Page 95 of The Reckless Love of an Heir
What had they just done? Guilt stamped down as soon as the sensations had gone.
Stupid. Reckless.
What about Alethea?
He withdrew from her body and tumbled onto his backbeside her, his legs still tangled up with hers. He huffed out a sigh.
They lay still, as she looked up at the orange-streaked sky. The sun would drop below the horizon at any moment. Her parents would be leaving and looking for her.
Birdsong swelled around them, a loud chorus of sound as the birds sang to the last moments of sunlight.
‘I suppose we ought to go back in,’ he said to the sky.
She sat up, untangling her legs and brushing down her dress, then stood as he buttoned his flap.
Still sitting on the ground, he leaned over and brushed the back of her skirt.
‘Is it stained?’
‘No. No one will know.’
But she knew, and she must ride home in the carriage with Alethea knowing how disloyal she had been. But if she had not been disloyal to Alethea she would be disloyal to herself, and Henry? With either step she would hurt someone. What a mess.
He stood then and before she could turn to go back to the house, his hand curved about the back of her neck and his lips pressed over hers. ‘Thank you,’ he said when he broke the kiss. Then he said, ‘Your spectacles.’
He turned and picked them up.
Her hands shook when she accepted them and put them on. It felt as though she had stepped back into herself. All the enchanting sensations his caresses had engendered had disappeared, leaving her standing on a barren island.
‘You go back inside first. I will follow in a few moments.’
She nodded.
He seemed so matter of fact. How many women had he done this with?
Warmth flooded her cheeks when she turned away. She did not even say goodbye to him, her mind was too muddled.
When she walked into the drawing room she was certain she must be as bright a pink as the roses in the garden, and that everyone in the room must know she was different. The hands of the clock said she had been out of the room for less than an hour – her life had changed entirely in less than an hour. No. It had not. She had to find employment, just as she had planned, only now she must find it quicker.
Henry walked in as she heard the carriages on the cobbles in the courtyard, arriving to take everyone away and leave the family to their grief.
He shook hands with the men, and shared a one-armed masculine embrace with Harry and Uncle Edward.
He did not look at her, and if he had, she would have looked away. If she caught his gaze she would blush the colour of a ripe strawberry.
She hugged Aunt Jane when she said goodbye and held Uncle Robert’s hand for a moment. His eyes looked so empty. Then she hugged Christine and Sarah, before saying her goodbyes to Henry’s wider family who were also leaving. Through all the goodbyes, somehow she managed to avoid Henry entirely.
Her father held her hand when she climbed into the carriage. She sat beside Alethea, her heart heavy and her hands shaking. She held the edges of her shawl and pulled it tighter about her shoulders.
What had they done? He had never been more reckless, and nor had she.
None of her family spoke in their short journey home. Probably because it had been an emotional day for all of them – yet for her… Such a day.
As soon as they reached home, Susan excused herself and retired to her room and her bed.
As she lay in the dark, in the comfort of her childhood bed, she could not escape the memory of this evening. The perfume of the blades of grass and the rose petals that had fallen there and were crushed beneath her clung in her hair.
Her fingers touched where Henry had invaded her body. She was sore still. Yet her senses seemed to hum the tune of his rhythm.
