The Major and the Pickpocket (19 page)

He rested his face in his hands, protected by the darkness around him. Tassie had always, always told him she never let down friends who trusted her. And she’d counted him, Marcus, as a friend. More fool her, seeing as he’d bullied her, forced her by foul means as well as
fair into a risky venture, come close to seducing her, and finally accused her and her friends of an ugly theft.

He needed her forgiveness. And if Sebastian, stupidly, criminally reckless as ever in his gambling fever, was on the verge of promising to back up his gaming debts with the entire Lornings estate, as Lady Sallis had just hinted, then quite probably Marcus’s only chance to save Lornings for Roderick now lay with Tassie, and his original scheme. Indeed, it was a wild gamble, but it was all that was left.

By rights the girl should tell him to go to the devil, and thrust his bargain back in his face. But out of sheer, stubborn pride, Marcus believed Tassie
would
challenge Sebastian, and lure him into a deep, private game, and play him with her delicate yet lethal finesse for the letter that held the threat of ruin over his godfather’s head.

Yet could he use her as he had planned, when she had grown to mean so much more to him than she should?

He left the theatre before the play was over, murmuring apologies to Hal and Caro. Sleet was falling from heavy black skies as he tramped through the streets. Marcus’s thoughts sped to Gloucestershire, where he guessed that the sleet would be coming down as snow on the rolling Cotswold hills. Thank God Tassie would be safe and warm with Sir Roderick in the Dower House.

There was a message waiting for him in Portman Square from his latest lawyer, a stoop-backed, dishevelled man with dusty clothes and an ancient wig; his name was Erasmus Digby, and he spoke as slowly and as interminably as a deaf country parson. Marcus tore it open.
Concerning the matter in hand, I think that we might be making certain progress with reference to the case I mentioned to you, of Smithson
versus
Southcott,
which occurred five years ago, and of which certain clauses might provide a useful precedent…

Marcus was weary of false hopes and promises, weary of the endless disputations of the law.

His lawyer could wait. So could Sebastian—for a short while. Because first he had to see Tassie, and make an apology.

It was two in the afternoon, and Tassie came from a game of All Fours with Sir Roderick to find Will Daniels with Jacob in the stone-flagged kitchen. Will was clapping his chapped hands together, and his cheeks were red with cold. More snow had fallen overnight, and though the morning skies had briefly brightened, fresh flurries were now whirling down from the leaden afternoon sky.

Tassie heard Will say anxiously, ‘There’s at least three of our ewes stuck up in the snow just beyond Oaker’s Ridge, Uncle Jacob! I’ll do my best to get to them, be sure of it, but if the ewes drop their lambs up there alone, they’ll die for certain in this cold.’

Tassie stepped forward anxiously. ‘Aren’t there any shelters for them up there, Will?’

‘Aye, mistress Tassie. There be a ring wall up in the lee of the ridge, and a shepherd’s hut a mile further. But, don’t you see, ‘tis getting the creatures there that’s nigh impossible!’

Jacob said, ‘Can’t your father help?’

‘He’s nursin’ a stiff leg from where he slipped yesterday on the ice in the yard. And you ain’t no use, either, Uncle Jacob; it needs someone young and fit.’ Will sighed. ‘I’ll set off up there again to try it, but there’s only two or three hours of daylight left at most…’

Tassie frowned. There’d been several young lambs
brought down to the barn in the last few days, and she loved their long, wobbly legs and their helpless, bleating cries. She couldn’t bear to think of the new lambs lost in the snow.

‘Well, nephew,’ Jacob was saying heavily to Will, ‘you could ride over to Hockton for help, but the farmers there will all be a-strugglin’ with their own flocks. There ain’t much more we can do.’

But there is,
thought Tassie desperately.
There is.

During her travels with Georgie Jay and his friends, she’d often helped with the lambing. Old Matt, who’d been a sheep farmer before the enclosures took away his livelihood, had taught Tassie everything: how to spot a ewe about to birth, how to cut the cord, and rub the feeble infant briskly, and push it towards its mother to feed.

Quickly, not saying anything to either Jacob or Peg because she knew they’d disapprove, she followed Will out into the bitter cold of the yard. ‘Will,’ she called, clutching at his arm. ‘Wait a few moments, Will. I know all about lambing! I’ll come and help you!’

