Chapter 64

How bloody ridiculous was it, he didn't even know how to greet her, so he threw himself onto the chair by the fire? The door opened and he leaped to his feet.
"Miss Armstrong, you caught me at a disad-"
It was better to explain the fact the chair toppled over, but so long as she didn't detect he was nervous, it would be all right.
"You sent for me, Lord Hawley?"
She spoke in that light, cool but still earthy tone of hers that always had him a disadvantage, because it set distance between them, one he'd need a mallet to break through. All the plans, the plans he'd made, the promises too, vanished like smoke up the chimney.
In spite of everything. the sleepless nights, the hunger, the tiresome damned sessions with Tilly, with Ruby, with Belle, the crawling on his belly on the moorland around Caruthers's Blandish estate, he couldn't stop himself.
Seeing her again, seeing her properly, not through a spyglass up the top of some tree that aggravated his damaged thigh to climb, his throat knotted. She took his breath away, standing there in the plain corded travelling coat, hatless. Had everything that happened that last night really happened?
But it had happened. It had happened because he hadn't been able to let her that last inch into his heart, because it seemed to him the papers were all she was interested in, because he'd been afraid of losing her. There could be no repeat now she was here, he saw in a rush.
The room was set for seduction. Why delay?
"Yes. I did, Cassidy. I wanted to ask you if you'd consider allowing me to do something I've not done."

***
"Not done?" Cass lowered her eyelashes. To quote Ruby, what the bleedin' hell could that be? In a bedroom--what a surprise. Shabbily furnished-a few shillings the lot. And a slight smell of must as if the place hadn't been inhabited for years. "Is there anything? I mean ... "
When that last day had been such raging insanity, building up for weeks and weeks to these seconds of blinding madness-madness that could conceivably have destroyed them both-him asking to do something he hadn't was the last thing she wanted to hear. She fixed her gaze on his waistcoat. These nights when she'd looked out the window and let him into her thoughts would not be her undoing, even though these nights had gotten her through these months.
"While that's very nice for you Lord Hawley, I think I should tell you here and now I've spent a lot of time learning French in order to forget the things you did do, we both did come to that. Things that really could have destroyed us -"
He stepped closer. "But you haven't heard what I'm asking you to consider."
"Do I really need to, to do that? Just because I haven't, doesn't mean I--"
"Lazuli Blenheim. Lady Lazuli. Fair haired. But I swear, if you will let me, I will love you when your hair is gray. I'll want you too. Just like I do now. It's the old name for Sapphire. The color of your eyes, which is why I chose it."
"You what? I'm sorry, I don't-"
"I have it all here. A new identity for you. I have everything."
"Not that."
Love her? Her gaze froze on the silver cravat pin, holding his maroon neck tie. Her throat probably dried on it too. Love was a word to do that, after all. So Christmas Eve wasn't an aberration? Next he'd be asking her to marry him. Shiny bright? A tinker's daughter and a duke? It would be dazzling. Well, just because he could, didn't mean she could. Anyway, he wouldn't.
"I just want to love you, Cassidy. I just want us and I don't care who the hell you are, or what the hell you've done. That is what I'm asking you to consider. I do love you. And I'm sorry I didn't manage it before."
"Well, you couldn't and neither could I. And if the past four months-which I owed you, not the other way about, so you didn't have to free me-if they have taught me anything ...."
"Do you understand what I'm saying, Lazuli?" He flicked the hair back from her face."I never expected it but I want to marry you."
"Marry?" So he did want? Her throat, already dried as a withered leaf, calcified. "A duke of the realm? And me? A thief? And not just any thief? A thief half the country must be out looking for by now, seeing as I'm apparently not just a thief any more but a spy. That's before we get to what I can count in my family tree."
It was true. Never had she understood the necessity of formality as strongly as she did in that second. Love was wanting what was best. She. Them. Was not best. Not even if she remained his mistress. She didn't want to be his mistress, end of.
"No. Lord Hawley, I must say, in fact, I've seldom heard of anything more ridiculous. Especially when I only consented to coming here today-"
"You consented? Listen you damned snit, has no one ever told you what you're full of?"
"-to thank you for you kind intervention, even if it does mean me now having to sneak about for the rest of my life, once His Grace, Colonel Cootface finds I've gone. And let me tell you, if I have come to know anything about that man, it is that he will. If he has to turn the country upside down he will. He won't let this go."
"You're full of the kind of stuff I can see I'm just going to have to kiss out of you."
She tried to move away but he gripped her waist. "I mean it."
"You can try, Lord Hawley. Yes. But just because you can doesn't mean you-"
He bent his head before she could finish and heat coursed through her. Her heart skidded across several beats, as his body hardened against hers. She clung to him, her arms hooking round his neck.
"You are going to let me do this, aren't you?" He not only swung her up against him, he carried her to the bed.
"What?"
"What we just discussed." He set her down on the bed, tore off his cravat. "I saw your eyes that first night in the library and I knew you were the woman for me, Cassidy Armstrong."
"No. You didn't. What you knew was that I was Sapphire. A thief. And the woman who ruined your life. So will you just stop-"
"Shh. Now, let's get your buttons."
She made a grab for her coat flaps. Not that making a grab for her coat flaps meant a great deal to a man like him. "No. Stop it."