Page 71 of Bane Bloom

Slowly, he began to speak. “I don’t wish for you to suffer. I don’t wish for harm to come to you. I don’t wish for you to be afraid.”

I took a shallow breath. “I’m never afraid when you’re with me.”

His hand came to the side of my face, calluses rough against my cheek, long fingers curving around toward the base of my head. “Ah, lass,” he said, resigned, as he brought my mouth to his.

I sighed against his silky lips, and I let my palm drift across his chest. His quiet groan—the warm slide of my hand over his skin—sent sparks dancing over my body.

Our tongues met, and he rose up on an elbow and bent over me. His weight shifted, one knee sinking into the mattress between my legs.

The lines of his body as he hovered there, watching my face in the candlelight . . . rounded shoulders, muscles taut across his chest . . . it all stole my breath completely, even as his breaths came quicker. A memory plopped like a stone into my pool of fevered half thoughts—Prudence’s description of the night his father had come to her in the glasshouse.

Whatever Thomas saw then in my expression softened his features, snuffing the blue fire of his eyes. He brushed my cheek with his thumb. “They were wrong to send you here alone,” he said in a low voice.

My own voice was barely audible as I replied, “Were they?”

“Mmm. And I was wrong to think I could be in the house with you without this happening.”

“What has happened, exactly?”

I could see that my question had taken him by surprise, but it was genuine. Confusion was rising like the Thames at high tide. Did I feel for Thomas? Did he feel for me? Was this what that was like? And if so, did it mean anything? I had read novels aplenty, yet I found myself confounded by the reality. And the novels never described moments like this one.

“Nothing that prevents us from retreating to safe ground,” he said at last.

His lips brushed mine lightly, and he sat up. My hand made an involuntary motion to stop him, then stilled.

He reached down to the floor and came back up with the coverlet, which he spread over me. Then he sat back against the headboard, his body resting on top of the coverlet, so it was between us.

“Sleep, lass. I’ll be here should the nightmares return.”

“What about you? When will you sleep?”

“No need to worry about me.”

I wasn’t bold enough to try and draw him back to me. And I wasn’t strong enough to send him away.

But I did move as close to him as I could, turning so my back was barely touching the side of his body. His warmth reached me even through the coverlet. I lay there quietly, thoughts spinning.

I woke a short time later and discovered him curled at my back, his arm draped heavily over my waist, his breath in my hair. I kept as still as possible, hoping he might stay there forever.

Heirloom

But in the morning he was gone. I lay facing his side of the bed, hand resting in the hollow he’d left in the coverlet. I could still smell him. There was more to his scent than the sun-drenched-garden note that came on most strongly. During the deeper exploration of these past two nights, I’d discovered cooler undertones. Lake water, stones, and rich, dark earth.

I’m falling in love with him.

In the morning light it was clear, though I had no previous experience to compare to. The closest I’d come was a fleeting infatuation with one of my father’s artist friends, before I’d schooled myself that the young men who flocked around him were unserious. Handsome, and the youngest son of a titled family, he was the first man to ever catch my eye. He had once jokingly referred to me as “manly,” observing me at the household bookkeeping while enjoying a nip of Papa’s brandy. I had laughed, but I now realized how it had cut me—and stayed with me.

I knew how it felt to be unloved, and I’d closed myself off to the risk.

Thomas, I had never seen coming. He was the most closed-off person I’d ever met, so perhaps it was inevitable that my own defenses would be neglected.

As exhilarated as I was by these new sensations, I was simultaneously terrified. What did Thomas feel? Even I knew there was a difference between love and lust, and he’d made it clear he wished to avoid an attachment. I had to admit ours would be an awkward sort of attachment—a spinster illustrator from London and a Viking groundskeeper on a country estate in Cumberland. Nancy would be appalled, and even liberal-minded Papa would disapprove.

That was without even bringing Thomas’s dubious parentage into the equation. Or the fact that my work here might be part of a plan to displace him from his family home. Or Pine Cottage itself, with its wonders and perils and plans of its own.

You don’t do things by half measures, do you?

I groaned aloud as I peeled back the coverlet and got out of bed. By the light, I’d risen much later than usual. I padded to the window to look out and noticed a sheet of paper lying next to the cronewort sketch. My heart skipped as I noticed the ragged edge, but I saw right away that it wasn’t Prudence’s hand.