‘You, Miss Tassie?’ His jaw dropped open. ‘But—’

‘Don’t I know how to ride, and milk cows as well as any country girl?’

‘Aye, you do! But—’

‘I’m coming with you, Will. And that’s final.’

He grinned and touched his curly forelock. ‘I wouldn’t dare argue, Miss Tassie.’

The snow was falling steadily by the time they’d mounted their ponies and headed up towards the exposed slopes of Oaker’s Ridge. There they found several heavily pregnant ewes taking cover behind a stunted thorn thicket that was little more than a windbreak. The animals needed proper shelter out of the cold, especially
as one of them was distressed. Tassie feared that her lamb was on its way. She tried to remember, rather desperately, what old Matt had told her.

‘Keep them calm, Tass. Mother Nature will take her course, long as they’re not panicking. It’s if they struggle the little lamb gets hurt.’

They must get the ewes into shelter. They must.

Will was crouched over the birthing ewe, ready to help her. But, above the ominous moan of the strong easterly wind as it drove the snow across the hills, Tassie could hear another, far-off sheep crying out, bleating piteously. ‘Will,’ she cried, ‘there’s another one up there. Can you hear it?’

‘Aye, that I can,’ replied Will grimly. ‘But it will have to wait, Miss Tassie. This little ‘un’s on its way. Can’t leave it now.’

He was right. The ewe strained, her eyes rolling in distress. Again, Tassie heard the distant sheep calling: a forlorn, chill sound, up on the heights above the tree line. Tassie made up her mind. ‘I’ll go to that one, Will. On foot—the pony won’t make it, not in this snow.’

Will looked anxious, but he was fully occupied with the straining ewe. ‘Could be you’re too late anyway to save her, Miss Tassie.’

‘I hope not. Oh, Will, I hope not.’

‘I’ll follow you up when this one’s sorted. Don’t risk yourself too much, now, will you, girl? Looks like some real heavy snow comin’ in.’

It was a long, hard struggle to the top of the ridge, and the cold wind took Tassie’s breath away. The afternoon light was starting to fail, and the snow was clinging thickly to her coat and boots by the time she found the ewe, lying terrified in a drift. When it saw her it struggled to get up. ‘It’s all right,’ breathed Tassie
quickly, kneeling down beside it. ‘It’s all right, my lovely lass. Stay where you are. I’ll see you come to no harm…’

She was a long, long way now from Will. Looking back down the hillside, she saw that the driving storm had obliterated her view of the entire valley. Fighting down a little surge of panic, Tassie inspected the ewe. Her lamb was on its way. Tassie sheltered them from the howling demon wind with her body, while willing the mother on. Nearly there. Oh, nearly there…

The tiny lamb slipped out, and its mother’s strainings eased. Tassie drew the sharp knife from her boot, using it and some twine Will had given her to separate and bind the cord, then pushed the damp, quivering bundle towards the ewe. ‘Here you are, mother,’ she whispered. ‘’Tis up to you now. I can do no more.’

And slowly Tassie, forgetting her weariness, forgetting her cold, began to smile with pure delight as the weary ewe nudged at her new-born lamb, licking it and caressing it into life, until at last it lifted its head and bleated before latching on to feed.

Tassie knew she could allow herself little time to sit and gaze at it. This was different indeed to the spring lambings she was used to, amidst gentle green meadows, with skilled people around to help. This was a matter of life and death. Snow whirled around, thicker and thicker, and she knew that dusk was only an hour or so away. The wind was wailing like the devil himself around the white wastes of the snowbound hills. And yet here, just before her eyes, was warmth and life and hope, as the tiny creature staggered to its feet.

Life, yes—but how much longer would the lamb be able to cling on to life in this chilly wilderness? They
all needed shelter, badly. Tassie looked round with straining eyes, trying to pierce the white storm of snow. There was no way she could get them both down into the shelter of the barn. She might just make it to the home farm with the lamb tucked inside her coat, but that would mean leaving the ewe, weak and chilled and full of milk for her lamb, out here alone in the snow. That she could not contemplate.

Perhaps Will would reach her soon. She crouched over ewe and lamb, trying to shelter them from the worst of the vicious, snow-laden wind; but as the flakes began to settle thickly on her head and her shoulders, she knew she had set herself an almost hopeless task.

And she had a dreadful feeling, as the snowstorm closed in around her, that Will would never be able to find her now.

