A Night to Surrender (Spindle Cove #1)(48)

She stretched her arms around him. He lay silent atop her, and she knew a moment of fear. She wanted to give him the same comfort he’d given her, but she was afraid of doing everything wrong. With trembling fingers, she stroked a light caress down his spine.

“Yes.” He exhaled against her neck. “Yes, touch me. Just like that.”

She caressed him with both hands now, covering his back with smooth, even strokes.

“Susanna?” he said, after minutes had passed.

“Yes.”

“Feel strange. Can’t lift my head.”

“It’s the drugs. They’re taking you under now.”

“Su-san-naa,” he half whispered, half sang, in a slurred, drunken tone. “Susanna fair with brazen hair.” As she laughed, he pressed his brow to her pounding pulse. “That’s the perfect word for you, ‘brazen.’ Do you know why? Because your hair is like molten bronze. All gold and red and glowing. And you’re bold and fearless, too.”

“I have so many fears.” Her heart was thumping like a hare’s.

“You don’t fear me. That first day, when we met. Those few seconds after the blast . . . you were under me, just like this. Soft. Warm. The perfect place to land. And you trusted me. I could see it in your eyes. You trusted me to guard you.”

“You kissed me.”

“Couldn’t help myself. So pretty.”

“Hush.” She turned her head to kiss him quiet. Her heart couldn’t take any more. The faint, drugging taste of laudanum lingered on his lips. “Just rest.”

“Would have garroted those surgeons,” he muttered. “Your relations, too. Never would have let them hurt you.”

She couldn’t help but smile at his sweet promises of violence, offered up like a posy of carnivorous blooms.

“I suppose they did mean to help,” she said. “My relations, I mean. They just didn’t know better. Looking back, I know I presented a challenge. I was so awkward and stubborn. Not a ladylike bone in my body. They used to set me at copying pages from this horrid, insipid book. Mrs. Worthington’s Wisdom for Young Ladies. Oh, Bram. You would laugh at it so.”

He was quiet for a long moment. Then his chest rumbled—not with a laugh, but with a loud, resonant snore.

She laughed at herself, and at the same time hot tears spilled from her eyes. In his sleep, he flexed a protective arm around her. His embrace felt so right.

Perhaps she could trust him to guard her. He was strong and principled, and she had no doubt he would risk his life to keep her safe, in body. But he couldn’t make any promises to guard her heart.

And in her heart, she feared she was already falling. Tumbling headlong toward a world of pain.

Fourteen

“Ouch.”

Susanna released the rose blossom and stared at the tiny drop of welling blood on her finger. Reflexively, she stuck it in her mouth, soothing the hurt.

“Kate,” she called across the garden, “would you finish the roses for me? I’ve forgotten my gloves this morning.”

Incredible. She never forgot her gloves.

She left the roses and moved to the herbal bed, gathering great fistfuls of thorn-free lavender and snipping them free with shears. Soon her basket was heaped to overflowing with fragrant stalks. And still, she kept piling them higher.

Whenever she tried to still them, her hands began to tremble. Maybe because they were still heavy with the feel of his skin, his hair.

At this very moment, Bram remained asleep upstairs on the upper floor of Summerfield. Meanwhile, down here in the garden, Susanna was forced to keep up the Wednesday habit of hosting the Spindle Cove ladies. Gardening first, tea after. Normally, she appreciated both their company and their help. But today, she would have far rather been alone with her thoughts.

Because her thoughts were all of him. They made her blush. They made her feel uncorseted, exposed. They made her sigh—aloud, for heaven’s sake. Ladies clustered all around her, pulling weeds, cutting blooms, sketching bumblebees and blossoms. But when Susanna knelt beside the feverfew and let her gaze go unfocused, her thoughts climbed straight upstairs.

She saw him. Dark, powerful limbs, covered with even darker hair, all tangled among the white, crisp sheets. Her sleeping beast. In her mind’s eye, she approached the bed, eased onto the mattress beside him. Stroked his cropped, velvet hair. Kissed the notch carved between his throat and clavicle. Heat raced along her skin, gathered between her thighs.

And then he woke, capturing her with his strong arms and that compassionate green gaze. His heavy weight atop her was a blessing, not a burden or a threat.

Susanna fair, he said. You were the perfect place to land.

“Miss Finch. Miss Finch!”

She shook herself, coming back into the present. “Yes, Mrs. Lange?” How long had the poor woman been trying to catch her attention?

“Did you want me to divide these lilies today? Or shall we leave them for another week?”

“Oh. Whatever you think best.”

From beneath her straw bonnet, the other woman gave her an impatient look. “It is your garden, Miss Finch. And you always have an opinion.”

“What’s wrong, dear?” Mrs. Highwood asked. “It doesn’t seem like you to be so distracted.”

“I know. It’s not. Forgive me.”