A Return of Devotion

by Kristi Ann Hunter

  This kiss was more than he imagined, more than he’d dare to dream. He’d never have thought that caring about a person could have such an impact in how a simple kiss affected him.

  Not that this kiss was simple anymore. They’d left that behind when he’d eased her forward and pressed their bodies together.

  He tore his mouth from hers and buried his face in her neck, pressing kisses along the edge of her worn muslin collar. Her breath rushed past his ears as his own sawed in and out of his lungs, desperate for more of that scent that was so uniquely her. Her hands lifted to his shoulders and her fingers pressed in, trying to pull herself closer.

  He could have more. They could have more. She might not know it yet, but he wasn’t letting her go. Not now, not when she’d let down her guard enough to show him that she was as swept away by the overwhelming feelings as he was.

  It wouldn’t be her first time. Nor would it be his. They could take a bit more, share a bit more, and not be crossing any line they hadn’t tripped over before.

  But that wasn’t the point.

  William crushed Daphne to him as he turned his face away from her neck, laying his head on her shoulder as he tried to fight his way through the fog in his brain that would convince him he could have everything he wanted right now.

  And he probably could.

  She was shaking as much as he was.

  But she deserved more. They deserved more.

  Love, if that’s what this was, deserved more.

  It deserved more than passion, more than a moment.

  It deserved a lifetime.

  And the fear that he wouldn’t be able to find a way to make that happen wasn’t an excuse to take what he could now, even if it would be freely given.

  He held her, simply held her while their breath slowed its frantic pace. Once Daphne realized what had happened, what could have happened, she was going to be wracked with guilt and he didn’t know how to fend it off.

  So he held her, hoping maybe a few moments of connection that weren’t so charged would tell her that she meant so much more to him than any fleeting physical pleasure could bring.

  Then she stiffened in his arms.

  He turned his face to press back into her, his nose buried in the curls he’d knocked loose. He whispered in her ear, “Don’t. Please don’t. ” He took a deep shuddering breath. “Please don’t regret that this exists. I—I won’t kiss you again until we figure this out, but please, please don’t regret what we make each other feel.”

  He waited, arms wrapped tightly around her, until she relaxed ever so slightly and nodded. Her hands brushed against his shoulders in a light caress as he opened his hold and took a step backward.

  So many emotions warred on her face that he couldn’t read her expression. She might not even fully know what she was feeling right then. He knew he couldn’t make sense of everything that was hitting him. Between the revelations and the kiss, his mind was swimming with new ideas and sensations. All he knew at this moment was that this was a woman he wanted in his life, and it had been a long time since he’d wanted anyone to be a part of his life.

  Unfortunately, caring for her didn’t make the rest of the problems facing them go away.

  “I think . . .” She cleared her throat and tried again. “I think I’ll go see to the . . . house.”

  He nodded and she turned and walked toward the exit. She paused in the doorway. “This can’t happen again.”

  Yet, William silently added as she disappeared into the antechamber. He’d agree to being careful and slow for now, but he couldn’t imagine a future that didn’t involve him and her exchanging vows and making sure this happened for the rest of their lives.

  Chapter thirty-three

  For the first time since the extra maids and footmen had invaded her home, Daphne was thankful they were there. It meant she could abandon the house into their care for the rest of the day. Given the way she’d been hiding for the past few days, it was entirely likely no one would even notice her disappearance.

  She returned to the cottage and readied herself for bed despite the fact that the sun was still above the tops of the trees.

  He had kissed her.

  She had kissed him back.

  And she had very much enjoyed it.

  Crawling into bed, she pulled the covers up over her head until she was encased in a world of shadows where the only sound was the muffled rasp of her own breathing. She inhaled the crisp scent of the freshly washed linens and tried not to think.

  It had been fourteen years since she’d been kissed, although she wasn’t sure the two instances should be compared. Kissing William was nothing like what she remembered of kissing Maxwell Oswald. Her memory was hazy, of course, but she knew the kiss with William had been more powerful, more emotional, more everything.

  It didn’t escape her notice that he was the one who stopped. Not her. He was the one who’d pulled away, who’d hauled them back into reality, who’d managed to keep a hold on his senses. Not her.

  A part of her had been holding on to the knowledge that he’d considered the possibility Benedict could be his to convince herself the real William wouldn’t live up to the one she imagined. But whatever his sensibilities had been all those years before, they’d obviously changed. Real live William had grown from his past and put a stop to something she could only hope she eventually would have stopped as well.

  What did that say about her?

  He seemed intent on pursuing her. Could she let him? Could she trust herself to keep her head on straight while actually contemplating a future with William?

  If she couldn’t, she was better off alone.

  If.

  What a very large word if was. Because if was all about choices, wasn’t it? If she went to the party in Kit’s dress. If she was going to do whatever it took to keep her baby alive and well and with her. If she was going to devote her time and life to raising children.

  Those choices had been easy to make. It was so much easier for Daphne to make it about other people. Even then she hadn’t always been able to follow through. Despite her best intentions, she always seemed to fall a bit short.