Marcus arrived at Lornings in the late afternoon, just as the snow was taking the countryside in its fierce grip. By changing horses frequently he’d completed the journey from London with just one overnight stop. He was apprehensive, as well as saddle-weary, by the time the snow-encrusted chimneys of the Dower House came into view against the darkening sky.

How best to explain to Tassie that he had made a terrible mistake about those paintings? A mere apology would not be enough, he knew. Oh, she’d accept it, no doubt, with formal composure. But would he ever again see that look of bright, humorous regard in her expressive eyes? Would she ever again look on him as her friend? He found himself longing for her trust, almost more than anything. He feared, very much, that he had lost it for good. The business of Lornings, he realised
suddenly, was no longer occupying the whole of his mind, as it had done for so long.

He rode his horse into the snow-covered courtyard of the Dower House with a feeling of relief, for the going had been hard, and the roads were, as he’d been warned, impassable for all but the hardiest traveller. As he dismounted, the kitchen door flew open, and Peg came running out to fling her arms round him as Jacob hurried to take his horse’s bridle. Marcus steadied Peg, laughing at the warmth of her embrace.

‘You’ve missed me, Peg, haven’t you? And I’ve missed you. Anything good in that oven of yours? I feel as if I haven’t eaten for days.’

‘Oh, Master Marcus,’ sobbed Peg. ‘I swear, you won’t want a thing to eat when you hear the news. You see, Miss Tassie’s gone a-missing, sir!’

Marcus hadn’t realised how utterly weary he was, until that moment. His spirits sank like lead. ‘Gone missing?’ he repeated. ‘You mean that she’s
out,
in this?’

Jacob spoke up grimly. ‘She went up after new-born lambs with young Will this afternoon, just as the snow was a-settin’ in. We didn’t know, sir, or we’d have stopped her for sure. Will came back down from the hills just a few moments ago, frozen to the bone. Miss Tassie went on up over the ridge, he said, after a ewe she could hear crying out. He went a-lookin’, calling out for her, but the snow was real bad, and he was carrying two new-born lambs he had to get back to shelter. He hoped she might have found her way back down here.’

Marcus ran his hand distractedly through his hair. ‘And she hasn’t.’

He was answered by their silence.

Peg said tearfully, ‘Will and Jacob, they was all for
goin’ up into the hills after her, sir, but Lawd’s sake, how will they find her in
this?
The snow’ll be two foot thick up on Oaker’s Ridge, and it’ll soon be dark. ‘Tis the worst spring weather we’ve seen in years.’

Marcus said swiftly, ‘Where is my godfather? Does he know Tassie is missing?’

‘Poor Sir Roderick’s bin in his bed these last few days—his joints are real stiff with the cold—and we thought it best not to worry ‘im…Oh, sir, what can we do? That poor lass, out there in all this by herself!’

Marcus felt desperate with anxiety, yet he knew it was not their fault. He said quickly, ‘She’s plucky and resourceful. She’ll have found somewhere to shelter, never fear. But on no account must she be left to stay out all night. I’m going after her.’

Peg began to wail again. Jacob said resolutely, ‘Then I’m comin’ with you, Master Marcus! The lad’ll come, too. Real upset about Tassie, he is. He’s just gone to tend to the new-born lambs in the barn, then he’ll be with you,’

Marcus gently touched the older man’s shoulder. ‘My thanks, Jacob, but this bitter cold will have you frozen up in no time. And Will must be exhausted if he’s already spent all day up on that hillside. No, I shall go alone. I’ll just see my godfather, to tell him I’m back, and in the meantime, Peg, would you get me a small bundle of food together? Bread, cheese, anything.’

His godfather had been nodding off before the fire, but was sleepily glad to see him. ‘Send Tassie to me later, will you, Marcus?’ he murmured. ‘I’ve a fancy for cards, as well as the sight of her bright smile. She’s a fine lass, that one.’

‘I know,’ responded Marcus quietly. He went then to change into a heavy coat, stout leather boots and warm
gloves. He pushed a tinderbox into his pocket, and a little silver flask filled with brandy. He worked with swift intensity, trying not to waste time thinking.
How long would anyone survive out there on the bleak hillside in this kind of storm? How many hours?

Of one thing he was certain. Unless he found her swiftly, her life hung in the balance.

