Page 15 of Win Me, My Lord (All’s Fair in Love and Racing #5)

CHAPTER NINE

F or the next three interminable seconds, Artemis considered the possibility that the wind was playing tricks on her ears.

But, no.

You didn’t marry him.

Those were the words that had issued from Bran’s mouth.

And that was Bran standing before her, waiting for an answer like he deserved one.

“Why would I have married your brother when I thought I would marry?—”

No.

The next word would not leave her mouth.

She’d known he would be here—and this was what she deserved for not keeping away.

She needed to leave.

This conversation wasn’t proceeding in any way that was orderly.

Orderly?

The word implied reason and propriety.

When had reason and propriety ever played a role in her dealings with this man?

Certainly neither reason nor propriety had any say in her standing before him on this stretch of beach at dawn.

She’d not only known he would be here—she’d come expressly for that reason.

She’d wanted to see what he did out here in the mornings.

She’d wanted to know something of the life he lived now.

Sure, she had known he was a guest of Sir Abstrupus at the Roost and he was training Radish, but it hadn’t been enough to know those things. They were lodging and occupation, but nothing of the man himself.

Other facts, however, did speak to who he was now. The fact that he no longer rode. That he swam at dawn every morning.

For some reason, she’d wanted evidence.

Want.

There it was— want —the enemy of reason and propriety.

It led one down dark and treacherous paths to isolated beaches at dawn.

These swims at dawn had to do with what the injury had wrought in his body—and in his mind.

And he looked so attractive—his white shirt clinging to his muscled chest, hair tousled and curling at the ends, golden eyes reflecting the rising sun.

So very attractive that she hadn’t been able to stop herself from offering him a hand.

But it hadn’t been only to help him. She understood this about herself.

Want.

She’d wanted an excuse to touch him—to feel, once again, his strong hand wrapped around hers.

Addiction was a trickster.

For his part, Bran watched her, closely … expectantly.

Right.

She didn’t owe him a completion of that sentence—or anything else, for that matter. “I suppose we won’t see each other again until the St. Leger.”

Oh, why had she said that? And what was that note in her voice? Was it disappointment?

He didn’t appear to notice. “You’ll be attending?”

“I shall.”

The intensity within his golden gaze didn’t recede. “You don’t have to, you know.” His voice had gone low so it was crushed velvet brushing across his throat.

Something slid through her.

Something she didn’t want to feel.

Want …

Desire.

“Radish will come through all right.”

Oh, the certainty within his voice.

How she wanted to believe it.

Nay.

How she did believe it.

Why?

It was his eyes—the empathy within.

She swallowed against sudden emotion.

When she’d told him about the death of Dido, he’d been paying attention.

She remembered that of the Bran she’d once known. He listened—to the words spoken and to those left unspoken. It was an incredibly attractive quality in a man.

She remembered that, too.

“I must go,” she said, and immediately set about accomplishing exactly that. She grabbed a handful of mane and used her momentum to launch herself up onto the horse’s back, sitting forward so her knees rested against her mount’s sides.

From his place on the ground, Bran watched her every movement with a cock of his head, his gaze gone opaque. Except she might’ve caught a flash of telling emotion in his eyes before he’d hidden himself away behind them.

Envy .

It confirmed something inside her.

I no longer ride.

More lay behind those four words, and everything presently in his life—where he lived … his occupation … his dawn swimming—came together as part of that more .

“Good day,” she said, and turned her mount and started riding, her entire self hot to the tips of her ears.

No farewell sounded at her back.

She rode faster than was strictly necessary. Nothing pressing waited for her at the Grange. But this haste wasn’t born of external necessity, but rather internal.

What had she accomplished by coming here and confirming his morning routine?

Nothing.

She cast her mind over the last ten minutes and found yet another reason adding fuel to her inner turmoil.

When she’d reached out to help him to his feet, he hadn’t accepted.

He’d withheld his touch from her.

It should feel like a blessing.

But it was a humiliation.

Oh, her cheeks might never stop burning.

And even through humiliation, there it remained— want .

The first time he’d touched her had been at her debut ball.

From the moment she’d met him in Rake’s stables at Somerton—for the entire, interminable month until the ball—she’d anticipated the touch of Lord Branwell Mallory.

Sometimes, she went breathless from the mere idea of touching him and of him touching her, an obsession that caught her in its grip like nothing she’d experienced in her nineteen years.

Dancing was the obvious solution.

Until it wasn’t.

Until it wasn’t enough.

How swiftly after their first touch—him bringing her hand to his mouth for a kiss—had she needed to be touched in other ways, too. Slipping into midnight gardens to touch lips to lips … lips to tender earlobes … lips to necks … sliding hands from gloves to touch with bare skin.

Then that hadn’t been enough.

“I want to know you better,” she’d whispered against his neck in one midnight garden or another. “Away from all the society nonsense.” Her gaze had lifted and caught his. “Just you and I.”

He’d searched her gaze for the three longest seconds of her life. “It wouldn’t be proper,” he said, at last.

“I don’t care about that.”

She’d been a young, reckless woman speaking those words. But it wouldn’t be until years later that she saw herself thusly.

His eyes narrowed on hers for such a long time, panic stirred within her.

He could say no .

And she would die.

“I have a flat of rooms that I keep.”

Snatched from the brink of certain death, Artemis exhaled a trembly breath. How incredibly alive she’d felt in that moment.

“Give me the address,” she said, “and I’ll meet you?—”

“I’ll escort you,” he said, firm.

Oh, the warm shiver that had purled down her spine at the velvet command within his voice.

“I won’t have you alone on the streets of London.”

They’d arranged a night and a time.

And in that little flat on Barlow Street, for two blissful months, Artemis had all the permission in the world to touch him between the morning hours of two and four. They’d left no part of each other unexperienced in those exquisite stolen hours.

And now, that craving to touch him, so long repressed, had returned.

After everything.

Improbably.

How readily the body would betray its inhabitant.

Except he’d refused to touch her just now.

It stung, but also it was a boundary drawn.

She should be grateful.

She could have no more contact with him.

Not safely, anyway.

That was the truth of the matter.

He was a dangerous man.

But more, she was the real danger.

A danger to herself when she was near him.

After everything.

Even though he was now a different man.

And yet certain things didn’t change about a person, did they?

Unless, of course, those things were never true about them in the first place.

An idea that refused to hold in her mind.

In fact, her mind soundly rejected it.

Strange possibilities were accumulating, one by one.

He’d believed she would marry his brother?

What other untruths did he believe of her?

Yet what did it matter? So much time had passed. They were no longer who they were then.

That wasn’t possibility; it was fact.

Whoever their past selves were then and whoever their present selves were now, the odds were those selves would never be reconciled.

And wasn’t that what she should want?