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“I’ll show you, Ro,” he muttered. “What you’ve been missing, all this time.”

Her spine went stiff, and she pushed his head from her breast. A cold panic went through him as she started pulling away.

“No,” he said, as insistent as any babe with its favorite toy. “No. Don’t go.”

“Rowden.” The way she said his name made him want to howl. So much tenderness in it, and yet she was peeling them apart, dividing them once again. He didn’t want to be apart from her.

She pulled her bodice into place, covering her beautiful breasts, as if he hadn’t just held them in his mouth, as if he couldn’t still taste her sweetness on his tongue. She watched him still, her eyes dark and steady. The lamplight flickered over her face, making her a creature half of flesh, half of fancy. A goddess he’d conjured up who taunted him with the promise that she could fulfill his wish, and then would destroy him with wanting.

“Tell me why,” he growled, curling his hands into fists so he didn’t reach for her and yank her back against him. He wanted to hear the answer spelled out from her own lips. “Tell me why you don’t want me.”

“I want you too much,” she whispered.

“Then—”

“That is the problem. Every time I—every time we…” She turned a hand up between them, as if she didn’t have the words for what sprang up between them when they touched.

Her voice sank to a whisper. “Every time I give something to you, I fear I am losing a part of myself. And I fear I will never get it back. And then…if something were to happen…” She swallowed hard. “If you were to leave…I would be broken. Just like my father when my mother died.”

It is not the same, he wanted to tell her. It was not the same. But he was up against a fear greater than her desire, or his, and no amount of kisses could soothe her.

This was not a child who dreaded something nameless in the dark. This was a woman who feared the loss of herself, when she’d only just managed to reclaim herself from whatever Henry Hinton had done to her, may his soul rot in eternal damnation.

Her eyes darkened. “The thing I hate most,” she said in a low voice, “is hurting you. I…I had no idea, Rowden. How you felt before.”

How I feel now, he wanted to say, but he recognized that he wanted to punish her. He wanted her to know that she hurt him again and again, every time she refused him her love.

They stared at one another, at an impasse. Rowden couldn’t tell if he felt cold fury or hot rage. His body felt foreign to him, a dumb block of sensations he had no name for. He hardly knew himself. He had existed, he had led a life, until Sophronia had come back into it and he felt his soul returning to him. But now she would take that away again, and what would be left?

“Rowden.” She swallowed hard, the lines of her delicate throat moving over the words. He didn’t like how closely she studied him, as if she could read his face. She always could, before. “I wish… You are…” She tried again. “You…”

He raised a hand to stop her words. He didn’t want her to stand here trying to soothe the wound she had opened. Trying to staunch the blood from the cut when she was the one who had sunk the blade deep.

“You did right.” His voice sounded not his own, so rough, distant, cold. “I am leaving.” It was the only way he could find protection. A way to lick his wounds in private and not let anyone see his hurt. “I told Foster I would go on another mission.”

She blinked, her expression turning to one of hurt, and now he knew the flood within him was rage. How dare she feel abandoned if he chose to leave when she was the one driving him away?

“Oh,” she said. “Oh, I see. Wh—where are you going?”

A knock sounded on the door frame, and Rowden realized it stood half open. He had kissed Sophronia like he was a satyr—he had pulled her breasts from her gown—and anyone could have walked by and peered into the parlor. He closed his eyes briefly against the battering wave of shame. If Sophronia did not want him, then the worst had already happened. He was already a shell, a mockery of a man. What more could be done to him?

“Mr. Rowden, sir.” It was Bosley’s voice.

“Yes, Bosley. You may enter.”

Bosley’s gaze flickered over Sophronia, then fixed just above Rowden’s shoulder. He wore the version of his implacable expression that hinted, You are not going to like this news.

“Your cousin Mr. Giles requires your assistance,” Bosley said. “In the small parlor.”

“Thank you, Bosley. I shall see to it.” He started moving toward the door. “Are, ah, Mr. Pearse or Mr. Atwood aware of my cousin’s current state?”

“I endeavored to approach you first, sir.”

“That was correct. Thank you.”

Sophronia fell into step beside him as Rowden moved through the twists and turns of the back hallways. “Do you suppose Giles has taken ill?”

He found he felt no urge to push her away. Reject him as she might, he still wanted Sophronia close. Her steady head steadied him. He was still learning this woman she’d grown into, and she seemed a person of resources and endless depths.