T
assie had managed to carry the lamb a few yards upwind, with the mother ewe stumbling along behind, to the shelter of a nearby wall; but truth to tell, the piled-up stones offered little shelter now, so deep were the snowdrifts, so bitter the whirling wind. She knelt over the animals, trying to shelter them with her body; but her teeth were chattering, and her fingers were growing painfully numb in their damp woollen gloves.

Darkness was setting in. She had never known snow like this before, and still it came, spinning around her in myriad whirling flakes, until there seemed to be nothing else in the whole world.

Tassie was frightened now. Even if they had come out looking for her, how would they find her in this? She hardly had the energy to shout, and anyway, the wind would whip her words away.

The little lamb bleated piteously. She hugged it to her, and began to whistle.

Marcus was on the verge of giving up when he heard that familiar sound. He was so glad, he wanted to shout
for joy. For nigh on two hours he’d been searching the snowbound hillside as darkness set in; he was trying not to admit it, but he knew full well that every minute that passed gave him less chance of finding her. Then he heard an almost miraculous sound in the distance—someone was whistling ‘The Bold Ploughboy’. Calling out, ‘Tassie. Tassie, I’m on my way,’ he struggled on knee deep through the drifting snow.

He found her at last, crouched in the darkness in the lee of a snowbound wall, hugging a tiny lamb in her arms, while a weak, exhausted ewe lay in a snowdrift beside her. Tassie clambered to her feet, still holding the lamb, her wide green eyes wary, her mouth lifting in a tentative, hopeful smile.

‘Oh, Marcus,’ she said simply. ‘Marcus, please don’t be angry with me for wearing breeches, or for whistling. I’m so
glad
to see you.’

He wanted to pull her into his arms, to warm her with his own body, to cover her precious face with kisses. Instead he touched her cheek with his gloved hand. ‘Hello, minx,’ he said softly. ‘So what, in the name of Methuselah, have you been up to now?’

She flinched a little, uncertain of him. ‘The ewe was so weak,’ she said quickly. ‘And the lamb—oh, Marcus, how could I leave the lamb?’ As if rejecting the very thought, the tiny animal bleated protestingly.

Marcus said gently, ‘You couldn’t. I understand. No recriminations, Tassie.’

In fact, Tassie had been overwhelmed to see him. Her heart had given a great, painful jolt as she recognised his distinctive figure striding unevenly but purposefully towards her through the deep snow in the fast-fading light.

Marcus was assessing the situation swiftly. ‘We’ll
never get back down to Lornings tonight,’ he said practically. ‘Not unless we abandon the ewe and her lamb.’

‘We can’t do that!’ cried Tassie, aghast, hugging the lamb to her again. ‘Oh, Marcus, we can’t!’

‘I know,’ he said softly. ‘We can’t stay here either, Tassie—your nose is almost blue with cold already. But we can, I think, make it to the shepherd’s hut just along the ridge. Do you know it?’

The lamb was bleating piteously; Tassie tried to soothe it. ‘I know it, Marcus,’ she replied earnestly. ‘I thought of trying to get there earlier, but the ewe wouldn’t make it, and I can’t carry her…’

‘I can,’ he replied gently. ‘Follow me. If you walk in my footsteps, it should make the journey a little easier.’

With sure strength he swung the ewe up across his shoulders, in the way the shepherds did, and set off through the blinding snow. Tassie hurried after him, clutching the little lamb to her heart, scrambling in and out of the deep footprints left by his boots. She was too exhausted to think properly of anything now except staying on her feet, but she was conscious of an overwhelming feeling of gladness that Marcus was here.

She’d been so afraid that he hated her, because he suspected her and her friends of stealing from Lornings. Perhaps he
was
still angry with her, but there was something new in his steely-grey eyes, a kind of peculiar, burning intensity of gladness as he’d greeted her, that made her hope, so much, that he didn’t hate her after all.

The stone shepherd’s hut was looming up out of the snowstorm just a little way ahead. Marcus reached it first, and pushed open the door. Putting the ewe carefully down on the beaten earth floor, he drew the tinderbox from his pocket and lit the stump of old candle that sat on a shelf. There was a bale of ragged hay in here
too, and a small heap of firewood left in the hearth by the hill-shepherds for any of their number who might find themselves benighted here.

