Page 77 of His Spirited Lady
A groan crawled up from deep under his ribs. “That’s what I’m afraid of.”
“Is it like when we kiss with our tongues or is it like a lolli—”
Richard put his hand over her mouth, felt her wicked smirk. She was going to kill him, and she was doing it on purpose. “You are wicked.”
Her inhale tickled his palm. The look in her eyes was one he’d seen glinting back at him from the mirrors at some of Quebec’s best cabarets as he’d celebrated every profitable year. She wasn’t drunk on alcohol. She was high on success.
She lifted his hand from her mouth. “And that’s how women’s knees get dirty?”
God help him. “One of them.” He would not show her any of the others.
She kissed him then, just long enough to tease his lips with her tongue. It ricocheted through his body all the way to his toes. “Shall we get the carriage?”
Richard rested his forehead against her warm one. If it was daylight, he was sure he’d find her blushing. “Let’s.”
He stopped their charge to the door. They couldn’t be seen together with him in this state. “I’ll go around the front. You go through the ballroom. I’ll come get you.”
Once Richard was alone, he adjusted his shaft so he could walk without crippling himself. The breeze cleared the air of Amelia’s scent, and the chill helped him rein in his impulses. Still, he went for the carriage, his heart thudding in his ears.
If she barters her virtue for whiskey…Richard’s steps slowed. He could have predicted this evening, especially after the last one. He couldn’t keep his hands from her, and she showed an amazing lack of self-preservation. Except this wasn’t a woman looking for a scandal as an excuse, or even for scandal’s sake. She wanted to celebrate her success, her confidence that she’d climbed to the top of the heap and knew she could do it again.
But she didn’t know how difficult that could be.
Oliver’s driver saw him and began threading the carriage toward the door. Richard went back toward the party, formulating how to keep them both from getting hurt.
One look at Amelia speaking with Jasper told him he didn’t need to bother. Dreading the encounter, Richard still walked to her side. They said their thanks and goodbyes to her cousin and went down the front steps to the carriage without touching.
It was dark in the coach, but the gas lamps fluttered outside, points of golden light so regular he could predict them.Light. Ten hoofbeats. Light. Ten hoofbeats.Amelia stared out her window, the light gilding her skin.Ten hoofbeats.
“You refused Oakdale,” she whispered.
He had, and he should have sworn Warren to secrecy. “Jasper’s offer is based on a lie.”
“But what if—”
If he married her next week, they’d be in France for their honeymoon and then in Quebec by the end of the year. It would be wonderful, until she grew bored of snow, and trees. And him. “No more pretending, Amelia. We knew going in that this would end. Your life is here, and my life is there. We simply got distracted.”
“Is this about you being in trade again? Because I—”
Richard would rather be dragged behind the carriage than in here having this conversation. “This is about either of us being half a world away from a land that is a part of us and businesses that need us,” he stated, working to keep his voice level. “You will hate making whiskey in Quebec with ingredients you don’t understand, in a city with piped water, and people you don’t know.”
“I know you.”
Her whisper sliced through him. “And if something happens to me? If I go into the woods and a tree falls wrong or a saw comes loose? If you have to stay there alone or come home and start over? Again?”
“I’m stronger than you give me credit for.”
She probably was. How many times had she set herself on fire? “I’m not.”
The driver slowed on Oliver’s street. Richard banged on the carriage ceiling in what he hoped was a universal signal to drive on. The carriage lurched forward. The trees slipped past as he waited for the storm to break across from him.
“So you won’t take me with you, but you won’t give me my home.”
He knew this tone. He’d heard it at the house party when she’d been angry with Ethan Raymond. He could imagine the tears in her eyes. “You began this knowing you’d lose it. You had a plan—”
“I didn’t have an option then.”
He understood that. He’d never considered her in Quebec until he’d suspected she’d come if he asked.
