“Stop saying that,” he practically begged her. His voice was laced with exasperation—no, make that desperation—and she must have heard it, too, for she clamped her mouth shut, swallowing nervously as she watched him pull on his shirt.
“I have to leave for London, anyway,” he said, not that that would have stopped him if she hadn’t done so.
She nodded.
“We will discuss this later,” he said firmly. He had no idea what he’d say, but they would talk about it. Just not right now, with the entire house waking up around him.
The entire house. Good God, he really had lost his head. In his determination to show Anne honor and respect the night before, he’d ordered the maids to put her in the finest guest bedroom, on the same hall as the rest of the family. Anyone could have walked through the door. His mother could have seen them. Or worse, one of his young cousins. He couldn’t imagine what they would have thought he was doing. At least his mother would have known he wasn’t killing the governess.
Anne nodded again, but she wasn’t quite looking at him. Some little part of him thought this was curious, but then some other, larger part of him promptly forgot about it. He was far too concerned with the painful results of unfulfilled desire to think about the fact that she wouldn’t look him in the eye when she nodded.
“I will call upon you when you arrive in town,” he said.
She said something in return, so softly that he couldn’t make out the words.
“What was that?”
“I said—” She cleared her throat. Then she did it again. “I said that I don’t think that’s wise.”
He looked at her. Hard. “Would you have me pretend to visit my cousins again?”
“No. I— I would—” She turned away, but he saw her eyes flash with anguish, and maybe anger, and then, finally, resignation. When she looked back up, she met his gaze directly, but the spark in her expression, the one that so often drew him to her . . . It seemed to have gone out.
“I would prefer,” she said, her voice so carefully even it was almost a monotone, “that you not call at all.”
He crossed his arms. “Is that so?”
“Yes.”
He fought for a moment—against himself. Finally he asked, somewhat belligerently, “Because of this?”
His eyes fell to her shoulder, where the sheet had slipped, revealing a tiny patch of skin, rosy pink and supple in the morning light. It was barely an inch square, but in that moment he wanted it so badly he could barely speak.
He wanted her.
She looked at him, at his eyes, so firmly fixed to one spot, then down at her bare shoulder. With a little gasp she yanked the sheet back up.
“I—” She swallowed, perhaps summoning her courage, then continued. “I would not lie to you and say that I did not want this.”
“Me,” he cut in peevishly. “You wanted me.”
She closed her eyes. “Yes,” she finally said, “I wanted you.”
Part of him wanted to interrupt again, to remind her that she still wanted him, that it wasn’t and would never be in the past.
“But I can’t have you,” she said quietly, “and because of that, you can’t have me.”
And then, to his complete astonishment, he asked, “What if I married you?”
Anne stared at him in shock. Then she stared at him in horror, because he looked just as surprised as she felt, and she was fairly certain that if he could have taken back the words, he would have done.
With haste.
But his question—she couldn’t possibly think of it as a proposal—hung in the air, and they both stared at each other, unmoving, until finally her feet seemed to recognize that this was not a laughing matter, and she leapt up, skittering backward until she had managed to put the wingback chair between them.
“You can’t,” she blurted out.
Which seemed to rouse that masculine don’t-you-tell-me-what-to-do reaction. “Why not?” he demanded.
“You just can’t,” she shot back, tugging at the sheet, which had snagged on the corner of the chair. “You should know that. For heaven’s sake, you’re an earl. You can’t marry a nobody.” Especially not a nobody with a falsified name.
“I can marry anyone I damn well please.”
Oh, for heaven’s sake. Now he looked like a three-year-old who’d had his toy snatched away. Didn’t he understand that she couldn’t do this? He might delude himself, but she would never be so na?ve. Especially after her conversation with Lady Pleinsworth the night before.