Marcus looked over at Tassie. Her face was white with weariness; but she was gently setting the lamb down, pulling out hay for it, rubbing its woolly fleece and laying out a soft bed beside its dam, so it could reach her full teats. It began to guzzle greedily, little tail wagging. Tassie knelt on the floor, gazing in delight. ‘Look, Marcus. Isn’t he a darling? Look how well he feeds! He will be all right, won’t he?’

Marcus smiled. ‘The little fellow looks as though he will, thanks to you. Were you there at the birthing, Tassie?’

She looked up at him apprehensively, and he realised she was wondering if he was going to shout at her. God help me, but I must seem an ogre to her, he reproached himself silently.

‘Yes,’ she said almost defiantly. ‘I heard the ewe bleating in distress, far away from where I was with Will. I couldn’t ignore her, Marcus! She was almost too weak to give birth—I had to help her.’

He unwrapped the parcel of bread and cheese Peg had given him and broke off a portion for her. ‘I take it you’ve helped with lambing before?’ He was past registering surprise; Tassie, it seemed, could turn her hand to anything. He tried to picture, with a certain wry amusement, any of the society ladies of his London acquaintance assisting at such an emergency. He tried to picture Philippa. He couldn’t.

‘Yes,’ she asserted earnestly as she took the food, ‘of course I have. But never, Marcus, in a snowstorm such as this! We often worked on upland farms in the spring and early summer, helping with the lambing and the shearing, me and—me and…’

She was going to say, he knew, ‘me and Georgie Jay and Lemuel and the others.’ But she didn’t, because, he guessed, she was frightened of rekindling his anger. He caught his breath at the look of uncertainty in her lovely, wistful face. Dear God, what a fool he was. He had driven her to this fear of him, with his arrogant ways, and his condescension towards the lowly but vital life she had led with her companions, his bullying refusal to listen to her, to trust her.

He realised now that he had always wanted her physically. From that first kiss outside the gaming hell, his desire had been aroused—though what man’s wouldn’t be? She was breathtakingly lovely, with her sweet face and her slender yet wholly womanly figure.

Yet it was more than simply a desire to bed her. He’d always been aware that Tassie was someone special. She’d touched his heart, in a way no one else had ever done. And yet he’d made her frightened of him, as frightened as she’d been of the guardians who had scarred her lonely childhood.

Feeling a despairing sense of anger at his own stupidity, he began automatically to arrange the firewood that lay in the little brazier in the chimney-place, and struck a spark amidst the kindling. The flickering firelight blended with the glow from the candle, casting soft shadows across Tassie’s hesitant, vulnerable face. God’s blood, he had been a fool in his dealings with her.

She saw him watching her, and quailed inwardly. She had been so glad to see him! Her heart had blazed with happiness, just like the bright flames in the hearth. But the expression in his iron-grey eyes was smouldering, dark; she guessed he was still impatient with her, still angry. And with reason. He could have died, coming up here into the wintry wilderness, looking for her. And
it was all her fault. Oh, why had she been so stupid as to think that he could care for her? When would she ever accept that she could never belong in his world?

There was a wide stone ledge running along one side of the hut. She finished off her mouthful of bread, and sat on it with her hands folded on her lap, feeling cold. ‘Marcus,’ she said hesitantly, ‘I’m sorry about all of this. I always seem to be getting into scrapes, and you’re always getting me out of them. And I’m sorry, too, that I didn’t tell you earlier about those paintings. I know they must mean an awful lot to you, for you to get so angry about them.’ She started to chew at her forefinger, then pulled it away and tilted her chin defiantly. ‘But—I
know
that Georgie Jay and his friends didn’t take them. I would swear it on my life…’

She was pale with tiredness and cold, but even so she gazed at him with a frankness and honesty in those clear green eyes that moved him more than he could say. He knelt down quickly before her and put his hand on hers.

‘Listen to me, Tassie. I know it wasn’t you or your friends. In London, I learned that it’s my cousin Sebastian who’s been secretly stealing from Lornings, to fuel his passion for gambling.’

A mixture of emotions crossed Tassie’s expressive face. Relief, gladness, then anger. ‘Why,’ she breathed, ‘the scheming, low-down thief! So he couldn’t wait till September to get his hands on it all! Marcus, you must take me to London,
now.
You must give me the chance to get even with him.’

Marcus smiled. ‘Tassie, I know you’d run my fencing sword through him if you could. But—hear me out—I’m not at all sure that I want to go on with this. It was a mad, foolish scheme I concocted, because I was so
crazy with anger against Sebastian—but it’s too much of a risk, Tassie. I’ll think of something else.’

