Her Favorite Duke (The 1797 Club #2)(15)

She swallowed hard and motioned him closer, like a siren driving him toward rocks. “Come warm up,” she said, her voice rough.

He moved to stand with her and they stared into the flames, their bare arms nearly touching, but not quite. An almost perfect metaphor for their entire relationship, it seemed. Almost there, but not quite.

As if she read his thoughts she moved to face him. Her expression was taut with tension and her hands trembled at her sides. He held his breath, waiting for whatever she was going to say. It looked important. It looked life-changing. And he wasn’t certain he was ready for it.





Everything Meg had ever wanted to say to this man sat on the tip of her tongue, ready to be confessed in the strange little world only they inhabited. But as she stared at him, at his tense face, at his gloriously handsome face, her nerve faltered.

What good was saying anything? It was evident that Simon wanted her, but he had made no attempt ever to act on that desire. Perhaps that meant it was nothing more than need, not love. If she said what she felt and he didn’t truly care, he would think less of her. If he did care…well, that almost made it worse. They could never be together. James had guaranteed that by promising her to Graham all those years ago.

She swallowed her confessions back and whispered, “It’s getting dark.”

He glanced toward the boarded windows. Far less light was coming past the gaps now. “Part of that is the heaviness of the storm, but it’s also getting late. We…” He hesitated and turned his face away from hers. “We might not make it back tonight, Meg.”

She stiffened at that statement. She’d been so wrapped up in Simon all afternoon, she’d never considered not making it back a possibility. But now it loomed up, a crushing reality that had consequences. So many consequences.

“But…but if we don’t make it back, people will…they’ll know we are both missing,” she whispered.

His mouth turned to a grim frown and he refused to look at her. “Yes. I’m certain our mutual disappearance has already been marked by more than just James and Emma.”

She couldn’t help but gasp. “They’ll think—if we spend a night away alone together, they’ll think—”

Simon bent his head even farther and his hands clenched against his thighs, outlined beneath the blanket. “Yes. They may think very ill of us, despite the circumstances,” he admitted quietly. “But Graham will know better, won’t he?”

He said Graham’s name softly, almost like he was afraid of invoking him by saying it. She shivered as she thought of her fiancé, thought of what he’d say when she returned.

“In truth, I…” she began, then stopped. But as she stared at Simon, his outline in the firelight, she knew honesty was where they would end up tonight. It was too hard to pretend with him, the man who knew her most and best. “I hardly know Graham at all.”

His gaze jerked to her and she couldn’t tell if that statement surprised him or made him angry. “What do you mean?” he snapped. “You’ve been engaged for years, Meg. Of course you know him.”

She nodded. “So many years. And yet he isn’t my friend. Not like you.”

He turned toward her, leaning in, and her heart almost stopped. He looked like he wanted to touch her, and she found herself lifting her face toward his in readiness for the moment she’d been waiting for all her life.

But he turned away instead and moved toward the opposite side of the room. “I’ll look for food,” he murmured over his shoulder.

Meg moved toward the settee that he had apparently uncovered after he built the fire earlier and took a place on it, covering her face with her hands. She was trembling, and it wasn’t from the cold. She wasn’t certain she would survive this.

She wasn’t sure she wanted to.





Chapter Five





It was slim pickings, but a packet of dried fruit Simon assured her had been brought to the cottage by James and the other men just a few months ago and a bottle of wine would tide them over. It wasn’t as if they were going to stay here forever. Simon almost laughed at that thought, though there was nothing funny about this situation. If they were going to stay here forever, never go back to the consequences, Simon knew exactly what he’d do. And it would have nothing to do with food or honor.

Meg shifted in her place at the table and adjusted her ever-sliding blanket. It was fascinating to watch it move over her skin, and yet he forced himself to look away. These wayward thoughts were entirely too dangerous in their current situation. If he wasn’t careful, he was going to lose all reason and do something rash that could never be taken back.

The room was utterly quiet, and Meg looked upward, drawing his attention to the banging of the rain on the roof. It had eased up slightly from the torrent it had begun as hours before, but it was still far too hard to consider making a run back to the house on foot. Especially in the increasing darkness outside.

“It’s not going to stop, is it?” she asked, her voice thin and her face pale in the candlelight.

He swallowed at that question. It could fit so many things about this situation, but she meant the rain. He had to focus.

“No, I don’t think we’ll see it let up any time soon, considering it’s been doing this for almost two hours.”