Page 35 of The Lyon Rampant

“I think it’s time we got you back to the inn. You’re getting cold, and the dredging up of painful memories isn’t good for anyone. Do you think the kitchen staff can wait while I order you a glass of heated punch?”

It would take more than a glass of punch to make her feel better at this moment—what she needed was to be by herself. She must leave this instant, before she did or said something too revealing.

When she got to her feet, Piers stood too. He was smiling. She liked it—it gave his rugged face a softer look. It took great effort to wrench herself away from his radiating warmth and from the distraction of his body.

Hoping she sounded matter-of-fact, she said, “That’s kind of you, sir, but there are things I need to get back to. Thank you for your apology, and I hope you’ll enjoy revisiting your childhood haunts. I trust you can accept my apology in return—I’m more aware than ever of how much I’ve injured you by scaring Miss Lavoisier off. I trust we’re now even, and that you won’t feel the need to seek me out again. Have a good journey back to London, when you eventually return.”

He stiffened, and his head jerked back. The smile had gone, and his mouth was a grim line. Good—he finally realized that he shouldn’t be spending time with a ruined woman. Particularly not one who’d driven a further wedge between himself and the mother of his child, no matter how unwittingly it had been done.

Not bothering to say farewell, she turned away from him and hurried out of the churchyard and back into the relative safety of the inn.

The kitchen was much as she’d left it, with the fire blazing cheerfully on the hearth, the milk for the syllabub bubbling away, and Maisie hard at work peeling turnips. Kitty Trago was also in the kitchen, fetching down a bunch of dried herbs.

“Oh, there you are Belinda. Oh, dear—are you quite well? You look as if you’ve seen a ghost.”

“Not exactly, but you could perhaps call him a specter of my past. My very recent past. I have met a man who I knew in London who seems to be staying somewhere in the area. I don’t wish to meet him again.”

Who was she fooling, her cousin, or herself? She would have loved it if she and Piers Darvill could be friends, especially now she’d seen the softer side of him. But something rather dangerous had happened when they’d been close together, something which she hardly dared to acknowledge. She’d been aware of him as a man, in the same way that she’d been aware of William Coyle. Piers’s touch had brought her to life again after the long, dismal days she’d spent with no companion of her heart.

It would only take a sign from him for her to throw herself into his embrace, yearning for the touch of his lips upon hers.

She’d fallen for a man once before, and look what had happened! There was no way she could risk such pain again.