Chapter 10
This moment was too much, too fast. Miles snatched each and every one of her senses for his own. He’d reduced her to raw nerve and want.
With a choked gasp, she pressed against his chest. “Wait, Miles—”
His supportive hands vanished at once. Bella nearly tipped over before catching herself on the bannister.
Ice surged through her. The earth tilted as though she were on one of those tiny ships in a bottle, dropped from a devastating height. She was plummeting through the air atop the water. All she could see was the ground rushing to meet her.
Bella shook away the sudden disorientation, her gaze catching Miles’s. She knew that horrified expression; it had haunted her for years. Lead settled in the depths of her gut.
“Lady Arabella, I—”
Lady Arabella.
“Don’t.” Damp curls brushed her cheeks as she shook her head against whatever pitiful excuse West intended to offer up. “I cannot—”
“I— Lady Arabella,” he tried again. Bella refused to meet his gaze, wouldn’t subject herself to experience the appalled twist of his mouth or pity in the set of his clear eyes. “We— I— I should not have done that. It was entirely inappropriate and—”
“Enough, Weston. We need not belabor the subject. I am neither your opponent nor a heavy bag. You needn’t keep punching.” Her eyes burned as she blinked away furious tears before they could form. But she couldn’t hide the thin, stripped note in her voice—her weakness.
His swallow was loud, pointed over the pounding of the rain on the aged roof. “I am not— That is not my intent.”
She raised one hand, silencing him again, gaze still fixed on his chest. “We have nothing to say to each other, Weston. This never happened.”
His throat bobbed beneath his loosened cravat. “Right. We should— The rain has slowed. We should return to the house.” The hand West offered was the slightest bit unsteady.
“You should return to the house.” And truly, how dare he invade her sanctuary, kiss her, and then demand that she leave? He was lucky she was too overwhelmed for a more dramatic display.
West blinked slowly, as though she spoke some mysterious language from lands unknown.
His lips pursed before smoothing out. At last, his head bobbed once before he pivoted on muddy boots.
The filth clung to the worn wooden floor with a revolting squelching sound as he cut the two steps to the open door.
When he crossed the threshold, West took the air with him.
Her gaze clung to his retreating form, stoic and steady even in his undignified trudge across the muck.
Finally, West ducked beneath the oak branch that overhung the path back to the house, and she lost sight of him. Her lungs regained function, and she choked on a ragged inhale.
Bella flopped in a pathetic, damp heap on the stairs. She couldn’t bear it—not again.
Time after time, they played their roles.
The tender buds of attraction split through the snow into a riot of color.
Then temptation would grow and ripen into the fiery blooms of autumn.
With the last rally of warmth, they would crash together—too bright, too hot.
And every time the blaze sputtered out, leaving nothing but icy devastation.
And once again, Bella was left alone with the taste of his lips on her tongue, the echoes of his moans in her ears, and the lingering warmth of his skin on her fingers.
Familiarity did not lessen the ache in her chest. Nor had the years dulled her memory of it.
Bella awoke, nestled warm and safe against Miles’s chest when the morning sun crept through the gangway, snatching her peace.
She could not recall another such moment of contentment, of hope, between sleep and wake.
She pressed up to meet his gaze. A bright smile broke out, and she pressed her lips against his statue-still ones.
And the first whisper of doubt crept in.
“Should get dressed,” he grunted, his hazy gaze refusing to meet hers.
“Very well,” she whispered, then tucked a loose strand of hair behind her ear and pressed herself up with a palm against his chest.
West shifted from beneath her and stood to gather his clothing.
With weak fingers, she untangled the fabric of her chemise from the hay and pulled it over her certainly frightful hair before rising to her feet.
When she finally turned to face him, he was working the buttons through the fabric of his breeches. The golden strands of his hair were falling over his eyes in that way she usually found appealing but now recognized as convenient.
Cowardly.
She knew then. The morning wouldn’t be filled with heady kisses and heated caresses. Their future, or the lack of it, was evident in the frigid movements of West’s fingers and the defensive set of his shoulders.
“Well?” The word escaped her throat, though she hadn’t intended to free it. Because that first shot, her first defensive volley landed before his toes in the dirt. And his answering arrow was sure to pierce her heart.
Air escaped him in a great whoosh. The effort left him smaller, more fragile than she knew him to be. “Last night— We shouldn’t have. I shouldn’t have. This—us—it was a mistake.”
“A mistake,” she repeated stupidly. Even though she’d expected it, thought to brace herself… hearing that pitiful, insignificant word used to describe the most wonderful moments of her life... The last vestiges of hope wilted in her chest.
“You’re a lady. And I’m…”
The laugh that ripped from her throat was hollow, and bitter tasting on her lips. “You’re what? An arse?”
West flinched as though he’d been slapped. As though she were the one breaking him. “Belle—”
“Lady Arabella.”
At last, his eyes snapped to hers, dark and swirling not with lust the way they had the night before, but with something like regret. And wasn’t that absurd? If anyone had cause to regret that night, it was certainly her.
“Lady Arabella. I should see you back to the house,” he offered, a gentleman even in his discomfort.
“You should see me back to the house?” She scoffed and gestured with one hand toward the imposing brick structure behind her. “Do you suppose I’ll lose my way?”
The argument she would never admit to baiting him into didn’t tempt him. “No, but you’re in your underthings. And Draycott—”
“I’ll take my chances with Draycott and the like, thank you.”
“Be— Lady Arabella…”
“No. Do not follow me.”
Very little dignity remained in Bella’s possession as she plodded back to the house, barefoot in her shift, detritus spilling from her tangled hair. But her pride was still hers—she wouldn’t let him take that from her.
Pride was the one thing that had never abandoned her.
Not even in the years that followed.
In her more generous, less petulant moments, Bella understood that West had been correct that morning. Her father would have killed them both before he allowed her to be with a mere stable master’s son.
In truth, they’d been lucky their tryst hadn’t resulted in more permanent consequences. She shuddered at that ruinous thought. Even now, months after his death, the thought of informing her father that she was with child out of wedlock filled her with an unholy dread.
At the time, West had not yet found the sort of success he now enjoyed in the ring and couldn’t have supported a child.
Bella fancied herself a rather self-sufficient sort of lady—though more by necessity than any particular interest or choice.
But she wasn’t so vain as to suggest she could manage a household in the way a woman of West’s former station might.
But West no longer had such excuses for his dismissal. Ambrose Sinclair was no more. And West had amassed more than enough wealth in the ring to support a modest family.
And yet for some reason, he still did not want her. Or he wanted her carnally but found the notion of her as a romantic prospect repugnant. And that notion was worse. Unacceptable.
Bella snapped to her feet. She found herself stomping through the deluge before she recognized her intention.
Miles Weston was a fool. And she intended to tell him so.