Page 148 of A Shore Thing

“You’re not in any doubt?” he asked. “I was jesting about the nuns. Mostly. Reverend Mother Cecelia had a miraculous—”

She spun. She went sprinting across the room, pounding through the hall, down the stairs, her skirt hiked to her waist. Pretty speeches weren’t her forte. She needed to throw herself into his arms, to press her heart to his, to breathe him into her lungs.

The front door resisted.

She twisted and tugged the bronze doorknob, uncomprehending.

Jammed. The latch was always sticky, but Thomas had gone at it yesterday afternoon, taking it apart and cleaning off the rust. She could still smell the vinegar.

It had to open.

She attacked the door like a fury. Her love was on the other side. Or rather, he was in the courtyard, looking up at an empty window as the minutes ticked by, thinking…

Dear God, what must he be thinking?

She stumbled back, dizzy from her efforts, breathing in erratic bursts. When she regained the window, she was so lightheaded, she had to blink away the floating spots before she could confirm what her sinking heart already suspected.

He was gone.

—

Kit had claimed he would survive rejection, but as he supplied the motive power needed to propel the sociable down the street, he wondered if he’d exaggerated his resiliency.

He had declared himself. He had offered himself. She had not been swayed. He had seen the last he’d see of her: a beautiful, stunned face high above him.

He steered to the curb. The pain in his chest bid him hold still, and he obeyed. He closed his eyes, the carriages and pedestrians making a dull roar all around.

He sensed that someone had come up to him and was hovering, too close. His skin prickled and his eyelids gave an unwilling flutter.

Go away.

He couldn’t endure an exchange with a stranger, with anyone. There was a hole in his middle, and if he moved, if he spoke, he might get sucked through and disappear completely.

Go away, he thought. Everyone, go away. London, go away. Go away, go away.

“Kit.”

He opened his eyes. Muriel appeared, dark brows tensed, chin upraised. He’d seen that determined expression before, but never fixed on him in exactly that manner, as though he were the prize to be won.

Awe parted his lips. He didn’t feel small, but rather overwhelmingly aware that he was a part of something vast, something infinite. This unfamiliar awareness—it was humility. Had to be. He felt humble, even as hope and pride swelled his heart.

“Penny,” he said. She was gorgeously disarranged, locks of bright hair streaming over her shoulders. Her myrtle-green tea gown had an en coeur neckline that trained his attention on the rapid rise and fall of her breasts.

He swallowed. “You ran.”

The breath she drew was wheezing and accusatory. “I’d have ridden with you instead if you’d waited.”

“I did wait.” He peered into her deep brown eyes, trying to read her thoughts. “I waited until your removal from the window became an undeniable answer.”

“I removed myself from the window to go out the front door. But I couldn’t get it open. One of Thomas’s projects around the house was unsticking the lock. He seems to have made it more stuck.”

Thomas Everett Ponsonby.

Kit laughed, and it soothed his raw edges. He hadn’t imagined laughing again so soon. He hadn’t imagined her, wedging herself between the sociable’s tiny front wheel and the enormous wheel to his left, her skirt brushing his knees.

“You opened it eventually,” he murmured. She’d opened the door in time. She’d run to him. She was here. He was here. So were dozens of passersby, but he didn’t care. Let them crane their necks and gawk.

“I didn’t exactly open it,” she said.