Wanting to smile and wanting even more to roll over and push himself into her until they were both exhausted, he gave in and did the safe, less pleasurable thing. He smiled and lifted the pillow from under his head.
“Here.” He handed it to her. She stared at the thing as if it were a rat, and he sighed. “Take it. I know you don’t like the pillow you have.”
“It’s too flat,” she said after a moment.
“Yes, I know.” She preferred a plump pillow. Always had.
His throat closed, and he turned away, pounding the flatter pillow he took in exchange into a reasonable lump. “Now will you stop wiggling about and go to sleep?”
He felt her settle and then heard a little sigh of relief. Well good. At least one of them was comfortable.
Body aching and head resting upon a woeful pillow, he chased sleep once more.
St. Paul’s, London Bridge, Buckingham Palace, Kensington Palace—
“Win?”
He cracked open one eye. “Yes?”
A faint touch landed on the sheet at his back. And then it was gone. Her whisper drifted over him. “Are you sorry you did it?”
Again came that tender ache within the region of his bruised and battered heart. He gripped the pillow as he willed himself not to turn. “Sorry?” But he knew what she meant. Only it hurt too much to answer.
The sheets moved as she shifted. “Sorry that you gave up so much. For me?”
Ah gods, he couldn’t… White spots danced before his eyes. He squeezed his eyes shut. “No.” Winston cleared his throat. “I am only sorry that I did not know the whole of you.”
The desire to let her secrets spill forth rushed through Poppy, but the familiar tug of repression caught her. Never speak. You lead a double life. Remember this always. She’d followed the instructions to the letter, even when it tore at her soul. Even when her sisters suffered and her husband turned away from her. The SOS was her other half, sometimes the greater part of her. To what end? If she let it, the SOS would take her happiness away and leave her empty.
“I was eighteen when I took over my mother’s position.”
Win’s voice came at her through the dark. “The year we met.”
She sighed. “Yes. The day we met, actually.”
He was silent, as if he too were remembering that day upon the platform. She wondered what the memory held for him. For her, it had been both the best and worst day of her life. Every step down the long, cold train platform had been a struggle to pull herself together, to remind herself who and what she was. And then he was there, as if forming from the mist. It had been such a shock to see the handsome young man walking beside her, looking at her as if she had just become his whole world. She’d thought she was dreaming.
“What were you doing at the station?” He laughed shortly, as if disgusted with himself. “Do you know, I never even thought to ask you.” Another choppy laugh filled the air. “I was too stunned with lust to think on anything more than keeping you with me.”
Her breath hitched, and she struggled to find another. “And I thought you were the most handsome madman I’d ever seen.”
His voice rolled over her like fog. “Mad for you.”
God, the things he could do to her. Just a few words and it was all she could do not to fling herself at him. She cleared her throat. “I’d just been appointed Mother. Lena fulfilled the duty while I completed my training. Actually, I thought she might keep the position, but she’s never liked the role.” Lena had always been strange in that regard, preferring to be a guardian of the SOS, rather than the leader of it. Poppy settled further into her pillow and continued her story. “There is an SOS tunnel exit at the station, and I’d used it to leave the ceremony.”
“You were eighteen years old.” The shock in his voice was strong. “And they appointed you head of an entire organization?”
“I’d been training for the position since I was six.” Pride prickled along her skin and she fought to tamp it down. “I am the seventh generation of first daughters to carry out the duty. My family, along with another, founded the SOS.”
Letting out her secrets filled her with utter weariness, but it felt easier to say them in the dark. “In the early days, we were simply called