear he had not come to court Alethea. He had come to see her.
Heat bloomed in her cheeks as she looked at her father, guilt pointing its finger, as her thoughts betrayed Alethea.
‘Will you dance with me?’ Henry asked.
No. The word snapped through her mind because she could not trust herself. There was too much longing to dance with him in her heart. ‘Yes.’ She could not say no before her mother and father. There was no reason for her to refuse to dance with him.
He lifted his hand and she accepted it. Normally a man would have offered his arm, but they were only a few steps from the dance floor, and the dance was a waltz.
He held her hand in a way that seemed to say,I have you now, and when his arm came about her and his palm rested against her back, his embrace was protective.
The music began in full, flooding the air in the room. They had not spoken beyond their greeting and his request to dance with her. But what was there to say?
She looked across his shoulder as he turned her, and saw her parents enter the refreshment room.
Henry was looking at her, as she did all she could not to look at him.
Her stomach was a twisted knot of tangled threads.
There was nothing to be done. She was in love and there was nothing to be done. She could not let things continue. There was no place in their situation for any feelings between them. Did love die? Did it come to an end? Would her heart stop feeling as though someone had squeezed it so hard it was bruised and sore?
‘Susan…’ he said quietly as he continued to spin her about the floor.
She looked at him. The magnetic tug that had begun forming as a sympathetic pull was now a thick rope of longing coiling around her.
His eyes said everything that should not be said between them. She had called him self-centred and she had thought him shallow in his interests and his enthusiasm reckless and fleeting. The look in his eyes denied every one of those things. It promised forever.
She could not look away.
