Page 25 of The Autumn Wife
She breathed words he could barely hear but sounded to his hopeful ears like “Don’t stop.”
No, she didn’t mean that—she could hardly raise her head or hold his gaze.
He glanced to the ground to see the bottle of wine they shared was overturned and drained. Had she taken more than a few gulps? He hadn’t been paying attention.
As the moment of their separation stretched, her breath grew less shallow, her gaze steadier.
“Oh.” Her voice was breathy and low. “Oh, Theo, I’m…I’m—”
“Blame it on the wine.” He nudged the bottle with his foot, then forced himself to face the river. He lifted one knee to hide the evidence of his desire. “Or blame it on the starlight. Or the fire.”
He meant the fire in Montreal—the panic and exhaustion and the sense of intimacy that arose between people in any crisis—but he was also thinking about the burn still lighting up his blood.
“As for me,” he confessed, “I’ve wanted to kiss you for a long time, Cecile. I still want to kiss you.”
For a moment, as she slapped the back of her hand against her mouth, he regretted his honesty—but the regret lasted for only a moment. Tonight, she had revealed that she trusted him, despite his past. If he lied about how he felt, he would destroy that fragile trust altogether.
“Don’t worry.” He mustered the last of his better nature and muscled to his feet. “I won’t let that happen again.”
Unless you want it to.
Cecile heard the words—not from Theo, now striding away in the darkness—but only in her head.
In dizzy confusion, she remembered that her husband—before he was her husband—had once stolen a kiss, too. Herfirstkiss. It had been a starry night in the upper town of Quebec in mid-September, like now. She remembered the gritty cobblestones beneath her boots. She remembered her pulse racing as the man who had just proposed marriage after ten days of courtship seized her in the shadows. She remembered the violence of his hard mouth and the unwanted and unsettling things the kiss theft did to her body and how her senses were clouded long after they broke apart and she ran back, confused, to her bed.
She’d figured, in her innocence, that was the way between men and women. So she’d chosen to cede to her husband’s authority in this matter—which led to the hell that followed.
But you know now, said a whispered voice in her head.Theo’s kiss wasn’t stolen or violent.
She swallowed hard, the pointed claws of fear threatening to scrape new furrows inside her. Groping for clarity, she let herself admit that Theo hadn’t grabbed her. He had given her a choice after the first touch of their lips. She’d had more than a moment to sayno,as better sense demanded. It had been herchoiceto be kissed. But she hadn’t expected a simple kiss to so quickly stifle the memory of all those terrible years of her marriage—or allow her imprudent younger self to emerge in foolish glory. That naïve girl with the hungry heart had once yearned for the kind of gentleness that Theo offered, the kind of gentleness she wanted with an ache so fathomless that, at the memory, her feet arched within the confines of her boots.
She hauled herself to her feet, swaying, and stumbled down the bank toward the siren song of the water. She didn’t bother to tug free the laces of her ash-smeared habit or even remove her boots. Wading into the shallows until she stood thigh-deep in the river, she spread her arms and fell into it, letting the chill close over her head. Holding her breath, she felt the eddying of the current pull her skirts about. As she was cast in such darkness, floating weightless, her swirling thoughts slowed until she heard nothing but the pounding of her pulse in her ears. She threw her arms out and tried to will the water to seep the heat from her trembling body, calm her heartbeat, and rock her until the tremors stopped.
Instead, the wicked current tugged at her braid, like Theo’s hand had when he’d cradled her head. The cool water brushed her lips and slid down her cleavage. Behind her closed eyelids, the outline of Theo’s face arose, still lit by starlight and gripped by banked passion.
She shot up, struggling to pull her feet from the suck of the river bottom. Saints alive, a kiss could cause so much tumult. She knew this already, and yet here she was again, pressing a hand against her chest as if holding up the rubble of the wall Theo’s kiss had shattered. The barrier she’d erected to seal off the desperate, fanciful idea that a woman like her—an abandoned baby, a despised wife—could ever be cherished, protected, and loved.
She raised her face to the heavens and allowed herself to wonder, for the first time in forever,Am I a fool, to still hope?
CHAPTER TWELVE
Mother Superior returned to the congregation.
From his position atop the scaffolding, Theo saw, across the roofless gape of the unfinished chapel, the Reverend Mother’s stout, white-capped figure stepping out of a canoe and striding across the grassy lawn. Standing by the trestle table set out for the midday meal, Cecile waited for the head nun, her shoulders as stiff as a ship’s spar.
Theo stared—he couldn’t help himself. It’d be easy to think Cecile’s firm stance was only a nervous reaction to the reckoning to come, for the returning nun would want a full report on the budget and the building site. But Theo knew there was more to it.
He’d been keeping his distance since their reckless kiss, not wanting to destroy this fragile trust between them. But for a few fleeting, polite, and public interactions with her since—as he left thestable before she arrived to teach the children, or in the mornings when they discussed the workings of the building site—he’d held himself apart, kept his eyes above her throat and his hands stiff at his sides, not trusting himself.
Because all he could think about, day and night, was kissing her again.
Harder.
Longer.
Theo forced his attention back to the work at hand. He slapped a dollop of mortar on the stone he’d just set, passing the flat of the trowel across it. The creak of the ladder alerted him to Jules climbing up with a fresh bucket of mortar. The burly mason slid it onto the wooden boards, then hauled himself to his feet beside Theo.
“The wind’s got a chill.” Jules swiped his forehead with his stained sleeve. “Feels good, but winter’s coming early.”
