Chapter 9 #4
‘I will not marry a man who hates me with such intensity!’ she cried at last, her voice broken by an anger that could no longer hide the pain.
‘I will not do it, Arden. Not even if all London expects it or my brother demands it. You may announce your intention to marry me before the king himself. I will never marry you! Do you hear me? Never. I will never do it,’ she spat, while the tears fell down her cheeks.
And then the unthinkable happened. Arden kissed her.
He kissed her because that certainty of Eveline’s proved unbearable to him, and he found no other way to tell her that she had never been more mistaken.
She went rigid against him for a second. Then the memory of the first shared kiss returned to them both at the same time.
Arden was not kissing her with patience this time.
There was too much accumulated waiting, a great deal of jealousy, a great misdirected rage, and the fear that she would slip away from him out of pride or pain.
He circled her waist with one arm and drew her towards him, without enough brusqueness to frighten her, but with a decisiveness that took her breath away.
His mouth demanded a response, and Eveline, blessed be the weakness of her heart, answered without his having to insist.
She did not want to kiss him or to be kissed.
So Eveline told herself at first. She did not want to feel that blaze again, nor to remember the heat of his body, nor to confirm that no man—neither Tentwall with all his corsair’s beauty, nor Linfield with his quiet kindness—would make her tremble that way.
But Arden kissed her as though he had been dying of hunger and she were his only sustenance.
He was kissing her as though he did not know how to live without it.
And Eveline lost herself.
Her hands rose to rest on his masculine chest. She felt the strong beat of Arden’s heart beneath the layers of clothing, and it seemed the earl’s breathing had broken when she parted her lips to receive him with emotion.
And he took advantage of that surrender to deepen the kiss with a mixture of relief and triumph that made Statony’s sister’s knees give way entirely.
Eveline’s back found the support of a high hedge.
The garden, the music, the announcement, the guests, all of it was wiped from her awareness until there remained only Arden’s mouth, his firm hands, the brush of his body, and that certainty that she desired him with an intensity she did not know how to manage.
He moaned against her lips when she caressed his nape.
That sound woke her. Not from the desire, but it warned her of the danger.
Lord Arden desired her. That she could no longer deny.
He desired her in a way that would have burned away her own doubts if physical need were enough to build a future together.
But lust was not love. Cedric had taught her that, though she had taken too long to learn it.
A man could want to kiss her, touch her, possess her, and even so give nothing of himself.
A lover could burn for her and leave her alone among the ashes the next day.
The young woman had read a questionable novel or two, enough to understand the matter, even if she were entirely innocent.
Arden was not Tentwall, but neither had he told her that he loved her.
Eveline gathered the strength she had left and pushed him away brusquely.
Arden released her at once.
They stood looking at each other in the half-light, both with their breathing very much altered.
His eyes were dark, his mouth wet, and his expression of such need that something tore in Eveline’s chest. For an instant, she wanted to go back to him, to believe that kiss was enough, that the body could not be so mistaken, that if a man looked at her that way he would not be capable of hurting her…
But she had already been young, credulous, and brave in the worst way.
She would not be so again.
‘This is not right,’ she whispered.
Arden took a step towards her.
‘Eveline…’
‘No.’
This time she moved before he could touch her. She did not wait for an answer or for him to stop her. The lady walked quickly towards the terrace. Then towards the light. And when she understood she was about to burst into tears again, she ran back to the house.
Arden did not follow her, because he knew he must not.
The earl stayed in the garden, his hands clenched at his sides, his body still shaken by desire and his conscience striking him without truce.
He had kissed her to convince her, to show her that he loved her, and perhaps he had only managed to make her fear him. Him and his primitive desire.
‘Confounded idiot,’ he muttered to himself.
The party went on inside, merry and indifferent. Arden raised his gaze to the lit windows and swallowed the taste of his own clumsiness with a bitterness that left him breathless.
He had frightened her with the intensity of what he felt and with his absolute inability to say it as though he were a confounded poet.
And, for the first time since he had claimed Eveline before half the aristocracy, Nathaniel Greystoke, sixth Earl of Arden, understood that a special license, a public announcement, and all the desperate kisses in England would not be enough to keep her if he remained too cowardly to offer her the words he knew she needed to hear.