Page 52 of Burning Secrets of a Lady's Pen
Out of the corner of his eye, he could see the woman causing him such distress, her laughter reaching his ears before anything else. It would be wise to make his escape and leave before she made her way over.
“If you’ll excuse me,” Corin offered, dipping his head. “I’m sure we’ll run into one another at least once more before the night is over. I need to see to the fireworks.”
“Oh, I do love fireworks!” Lady Merrit exclaimed as Corin backed away.
He meant to turn and go in the direction of the crowd gathering at one end of the garden. Or to slip away inside. He meant to go in the opposite direction of the laughter that had drawn him in the first place.
But his feet had a mind of their own.
Unwittingly, he found himself pulled toward where Imelda was just breaking away from Charlotte, his hand catching her wrist before she could pass him.
He had nothing to say.
Heshouldhave had nothing to say.
And yet, still he found himself pulling her with him as he fell back into the maze of bushes to their left.
“Corin, what are you doing? We’re going to miss the fireworks!”
Imelda’s voice was faint, as if it came down some long, dark corridor despite how close they stood. But Corin couldn’t stop moving until he was sure that they were well and truly out of eye and earshot of anyone who might stumble their way in the same direction he had taken.
He turned to her almost too suddenly, the air between them fraught with a tension he hardly knew how to identify.
“It is none of my business,” he began hotly, his voice wrought with far more emotion than he had meant to allow it to show. “And I am aware that you are rather fond of Theodore Fellowes, but I cannot in good conscience sit to the side and hold my tongue and bury my head in the sand as everyone else only seems all too willing to do.”
“I…fond?” Imelda repeated with a flustered laugh. “What does Theodore have to do with anything?”
“You don’t find it in the least bit odd that he has risen so greatly among the troupe’s ranks after beginning this acquaintance with you?” Corin snorted. “Or did you miss his obvious angling in front of your uncle when it was that he had the two of you in the same room?”
Imelda’s eyes flashed, the first firework going off above them with a loud bang that seemed to echo the emotion lingering in those green depths.
“Are you accusing his interest of being entirely self-serving, Corin?” she asked sharply, her lips thinning as she did.
Corin grimaced. He had meant to draw it out far more, to approach her more gently, but then, he hadn’t really planned to do any of that at all, had he?
That last-minute impulse had overtaken him, and now he was paying for such rashness.
“He does not look at you the way that a man in love would,” Corin said stiffly, refusing to answer such a baited question.
Imelda’s eyebrows rose, but only fractionally. “And how would you know what that would look like?” she countered. “And why would you care?”
The accusation in her words was clear. And accurate.
But it wasn’t angry.
And that was Corin’s undoing.
“You know why I do and would,” he returned, his voice full of that four-letter word he didn’t dare to utter.
The next set of fireworks went off over their heads, light illuminating the shock in her face. And the relief.
Corin could barely breathe as he closed the distance between them, what little there was, and grabbed her about her hips to haul her to him.
His hands were hungry, needy creatures of their own as he wrapped his arms around her and lowered his head so that he could put his lips over hers once more.
The desperation from the theatre was still there, but it was tempered by something else. By the truth that was now between them. The love that he knew he must wear so openly on his face for even the mention of it to not have surprised her.
Imelda didn’t pull away.