  Maybe that’s why it felt so wrong to make a decision that might benefit herself. Did God want that for her? It seemed like an awfully big gift to be giving someone who had required such a large allotment of forgiveness already.

  A sudden pressing weight on Daphne’s chest woke her from her fitful sleep and had her attempting to rip the covers from over her head as a scream tried to claw its way out of her throat. Finally she got the blanket off her face, and breath rushed in and out of her chest like a set of bellows.

  It took a few moments for the panic to clear from her vision and her eyes to adjust to the lantern light filling the room, but finally she was able to make out Jess, sitting atop her, a smirk on her face.

  “What happened?”

  With a groan Daphne dropped her head back onto the pillow and gave serious consideration to covering it with the blanket once more. She settled for closing her eyes. “What do you mean?”

  “You’re down here hibernating like a bear while he prowls the house like a wounded lion.”

  Daphne lifted one eyelid and frowned at Jess. “We don’t live in the jungle.”

  Her eyebrows drew together. “I don’t think bears live in the jungle.”

  “Surely there’s some form of bear that lives in the jungle.” This was good. Daphne would come up with fifteen dozen remarks about bears if it was a topic that would successfully divert Jess.

  She should have known better than to hope for that, though.

  “As neither one of you are actually animals, I don’t think it matters.” Jess shrugged. “He brought his own plate to the kitchen.”

  “What?” Daphne sat up so fast she actually managed to dislodge Jess from her perch. The blonde had to scramble not to end up in a pile on the floor.

  “After the last course,” she said, straightening her dress once she found h
er feet, “he brought his plate down. Made a point of speaking to Eugenia for a moment. Sarah said he asked her how her day was while she was cleaning earlier. How much would you like to wager the man also wandered outside to chat with his stable boy?”

  “He found a ledger,” Daphne mumbled as she pressed her hands into her eyes. “He knows about the children.”

  Jess’s bemused attitude dropped away as she looked at the stack of ledger books in the corner of the room. “He knows? Was he angry?”

  “No.” Daphne rubbed a hand over her head. She’d been so focused on the kiss and what it meant that she’d forgotten about the revelation of the children. But the fact was, he hadn’t cared. He’d been . . . relieved? “I don’t think it bothers him at all.”

  “Well, I suppose we can thank God for that favor.” Jess leaned on the dressing table and crossed her arms over her chest. “What has you so upset, then?”

  Daphne might as well tell her. It would save Jess the time and energy required to wear Daphne down. And she would. Somehow Jess always knew how to trap Daphne into saying whatever exact thing she was trying not to say. “He kissed me.”

  Jess fell silent, head cocked to the side as she considered that information. Her lack of reaction—not that she ever really had uncalculated reactions—made Daphne nervous. Finally, Jess asked, “Was it any good?”

  “What?”

  “Did you enjoy it?”

  Daphne’s mouth dropped open. “What does that have to do with anything?”

  “If you hated it and want nothing to do with him, then that requires me to have a different plan than if you liked it and don’t know what to do with yourself now.”

  Daphne pulled her legs into her chest and wrapped her arms around her knees. Would it be too obvious if she dove back under the blanket? Probably. “Why do you need a plan at all?”

  Jess blinked at Daphne. “I always have a plan.”

  “So what plan have you been acting on since Will—er, since he got here?”

  A crooked grin slowly spread across Jess’s face. “William, is it?”

  “As if you didn’t know he’s been William for weeks now,” Daphne grumbled. “Just answer the question.”

  Jess moved to the screen in the corner of the room to prepare herself for bed. “At first I was thinking of ways to get the children out, if necessary.” She poked her head around the screen. “Then once it was obvious their positions were somewhat secure, my plans turned to getting you out.”

  “Me?” Daphne’s grip on her knees loosened. “Why me?”

  “Because . . .” Jess’s voice faded away as she pulled her head back behind the screen.

  Daphne placed one foot on the floor, ready to charge back there if the woman didn’t finish her sentence.

  Fortunately Daphne didn’t have to launch an attack on her friend because Jess started speaking again, though her voice was quieter. “Because I’m worried about you. You still have a lot of life to live, and I don’t know what will happen to you without the children.”

  Daphne was touched to know that when she’d been worried about whether or not Jess even intended to stay, the other woman had been thinking of Daphne’s future.

  “I can be a housekeeper.” She could. She was getting better at it every day. One day she might even be happy as a housekeeper. Wasn’t it simply caring for people in a different capacity?

  Jess came out from behind the screen and sat on her bed, facing Daphne with a serious expression. “You can be a housekeeper but not a marchioness?”

  A harsh laugh escaped Daphne’s lips. “Even when I was in London I didn’t have visions of being a marchioness. Why would I think that now?”

  “Because he’s William,” Jess said in a firm but quiet tone. “Because you’re changing into your best dress to eat dinner with him. Because he isn’t angry about the children. Because he kissed you. Because when reality forces the two of you to finally decide what crazy dance you are doing you could end up hurt and I don’t know what will happen to you without the children to pull you out of it.”

