Notorious Pleasures (Maiden Lane #2)(70)
Author: Elizabeth Hoyt

After a moment, Thomas nodded stiffly.

“Thank you.” Griffin looked at him. “You don’t love Hero. She has admitted being my lover. I don’t think you want to marry her. Let me have her, Thomas.”

“No.”

Despair clawed at his chest, but Griffin didn’t let the weakness show. “You don’t want her. I do. Don’t be a dog in the manger.”

Thomas laughed. “The tables have turned, haven’t they? Not so cocky now, are we?”

“Don’t. Don’t, Thomas.” Griffin closed his eyes.

“If Wakefield has decided we’ll marry this Sunday, I fully intend to comply.”

“I love her.”

Griffin opened his eyes on the stark words. They were true, he realized. The understanding should’ve been a shock. Instead, it felt strangely right.

He stared at his brother without hope, but without fear either.

Thomas looked startled a second; then he glanced away uneasily. “More fool you.” And he left the room.

HERO WAS LYING in bed that night, sleepless, her mind running in tight, erratic circles, when she heard the sound at her window. It was a tiny thing, something like a scratch, and if she hadn’t been wide awake and worrying, she wouldn’t have heard it at all. Could a cat have climbed up to her balcony? She propped herself up and stared toward the long windows. Her room was black, but muted moonlight lit the window dimly. She squinted. Surely—

A large shape suddenly loomed, silhouetted black against the window.

Hero gasped and choked, struggling to scream.

The shadow moved, the window opened, and Griffin calmly stepped into her bedroom.

Hero found her voice, even as her heart leaped in gladness at the sight of him. “What do you think you’re doing?”

“Hush!” he said, sounding like a disapproving schoolmaster instead of a midnight marauder. “Do you want to wake the entire house?”

“I’m most definitely contemplating it,” she replied, though he no doubt knew as well as she that she lied. Hero sat up in her bed and tucked the sheets primly under her arms. She wore a chemise, but she didn’t want him to get any ideas that she was wanton.

Well, even more wanton than she’d already shown herself to be.

He didn’t make a reply but prowled closer. The room was dark, and as he moved, she lost his shape behind the bed curtains. She felt an awful moment of panic as he disappeared from her sight, as if she’d never see him again. She reached out to brush aside the curtains and saw him by her dresser. He seemed to be studying the things on the top. Could he see in the dark?

“I’ve talked to your brother.”

She tensed. “Oh?”

“He tells me you’re going to marry Thomas on Sunday,” he said. “Our… conversation did not end well, I’m afraid.”

She was silent.

“Well? Are you going to marry Thomas?”

She squinted but still couldn’t make out his expression. “That’s what Maximus wants me to do.”

His head swiveled toward her. “What do you want?”

She wanted Griffin, but it wasn’t that simple. If she refused to marry Thomas, there would be nothing to stop Maximus from going after Griffin. Nothing to stop him from arresting Griffin and hanging him by his neck until dead. And even if that were not the case, could she marry Griffin knowing that she would have to give up her family? Perhaps never see Phoebe or Cousin Bathilda or Maximus again? A stifling panic rose in her throat at the mere notion.

“Have you decided to give up the still?” she asked softly, desperately.

“I can’t.” His voice was hard. “Nick died defending it. I can’t just walk away from him.”

“Then I’ll have to marry Thomas,” she said, feeling helpless. She let the curtain fall, deliberately cutting herself off from him. “Perhaps it’s for the best.”

“You don’t mean that.” His voice was low and gritty and sounded nearer.

“Why can’t I?” she asked wearily. Her heart had ached for days now, for so long that she didn’t notice it anymore. It was simply there: a constant pulse of sorrow. “I can’t marry you. We’re nothing alike.”

“True,” he whispered, and it sounded like he was close beside her, the breath of his words separated from her only by the gauze of her bed curtains. “We are nothing alike, you and I. You’re more similar to Thomas—staid, cautious in your decisions, careful of your actions.”

“You make me sound a terrible bore.”

He laughed, an intimate brush of sound in the dark. “I said you are similar to Thomas—not alike. I’d never find you boring.”

“How kind.” She touched the curtain with a fingertip, pressing gently until she felt the plane of his cheek through the gauzy fabric.

“I think that it’s our very differences that make us a perfect match,” he said, and his jaw moved under her fingertips. “You’d die of boredom with Thomas within a year. If I found a lady with a temper similar to mine, we’d tear each other apart within months. You and I, though, we’re like bread and butter.”

She snorted. “That’s romantic.”

“Hush,” he said, his voice quivering with laughter but also with an undertone of gravity. She cradled his jaw as he said, “Bread and butter. The bread provides stability for the butter; the butter gives taste to the bread. Together they’re perfect.”

Her eyebrows drew together. “I’m the bread, aren’t I?”

“Sometimes.” His voice was a thread of rumbled sound, low and ominous. She could feel his words as they drifted over her palm. “And sometimes I’m the bread and you’re the butter. But we go together—you understand that, don’t you?”

“I…” She wanted to say yes. She wanted to agree to marry him and turn a deaf ear to all the dissenting voices in her head. “I don’t know.”

“Hero,” he whispered, and she traced the movement of his lips through the curtain as he spoke. “I’ve never felt this way about any other woman. I don’t think I ever will again. Don’t you see? This is a once-in-a-lifetime event. If you let it slip through your fingers, we’ll both be lost. Forever.”

His words made her shudder. Lost forever. She couldn’t bear the thought of him lost. Impulsively she leaned forward and set her lips against his through the curtain, feeling his heat, feeling his presence.