Page 60 of Her Wicked Highwayman
“She reminds me of Isla a little,” Rafe mused as he studied the older girl’s features. There was something about the shape of her eyes and her mouth that he found fascinating.
Diana stared at her sister’s portrait, smiling sadly. “They both have that same look of mischief, don’t they? Eleanor was certainly mischievous when we were young. But as we got older and Mother grew unwell, Eleanor withdrew from everyone. Even though Mother was unwell, Papa still had her. But when Eleanor pulled away... I was lost. In some ways, I suppose I still am.”
Rafe caught Diana’s chin and turned her face toward his. “You aren’t lost. You’ve made a life here. And I daresay you still have a family.” He nodded at the footmen watching her with concern on their faces.
Tears suddenly filled her eyes, and she lifted a hand to brush them away.
“Allow me.” With gentle fingers, Rafe brushed the tears from her cheeks.
“I rather feel as though I am but one moment away from failing at everything,” Diana confessed. Rafe’s heart was pierced with the sharp echo of her pain.
“I know that feeling all too well. My brother and I were close once, but my mother blamed me for my father’s death, just as I blamed myself. In the end, I lost her, Thomasina, Ashton, and even little Joanna. I was never good enough. I made no money, only trouble. I never proved my worth, not the way Ashton does.”
Diana drew in a breath as he wrapped his arms around her.
“Wouldn’t it be a wonderful thing to simply be enough for those we love?” she asked.
He rubbed her back, feeling the stares of the footmen behind him, knowing he was taking too damned many liberties with her. But he had held Diana before, had kissed her tears away before. He had made love to her and known with clear conviction that she wasn’t simply enough—she waseverything. She was a cosmos unto herself, wrapped in mystery and majesty.
He wanted to woo her with words, with flowers, with walks in the gardens, but something inside him warned him that he didn’t have the luxury of time. So he courted her with a kiss.
Rafe bent his head, his lips caressing hers, and sweet agony rippled through him, so hard that he trembled. He’d never thought a kiss could contain the power to save a life, but in that moment she saved his. Diana held every gentle promise of love and passion’s fire in her kiss. He tasted an unspoken vow of understanding and acceptance and returned it with his own.
We are the same, my little star. Shine upon me so that I may not fear the darkness within me.
When their lips parted, she gazed at him with wide brown eyes that held the night sky and all the stars within them. She wet her lips and spoke.
“Are you certain we’ve never met before?”
CHAPTER 14
Rafe, Will, and Caspian waited in the rain-soaked night not too far off from the road, their horses restless as they hid within a copse of trees.
“Are you certain we’ve never met before?”
Even a week later, Diana’s innocent question still haunted Rafe.
He had managed to convince Diana they had never met before the day she came to see Rosalind for tea, even though the lie was bitter on his lips. The way she’d looked at him, those brown eyes still searching for a hint of Tyburn that he was forced to conceal, made his heart clench with pain. Every instinct in him demanded he confess all of his truths to her.
He had never been overly bothered by telling lies, but lying to Diana, even to protect her, seemed to deepen the black stain it laid upon his soul. Yet it was a worthy burden to bear in order to protect her. Someday he would tell her the full truth, when he was done with these raids, when it was safe, but that was a distant, uncertain day.
“Molly promised the coach was coming this way tonight,” Caspian whispered as he adjusted his grip on the reins.
Molly, one of their trusted informants who worked in the taproom at the Wild Boar coaching inn, was more than happy to tell what she knew of the passengers who passed through the inn’s doorway, so long as Caspian took her upstairs and shared her bed. Caspian, far more reserved than Will, always came back down the stairs after such encounters with his face red from embarrassment but his eyes still half-lidded with satisfaction.
“One of these days, that poor wench will expect you to propose to her,” Will said with a chuckle.
Caspian kept his focus on the road ahead of them. “She won’t. I told her I cannot marry, ever. Besides, she thinks I’m some poor fellow from Yorkshire.” He added this last in a Yorkshire accent, which made Rafe and Will chuckle. Yet Rafe heard the pain in Caspian’s tone, which mirrored his own. They led lonely, dangerous lives. He was glad he could protect Diana from it, even though it meant risking his own to find a way to take care of her and Isla.
Unfortunately, the news from Molly hadn’t all been good. Molly had warned them that the guard for this coach had been doubled from two to four, so they most likely expected trouble. It made sense, given those imposters working in the same area. More robberies meant more efforts at security. “Is Molly sure about the number of guards?” Rafe asked.
“She’s never led us astray before,” said Caspian. “Most likely, Caddington is tired of having us steal his money.”
This should have worried Rafe. More guards meant they probably had orders to fight back. He should have been focused on Caddington, on the coach they would soon be robbing and how it would be far more dangerous this time. But all he could think about was Diana.
He had visited her every day during the last week, courting her in earnest. She’d had her doubts when he’d shown up with bouquets of flowers, asking her for long walks or rides in thecountry, but eventually she had agreed. The time they’d spent together had been satisfying in a way that bedding a woman never had been.
His brother had noticed a change in him and didn’t tease him whenever he mentioned he was going to see Diana. He would simply smile and nod. Rafe had stopped trying to earn his brother’s approval years ago, but now that he had it, he wasn’t sure how to react. All he knew was that he needed to be with Diana. Little else other than Isla mattered to him.