  There was too much truth to Jess’s statements. “You’re right,” Daphne whispered. If it hadn’t been for Benedict, she’d have never found the courage to pick up the pieces of her life and rebuild. If she shattered again, she might not survive. “So I’ll be safe. I’ll be nothing more than his housekeeper. And,” she added with determined emphasis, “I will be happy about it because it’s a far better lot than most women in my position would have found.”

  Jess snorted as she fluffed her pillow. “Right. One question, though. Will you still be happy when you’re his wife’s housekeeper?”

  Before she could stop it, Daphne’s lip curled in distaste. Could she serve the wife of a man she’d kissed, of a man she’d had more than one fantasy about?

  Could she survive living under the same roof as the woman who could take on all the aristocratic duties Daphne couldn’t possibly consider filling?

  Not without a great deal of agony, no.

  “That’s what I thought,” Jess said. “And I suppose that answers the question of whether or not you enjoyed the kiss.”

  Daphne huffed and threw her pillow at the other woman.

  Jess tossed it back with a laugh. “I’ve never believed in wishing something had been done differently, so the situation is what it is. You need to decide what you want and I’ll help you. We can make it so that he runs into you constantly. The man already likes you well enough to kiss you. Mere proximity might send his feelings the rest of the way over.”

  “I don’t want to manipulate him into loving me,” Daphne grumbled.

  “It’s not manipulation. It’s creating opportunity.”

  Daphne groaned and punched her pillow back into place. “You, my dear friend, are frightening.”

  “I try,” Jess said and blew out the lantern.

  The dark didn’t keep her from speaking. As moonlight crept across the ceiling, Jess said, “You need to decide what you want, Daphne. Because he’s deciding what he wants. And I can guarantee you that once he decides, he won’t be above creating his own opportunities to convince you.”

  “You say that as if you already know what he’s going to choose.”

  “The man hauled the most annoying person in England into his house to be some sort of wall between the two of you, and the first chance he got he scaled right over that wall and kissed you. He may not have admitted it, but I think his intentions are obvious.”

  Part of Daphne wanted to defend Mr. Thornbury, but she had far more pressing matters to consider as the quiet that fell over the room refused to fall over her mind.

  For once, for one night, perhaps the first night in years, she didn’t lie in bed imagining some other life.

  She made herself consider everything she’d done—the distant past, the choices made—and she didn’t play an internal game of what if and she didn’t pretend anything had gone differently than it had. What she was reminded of was that, at some point, she had stopped truly existing. She’d been a mother, a caretaker, a friend, a teacher, but all of those were who she was for other people.

  Who was she when it was only her in the room? She glanced across the room at the lump in Jess’s bed. Well, only her in the room figuratively speaking.

  This was her life.

  What would it mean to actually live it?

  Chapter thirty-four

  Daphne put on her ugliest dress the next morning.

  Not that there was any chance she’d attracted whatever amount of William’s attention she had with a stellar wardrobe, but she hoped the printed muslin with the orange flowers that had faded to some sort of sickly yellow and had two inches of entirely non-coordinating fabric tacked on to the bottom hem would repel him for a little while.

  It wasn’t an appropriate dress for a housekeeper, but kissing the master of the house wasn’t appropriate behavior either, so she doubted it mattered.

  Once up at the house, she noticed the servants’ rooms on the lowe
r floor had been emptied. She’d known the garret rooms were near completion, but she’d completely missed the staff moving into them.

  There was no reason for her to remain in the cottage anymore. Jess’s admonishment that Daphne decide what she wanted pressed on her harder than ever. If she were going to be a housekeeper, this was the moment to decide. She would give up having her own home, her own space with her remaining children underfoot. Her room would become part of her pay. Nothing would be hers.

  Not that it was really hers now, but it still felt like it was.

  The truth was, if she married William, she’d bring nothing. She didn’t even have a dowry or a proper wardrobe. There was nothing to offer but herself.

  That didn’t seem like quite enough.

  She managed to avoid William throughout the morning, resorting to hiding in her office when it started to rain in the middle of the day. When did he expect an answer? Had he ever really asked her a question? It was imperative that she make her own decisions without his sharp jawline and bright blue eyes muddying the matter.

  And without the plain walls of the housekeeper’s office closing in on her.

  She slipped quietly up the stairs, avoiding the maids who were replacing the partially melted tapers in the candle holders so they would be fresh if used that evening. When Daphne and the children had lived here, it was a simple matter to go retrieve a new candle when the one you were using became nothing more than a pile of wax and a burned-out wick.

  That wasn’t the case anymore.

  Keeping an eye and an ear open for William, she made her way to the chapel.

  She’d spent most of her mornings here when she’d lived in the house. After waking, she’d slip through the children’s rooms and into the quiet solitude of the chapel. No one else went there except for the weekly family gathering, but Daphne loved the beauty of the room too much to limit its use that way.

  For Daphne, it was a refuge.