The Serpent Prince (Princes #3)(43)

“Sit back down. Papa posted it on the way to Doctor Fremont’s.”

“Awww.”

Someone banged on the front door.

Hedge started.

Lucy glanced up from the sketch to pin him with her stare before he could make a move. The manservant slumped. Lucy finished the right arm and started on the left. They could hear Mrs. Brodie’s quick footsteps. A murmur of voices, then the footsteps neared. Bother. She was nearly finished with the sketch, too.

The housekeeper opened the door looking flustered. “Oh, miss, you’ll never guess who’s come—”

Simon walked around Mrs. Brodie.

Lucy dropped her pencil.

He picked it up and held it out to her, his ice eyes hesitant. “May I talk to you?”

He was hatless, his coat wrinkled, and his boots muddy as if he’d ridden. He’d left off his wig, and his hair was a trifle longer. There were dark circles under his eyes, and the lines bracketing his mouth were deeper. What had he been doing in London this past week to make him look so tired again?

She took the pencil, hoping he wouldn’t notice how her hand trembled. “Of course.”

“Alone?”

Hedge jumped up. “Right, then, I’ll leave.” He darted out the door.

Mrs. Brodie looked at Lucy questioningly before following the manservant. She shut the door behind her. Suddenly Lucy was alone with the viscount. She folded her hands in her lap and watched him.

Simon paced to the window and gazed out as if he didn’t see the garden at all. “I had . . . business to do this last week in London. Something important. Something that’s been preying on my mind for some time now. But I couldn’t concentrate, couldn’t focus on what needed to be done. I kept thinking of you. So I came here, despite vowing I wouldn’t bother you again.” He threw a look at her over his shoulder, part frustration, part puzzlement, part something she didn’t dare interpret. But it made her heart—already laboring from his entrance—stutter.

She took a breath to steady her voice. “Would you care to sit?”

He hesitated as if considering. “Thank you.”

He sat across from her, ran his hand over his head, and abruptly stood up again.

“I should leave, just walk out that door and continue walking until I’ve put a hundred miles between us, maybe an entire watery ocean. Although I don’t know if even that would be enough. I promised myself that I would leave you in peace.” He laughed without humor. “And yet, here I am back at your feet, making an ass of myself.”

“I’m glad to see you,” she whispered. This was like a dream. She’d never thought to see him again, and now he was pacing agitatedly in front of her in her own little sitting room. She didn’t dare let herself wonder why he had come.

He swung around and suddenly stilled. “Are you? Truly?”

What was he asking? She didn’t know, but she nodded anyway.

“I’m not right for you. You’re too pure; you see too much. I’ll hurt you eventually, if I don’t . . .” He shook his head. “You need to be with someone simple and good, and I am neither. Why haven’t you married that vicar?” He was frowning at her, and his statement sounded like an accusation.

Lucy shook her head helplessly.

“You won’t speak, won’t tell me,” he said huskily. “Are you taunting me? You taunt me in my dreams sometimes, sweet angel, when I’m not dreaming of . . .” He sank to his knees before her. “You don’t know me, don’t know what I am. Save yourself. Throw me from your house. Now. While you still can, because I’ve lost my determination, my will, my very honor—what little of it I had left. I cannot remove myself from your presence.”

He was warning her, she knew it, but she couldn’t tell him to go. “I won’t turn you away. You can’t ask that of me.”

His hands were at either side of her on the settee. They bracketed her but did not touch her. He bowed his head until all she could see was his crown of shorn pale hair. “I’m a viscount; you know that. The Iddesleighs go back a fair ways, but we only managed to pocket a title five generations ago. I’m afraid we have a tendency to pick the wrong side in royal wars. I have three homes. A town house in London, one in Bath, and the estate in Northumberland, the one I told you about when I woke that first day. I said it was a wilderness, and it is, but it’s also quite beautiful in a savage way, and of course the land’s profitable, but we needn’t ever go there, if you don’t wish. I have a steward and plenty of servants.”

Lucy’s eyes were blurred with tears. She muffled a sob. He sounded as if he were . . .

“And there are some mines, copper or tin,” he continued, staring at her lap. Was he afraid to look her in the eye? “I can never remember which, and it doesn’t really matter because I have a man of business, but they pay quite well. There are three carriages, but one was my grandfather’s and is getting rather moldy. I can have a new one made, if you want one of—”

She caught his chin with her shaking hands and tilted his face up so she could see his pale gray eyes, looking so worried, so alone. She placed a thumb over his lips to still the river of words and tried to smile through the tears coursing down her cheeks. “Hush. Yes. Yes, I’ll marry you.”

She could feel the beat of his pulse against her fingers, warm and alive, and it seemed to echo the wild fluttering of her own heart. She’d never felt joy such as this, and she had the sudden fierce thought, Make it last, please, Lord. Don’t ever let me forget this moment.