He was wishing, even as he spoke, that he’d been to see his London attorney Digby about the new information the man had hinted at in his latest long-winded note; but Tassie distracted him by jumping to her feet, her emerald eyes blazing with anger. ‘Marcus, you can’t possibly back out now! Why, when I think of your grasping cousin robbing poor Sir Roderick’s treasures from under his very nose—I vow, if I caught him at it, I’d deal with him myself! Fie on it, what are a few card games to me, where’s the danger? I’ll wipe the floor with him, you see if I don’t!’

She was pacing angrily to and fro, her big coat swirling around her booted legs. Marcus, too, leapt to his feet, grabbed her and swung her round to face him. ‘Tassie, we’re not talking here about a card game between tinkers round a camp fire! We’re talking about fortunes, lost and won. Men will do anything for such stakes, will kill, even…You know nothing of such a world, nothing. And I was a fool to think of introducing you to it.’

She seemed to crumple at that. ‘I understand,’ she whispered. ‘I know I’m foolish, and know nothing about being a lady. I’m not surprised you wish you’d never, ever set eyes on me and Edward. I’m not surprised you get so angry with me. Oh, Marcus.’ She forced her expression into a rueful smile, but he saw the hint of bright tears trembling behind her lashes. ‘I only ever wanted to please you.’

‘Oh, my dear,’ he said. ‘Oh, Tassie, don’t look at me like that. Please don’t ever look at me like that. I’m not angry with you, Tassie. Even when I roar and bellow at you like a wounded bull, I’m not angry with you.’

She sniffed, and rubbed quickly at her eyes with the back of her hand. ‘Then you should be,’ she pronounced sharply. ‘I picked your blasted pocket, did I not? And since that day, I have been nothing but trouble to you from start to finish. That is why you shout at me so much, isn’t it? Because I exasperate you beyond bearing.’ She broke off, fumbling desperately in her pocket. ‘And now, I haven’t even got a dratted handkerchief!’

Marcus’s heart ached at her distress. ‘Here, have mine. Please, Tassie, don’t cry.’

‘It’s all right,’ she said woodenly, accepting his large kerchief and scrubbing furiously at her cheeks. ‘I quite understand. You must have beautiful ladies after you by the score, and of course there is Philippa, and…and—’

‘Philippa is nothing to me,’ he interrupted. ‘Anything I felt for her has long since vanished from my life.’ He realised, even as he uttered the words, that it was quite true. All he could think of was Tassie, who was gazing at him, speechless, wide-eyed. He met her gaze steadily. ‘Do you think Philippa could help with lambing, or ride astride to round up lost heifers?’

‘But—she is a fine lady. And everyone says how much you loved each other. And Emilia said—’

‘Ah, people spout all kinds of nonsense. Yes, she is a fine lady. But…’ He turned from her almost fiercely to pace the room, then whirled back to face her. ‘Oh, Tassie. Don’t you know, my darling girl, why I am such an ill-tempered oaf with you? Don’t you realise it?’

She blinked back her tears. ‘Because I drive you beyond the limits of patience,’ she said flatly. ‘You told me that yourself earlier.’

His face was hard with restrained emotion, his hands clenched at his sides. He said in a low, burning voice,
‘You drive me beyond the limits of patience because I want you more than anyone I have ever known. Every time you lift your face to mine, in argument or defiance, I want to kiss the words from your sweet lips. Every time you confront me, in your ridiculously enticing clothes and your shorn curls, which you cut off because of
my
stupidity, I want to take you in my arms and never, ever let you go.’

‘Oh, Marcus,’ she said, quite awed, crumpling her kerchief in her hand. ‘I wish you would. Take me in your arms, I mean…’ And then, as the full force of what he was actually saying hit her, she stared at him in wonderment. ‘Do you really mean it? Do you?’

A groan tore from deep within him. He reached out, to draw her to him, and the longing surged, hard and relentless, through his entire body. Ah God, but she was so exquisite, so vulnerable, lifting her sweet face to his with her eyes still disbelieving, yet her mouth softly parted for his kiss. She could not be a virgin, he groaned inwardly, not leading the life she had led—and yet everything about her proclaimed her utter innocence.

There was still time. Still, just, time for him to move back. For him to save them both from folly.