Her Favorite Duke (The 1797 Club #2)(12)

Anything.

And it seemed like he might. In this magical stolen moment in the woods, he raised a trembling hand, his fingers reaching for her. She held her breath as she waited, her body strung tight and ready for whatever would come next.

Thunder rolled around them and the spell was broken. Simon jerked his hand away and lifted his gaze to the increasingly gray sky. “It’s going to rain, Meg,” he said. “We should go back.”

She pursed her lips, glaring at the offending sky that had kept her from having what she wanted. Or perhaps saved her from doing something foolish. She supposed it could be seen from either perspective.

“Once we go back, it is over,” she said, to herself, but also to him. “It’s over. The future is irrevocably set.”

He held her stare and emotions she had never seen from him washed over his face. Regret was chief amongst them, and a vise tightened around her heart at the sight of it.

“Meg,” he whispered. “It has always been irrevocably set.”

Her shoulders rolled forward and she let out a shuddering sigh. “Yes, you’re right. Of course you’re right. Then let us go. As you said, the rain is coming. We shouldn’t get caught out in it.”





Simon walked beside Meg, just as he’d done so many times before. Only today there was a tension between them, a push-and-pull they had never allowed into the light until a few days before. Now it sat there, a barrier to their friendship and a window into his soul that he knew was so very dangerous to uncover.

Worse, it was a window into her soul. For the second time in as many days, he saw clearly that she wanted him too. It had been lit up in her eyes and drawn across her face. Margaret Rylon wanted him.

And he couldn’t do a damned thing about it, because she was Graham’s.

“He’ll take care of you,” he said, the words sounding hollow in the quiet of the woods. “Graham will take care of you for all your days.”

She spun on him, her eyes sparking with anger and other emotions that he saw and couldn’t quite believe. “Is that supposed to comfort me?” she snapped. “That he will take care of me? Like I am an animal to be fed and watered and that is enough?”

“That isn’t what I meant,” Simon said.

She waved him off. “I have never believed that Graham would make a poor husband. He is a good man, a decent man, a strong man. A very handsome man.”

Simon flinched at her recitation of his best friend’s better qualities.

“But I don’t want him,” she finished. “James chose him for me all those years ago and I know he had his reasons for doing so. But I never wanted him.” She caught her breath on a sob and took a step toward Simon. “I wanted…I only wanted…”

“Don’t say it,” he whispered, knowing that if those words left her lips he would lose all ability to control himself. He would lose any loyalty he felt to his friends and he would touch her. Once he started, he feared he’d never stop.

He should have left a week ago. He should have never come here at all. Certainly he shouldn’t have followed her because there had been some part of him that had known this would happen.

But here he was and she was staring up at him with wide, wanting eyes.

In that moment, the rain began. Not in a trickle, but a torrent that cascaded from the sky. She yelped out a sound of surprise as the cool water hit her.

Simon hunched against the downpour and grabbed Meg’s hand. “Run!” he cried.

He felt her fingers tighten in his own as they bolted down the path toward the house miles away. She began to laugh and he couldn’t help but join her.

And for one brief moment, it was heaven.





Chapter Four





Meg was in hell. A cold, wet hell. The walk that had taken an hour going out was clearly going to take twice that getting back thanks to the pouring rain, blowing wind and muddy paths. She and Simon had been slogging through it for twenty minutes and she was soaked all the way through to her skin.

Her very cold and miserable skin. And God, but her gown was heavy. It felt like it weighed fifty pounds as it molded to her body.

The only positive thing in all this was that Simon still held her hand as he guided her on the way back home. She clung to his strong fingers, and in the moments when they slid against her cold skin, she wished their walk would never end.

Even if they were both going to catch their death from it.

“Bollocks,” he muttered, his words barely carrying back to her over the roar of the wind and the pounding of the rain.

“What is it?” she asked.

He pivoted toward her. The rain had flattened his hair against his forehead and rivulets glided down his angular cheeks. She caught her breath. Wet Simon was also an utterly beautiful Simon.

If he noticed something different in her stare, he didn’t react to it. In fact, he pressed his lips together in displeasure and said, “The little stream you crossed over on your way out?”

“Yes?” she said. There was a small bridge over it, built by her grandfather decades ago, before she was born.

“Well…” Simon trailed off and motioned his hand forward.

She stepped up, squinting through the torrent, and caught her breath. The stream was now a raging river, water pouring over the bridge and cutting off their path.