She was melting. He could feel it.
His hands moved down and curved around her backside, pulling her firmly against him. There was no denying his arousal, and when she didn't move immediately away, he took it as a sign of acquiescence. “Come upstairs with me,” he whispered in her ear. “Come and let me love you now.”
She didn't quite freeze in his arms, but she did go uncommonly still.
“Victoria?” His whisper had grown harsh.
“Don't ask me to do this,” she said, turning her face away.
He cursed under his breath. “How long are you going to make me wait?”
She didn't say anything.
His grip on her tightened. “How long?”
“You're not being fair to me. You know I can't simply…It's just not right.”
He let go of her so abruptly that she stumbled. “Nothing has ever been more right, Victoria. You just don't want to see it.” He looked at her for one last hungry moment, feeling too angry and rejected to care about her anguished expression. Then he turned on his heel and left the room.
Chapter 19
V ictoria had closed her eyes against his bitterness, but she couldn't close her ears. His angry footsteps pounded through the house, ending with the loud slam of his bedroom door.
She leaned against the kitchen wall. What was she so afraid of? She could no longer deny that she cared for Robert. Nothing had the power to lift her heart like one of his smiles. But letting him make love to her was so permanent. She would have to let go of that little piece of anger she'd been holding inside for so many years. At some point that anger had become a part of who she was, and nothing terrified her more than losing her sense of herself. That was all she'd been able to hold on to when she was a governess. I am Victoria Lyndon, she would tell herself after a particularly trying day. No one can ever take that from me. Victoria covered her face with her hands and exhaled. Her eyes were still closed, but all she could see was Robert's warm expression. She could hear his voice in her mind, and he kept saying, over and over, “I love you.” And then she breathed in. Her hands smelled like him, like sandalwood and leather. It was overwhelming.
“I need to get out of here,” she muttered, then crossed the room to the door leading to the cottage's back garden. Once outside, she took a deep breath of the fresh air. She knelt in the grass and touched the flowers. “Mama,” she whispered. “Are you listening?”
Lightning didn't crash through the sky, but a sixth sense told her to turn around, and when she did she saw Robert in the window of his room. He was perched on his windowsill with his back to her. His posture looked desolate and bleak.
She was hurting him. She was clutching onto her anger because it was all she could depend on, but all she was doing was hurting the one person she—
The flower in her hand snapped in two. Had she been about to say loved?
Victoria felt herself rising to her feet as if lifted by some invisible force. There was something else in her heart now. She wasn't sure it was love, but it was something gentle and good, and it had pushed the anger aside. She felt freer than she had in years.
She looked back up to the window. Robert's head was in his hands. This wasn't right. She couldn't keep hurting him this way. He was a good man. A bit domineering at times, she thought with a wobbly smile, but a good man.
Victoria reentered the house and quietly made her way to her room.
She sat motionless on her bed for a full minute. Could she really do this? She closed her eyes and nodded. Then, taking a deep breath, she moved her shaking hands to the fastenings of her dress.
She slipped into the blue nightgown, sliding her hands down its silky length. She felt transformed.
And she finally admitted to herself what she had known all along—she wanted Robert. She wanted him, and she wanted to know that he wanted her. The question of love was still too scary for her to confront, even in her own mind, but her desire was strong and impossible to deny. With a steadiness of purpose she hadn't felt in some time, Victoria walked to his chamber door and turned the knob.
He'd locked it.
Her mouth fell open. She tried the knob again, just to be sure. It was definitely locked.
She nearly fell to the ground in frustration. She had made one of the most momentous decisions in her life, and he had gone and locked the damn door.
Victoria had half a mind to turn around and head back to her own room, where she could sulk alone. He would never know what he had missed, the blasted man. But then she realized that she would never know, either. And she wanted to feel loved again.