Chapter Two #3
Evelyn screamed. With no thought but to reach him in time, she hurled herself across nearly a yard of slick pavement, striking him full-force and knocking him aside just as the sign crashed to the cobbles with a thunderous clang where he had stood.
“What in—” the man swore, but before he could regain his footing, momentum carried them both down.
Evelyn shrieked as they tumbled, helpless. The man seized her instinctively, twisting as though to shield her from the worst of the fall, and they struck the ground together—Evelyn landing atop him.
For a heartbeat, the world stilled.
Evelyn became aware of the hard, lean body beneath her own, his muscled chest firm and solid under her cheek.
His arms were around her, his grip strong and hard.
His long legs stretched out under her, one of her knees trapped between them.
Heat flooded through her—not the burning heat of embarrassment, but a slow, intense, building heat that flooded from somewhere in her belly throughout her body, ending in her face.
She was sweating, though it was not hot.
Her entire body tingled with a new awareness.
Below her on the cobbles, the man gazed up. His eyes were blue—the rich, deep blue of an evening sky. His nose was thin and straight, his jaw firm, his cheekbones gaunt. It was the most handsome face she had ever seen.
She gazed into his eyes, and he gazed back.
His eyes widened in astonishment and then narrowed in a look that she would almost have thought was appreciative, if it had been directed elsewhere.
Seeing it directed at herself was infinitely puzzling, and that puzzlement brought her attention abruptly to the moment.
“Evelyn?” Lucy’s voice cut through the haze, high with alarm.
Evelyn blinked and looked around. A small crowd—eight or ten people—had hurried from the park at the sound of the crash. They now surrounded them, whispering, staring. Heat surged into Evelyn’s cheeks; she scrambled backward, mortified.
“Sir—my lord?” she stammered, though she did not even know his rank. He was rolling to his knees, rising more slowly than she, perhaps jarred by the fall. Evelyn tried desperately to focus on him instead of the murmuring onlookers.
Lucy seized Evelyn’s arm and tugged. Evelyn let herself be pulled away, stumbling around the corner to escape the speculative stares.
“They were all whispering,” Lucy said, her voice strained. “We have to get away from here. What if one of them knows you?”
Evelyn felt the colour burn hotter in her face.
Only now did the implications of the scene strike her fully.
People had seen her in the street—on top of a man.
They would think… oh, goodness, they would assume she had been attempting to lie with him.
She knew little of such matters—only snatches of giggled whispers overheard from maids—but enough to know what such a tableau suggested.
“We must go home,” she whispered miserably.
“We shall,” Lucy promised, guiding her away with gentle firmness.
They cut through the park, making the return more swiftly. When they reached the townhouse, Evelyn hurried up the steps.
“Thank you, Lucy,” she said at the doorway. She longed to retreat to her room, to try to make sense of what had happened, but politeness urged her to ask, “Will you come in for tea?”
“No, dear. I must get home—my parents will be frantic in this weather.” Lucy squeezed her hand warmly. “Rest now. You are exhausted.”
“I am,” Evelyn admitted, deeply touched by her friend’s compassion for the second time that day.
She wished Lucy good evening, then shut the front door, divested herself of pelisse and bonnet, and slipped quietly upstairs. The house was still; Mama was likely resting before dinner. Evelyn entered her chamber and closed the door behind her before collapsing onto the bed.
Her thoughts flew in panicked circles. A woman’s reputation was as fragile—and as valuable—as gold. And hers… hers might be ruined.
“Oh, I hope this does not spell trouble for me,” she whispered.
She lay where she was, shivering with fear as much as with the cold of the walk.
As she thought back over the walk, one thing returned incessantly to her mind: The strange, wondrous feeling of lying in the tall, strong man’s arms, his body pressed to hers.
Her own body flooded with intense heat and a feeling that she could only describe as longing.
Delicious, forbidden, wild longing such as she had only ever read about in the novels she and Lucy borrowed in secret.
“Don’t be foolish,” she told herself harshly, pushing the feeling away. Of all the things facing her at that moment, that was the strangest, and quite possibly the most foolish, response she could think of.
And yet, despite the danger, the fear, the humiliation… the memory that returned again and again as she lay there was the sensation of the muscled, warm arms that gripped her and the unmistakable longing she had seen in the gentleman’s eyes as he looked up at her.