Page 56 of Finding Hope
“You should have told someone where you were going. I have been worried beyond enduring. I was about to gather a search party.” His hands were rubbing up and down her arms, then chafing at her hands.
“W-wa-was walking. C-c-caught in the storm. Then someone locked the door.”
By the dim light of his lantern, she caught a confused look from Rotham. “But it was not locked, my dear.”
“I heard the key turn in the lock. And I tried the door!” she insisted.
“I have no key, and I walked straight in.”
Hope began to argue, but he hushed her with a fingertip on her lips.
“We can sort that out later. We must get you back to the house and warm again.”
Warm sounded lovely, but she knew the door had been locked. She had tried it twice and knew she was not imagining it.
Some of the sensation was beginning to return to her as he continued to soothe her with his hands. He swept some of thewet hair back from her face and tenderly placed as kiss on her forehead.
“I will take you back to the house now and never let you out of my sight again,” he murmured.
They were the words she had so desperately longed to hear. She allowed herself to nestle against his shoulder and breathed in his musky scent, mixed with rain, just one more time.
“Hope, if anything ever happened to you…” His voice trailed off. He held her face gently and looked deep into her eyes. His face moved towards hers, and he gently brushed his lips across hers.
A fluttering sensation beat rapidly within her chest as she leaned forward for more. For a few brief moments, all of her troubles melted away into the sensation of his kiss. Nothing existed but the two of them and the magical feeling between them. Perhaps she was dreaming, but she wanted to be closer to him as he deepened the kiss. When he pulled his lips from hers, he showered her face with tender caresses before returning to her lips for more.
“No, stop. This cannot be,” she said, as much to herself as to him.
“Hope, I want to be with you. Forever. Do you understand what I am saying to you?”
She shook her head. “It is impossible,” she whispered, though doubted he could hear her over the storm. It was a shame that what had finally brought them together was also tearing them apart.
“Nothing is impossible if we are both determined to make it so.” He looked at her long and hard and must have seen resignation or resolve there. “This is not the time to speak of it. Come, let us get you back to the house and warm.”
He gathered her into his arms, carefully draping the cape over them both as much as possible.
“Can you hold the umbrella and the lantern?” he asked.
She nodded and noticed as he pushed the door open easily that there could have been no mistaking it for being hard to open.
As he hurried them through the blowing rain back to the house, her tears mixed with the drops that hit her face despite the umbrella, which she struggled to hold close against the wind.
He ushered her in through the side door she had slipped out of earlier, then up the stairs to his study, where Westwood and her sisters were waiting for her.
“You can put me down now,” she told him.
The look on his face said that he would gladly hold her forever, but he did as she wished.
“Thank God!” Faith said as she came towards her. “Come. A warm bath awaits you, and you can tell me what happened.”
She turned and looked back at Rotham, willing him to believe her, yet unable to utter pleas for the tightness in her throat.
Max stoodin the drawing room, speaking to Westwood whilst waiting for the dinner guests to assemble and watching the door anxiously to see if Hope would come down.
“Do you believe someone really locked her in?” Westwood asked. “Or do you think she perhaps became panic-stricken?”
“If she was anxious, then why go out alone?” Max countered.
“According to Faith, Hope has to walk to reflect when something is troubling her. It was daylight, and she thought everyone was accounted for and would not see her slip away.”
