Mr. Cavendish, I Presume

She wanted him closer. Most of all, she wanted more.

She wanted his heat, his strength. She wanted his skin, burning against hers. She wanted to arch her back, to spread her legs.

She wanted to move. In ways she’d never dreamed possible.

Squirming in his embrace, she tried to shrug off her coat, but it only made it to the crook of her elbows before he groaned, “You’ll be cold.”

She struggled to free her right arm from its sleeve.

“You can keep me warm.”

He pulled back, just enough so she could see his haggard expression. “Amelia . . . ”

She heard the old Thomas in his voice. The one who always did the right thing. “Don’t stop,” she begged him. “Not tonight.”

Thomas took her face in his hands, holding her so their noses were a few inches apart. His eyes caught hers, tortured and bleak. “I don’t want to,” he said, his voice ragged.

But I have to.

They both knew what he’d left unspoken.

“I . . . I can’t . . . ” He stopped, taking a shuddering breath as he forced himself to step back. “I can’t . . . do something . . . that will . . . ” He was choosing his words carefully. Either that or he could not manage normal rational thought. “If I do this . . . Amelia . . . ”

He raked his hand through his hair, his nails biting into his scalp. He wanted the pain. Right now he needed it.

Something, anything, that might ground him, keep him from falling apart.

From losing the last bit of himself.

“I can’t do something that will decide your future,”

he made himself say. He looked up, half hoping she’d turned away, but no, there she was, staring at him, her eyes wide, her lips parted. He could see her breath in the damp night, each puff whispering through the air.

It was torture. His body was screaming for her. His mind . . .

His heart.

No.

He did not love her. He could not love her. There could be no god so cruel as to inflict this upon him.

He forced himself to breathe. It was not easy, especially when his eyes slid from her face . . . lower . . .

along her neck . . .

The small tie at the bodice of her nightgown was par-tially undone.

He swallowed. He’d seen far more of her, on numer-ous occasions. Evening dresses were almost always lower cut. And yet he could not take his eyes off the little strings, the single loop that had flopped down onto the swell of her breast.

If he pulled it . . .

If he reached out and took it between his fingers, would her gown fall open? Would the fabric slide away?

“Go inside,” he said raggedly. “Please.”

“Thom—”

“I can’t leave you alone out here, and I can’t— I can’t—” He drew a long breath. It did nothing to calm his blood.

But she did not move.

“Go inside, Amelia. If not for yourself, then do it for me.”

He saw her mouth his name. She did not understand.

He tried to breathe; it was difficult. He hurt with desire. “It is taking everything I have not to take you right now.”

Her eyes widened, flaring with warmth. It was tempting, so tempting, but—

“Don’t let me become the brute who ruined you, one night before . . . before . . . ”

She licked her lips. It was a nervous gesture, but his blood burned.

“Amelia, go.”

And she must have heard the desperation in his voice, because she went, leaving him alone on the lawn, rock hard and cursing himself for a fool.

A noble fool, perhaps. An honest one. But still, a fool.

Several hours later Thomas was still wandering the halls of Cloverhill. He’d waited for nearly an hour after

Amelia left to go back inside. He told himself that he liked the cold night air; it felt good in his lungs, prick-ling at his skin. He told himself he didn’t mind that his feet were freezing, surely turning into prunes in the damp grass.

It was all ballocks, of course. He knew that if he didn’t give Amelia ample time (and then some) to get back to her room—the one she thankfully shared with Grace—he would go after her. And if he touched her again, if he even so much as sensed her presence before morning, he would not be able to stop himself this time.

A man had only so much strength.

He’d gone back up to his own room, where he’d warmed his freezing feet by the fire, and then, far too restless to remain in place, he donned his shoes and moved quietly downstairs, in search of something—

anything—that might distract him until morning.

The house was still quiet, of course. Not even the sound of servants, up to perform their morning chores.

But then he thought he heard something. A soft thump, or maybe the scrape of a chair against floor. And when he looked more closely down the hall, he saw a bit of light, flickering onto the floor through an open doorway.

Curious, he moved down the hall and peered inside.

Jack sat alone, his face gaunt and exhausted. He looked, Thomas thought, like he himself felt.

“Can’t sleep?” Thomas asked.

Jack looked up. His face remained oddly devoid of expression. “No.”

“Nor I,” Thomas said, walking in.

Jack held up a bottle of brandy. It was more than three-quarters full, attesting to a need for solace, not for oblivion. “It’s good. I think my uncle was saving it,”

he said. He looked down at the bottle and blinked. “Not for this, I imagine.”

There was a set of snifters near the window, so Thomas walked over and took one. It seemed somehow entirely unstrange that he should be here now, drinking brandy with the man who would, within hours, steal everything but his soul.