Page 43 of Broken

They had talked until very late, but he had still soothed her back and shoulders, claiming he’d sleep better knowing she was comfortable. Last night her nightgown had remained on and his hands had only brushed her skin at her neck and feet.

It still had the same effect on her though. She rested more comfortably, but Lilly knew his actions had aroused both of them. When they had danced, she had seen the dark linen tenting over Giles’ groin. Knowing him as well as she did, she had not been afraid. She was embarrassed to admit that she was pleased. His obvious state disproved her fears that she was not unappealing.

Watching Giles approach, her heart gave a little flutter and her toes curled in her borrowed slippers. He could stop her heart again at any moment, yet she would still do anything to remain near him. She liked him. She liked her friend very much.

Briefly, she wondered what she would do when Giles’ healing touch was not available. Would she curl back into a bottle of laudanum and wither away? She did not want that.

Lilly wanted a normal life, but she was under no illusions that what she shared here with Giles was in any way normal.

Giles’ smile widened as he reached her, and he offered his arm for her to take. The heat of him, the scent of his body, wove around her and made her feel safe. For all of his threats, she secretly thought Giles Wexham was very good for her. Beside him, she was happy for the first time in perhaps forever.

* * *

Giles swallowed hard as the smile on Lilly’s face changed. He knew that look and it did not bode well for him. Lilly was falling in love with him, and he was powerless to stop her slide.

His usual tactic would be to cool things between them before moving on to another lover. But his previous attempt had been an utter disaster and the repercussions of yesterday troubled him still. Lilly needed a friend and she had foolishly chosen him to be that friend. Her one and only. Normally, the idea would terrify him, but this was Lilly. Despite her innocence, or because of it, he liked spending time in her company.

Giles didn’t know what was going to happen when her father returned to Cottingstone. Dear God, he had forgotten all about her father’s plans. How foolish. He could have written to Lord Winter to let him know she was better, if the baron had bothered to trust him with a forwarding address.

Giles struggled with his doubts for a moment and then shrugged, unsure of what to make of his prickling dread. With Lilly tripping along beside him, so trusting and pure, he couldn’t share his worries with her. He and Lilly were becoming too close.

He wove them around the now cleared garden, along the cobblestone path and out toward the orchard, but his mind tumbled with questions.

“Ah, I see why there is such an array of fruit with every meal. You are heartily spoiled for choice, Giles.”

“The gardens were my mother’s obsession, and I’m lucky they have managed to be spared damage from my neglect. Some of the trees are very old. Cook would pack up and leave without their bounty.”

“She’d never leave you. From what I can tell, Cook, along with everyone else dotes on you.”

Giles laughed and tugged Lilly closer. “Cook has had a willing victim for her creations for a long time.”

He and Lilly seemed to talk all the time, about anything and everything. It was a strange occurrence for Giles. Usually conversation came second when he was with a woman. But Lilly had a lively curiosity about Cottingstone and asked her questions in such a way that nearly embarrassed him. She was so damn earnest about it all and he was deeply flattered by her interest.

That did not mean he had accepted his annoying attraction to her. At the oddest of times, he found himself responding in a way best reserved for the bedroom, or at least a private corner. She had the unique ability to make him hard just by smelling a rose in bloom, as she did now.

He looked away from Lilly’s face in a vain attempt at control, but who was he kidding? He had not had a moment of true control since the first time he had glimpsed her haunting a dimly lit bedchamber of Huntley House.

All of his daydreams and fantasies revolved around the little ghost beside him. He still thought of her that way, too. Lilly was his own private specter, invading his dreams and his life in the most disruptive way possible.

In his short interval at Cottingstone, he had not responded in any positive way to the invitations sent to him from the ladies of his acquaintance. When he went back to London, he would have a blank appointment book before him. A clean slate with no romantic entanglements.

He had no pressing need to return and no desire to take a mistress.

Mistresses were exhausting.

Unlike Lilly.

When Lord Winter returned, Giles would not go directly back to London. He feared it might take some time to purge his thoughts of a ghost of a girl in a white, virginal nightgown.

The sound of water interrupted Giles’ thoughts and he lifted his head, surprised at their location. He had not meant to bring Lilly this far from the house, and especially not here to the creek crossing.

Certainly not to the place where she’d almost died.

A quick glance at Lilly confirmed her anxiety. She stared ahead, holding her lower lip between her teeth. Giles ruthlessly held back the urge to comfort her. A kiss or two might just be the right sort of distraction and her bottom lip looked so lush and soft that he was mightily tempted to break his own rule about getting involved with virgins.

“Do you know that when my parents were newly married and disagreed over a great many trifling matters, but afterward always played silly games to make up? If they were outside, my father would bring mother here, pretend to be a monster and demanded a kiss for every step taken across the bridge.”

Lilly stopped at the foot of the bridge and her frown grew. “I hadn’t heard that but, then again, I don’t remember your parents well.”