couldn’t stand the notion of you all alone here.”
The lump came back in Lucy’s throat.
“But they will be going home, it’s true. They’re not in service anymore, and they deserve their rest. I’ll have to be looking for somebody else.”
“It’s not your job to find…”
“I got to take care of you, Lucy!” The force in his voice stunned her. “I… I love you. I do.”
Lucy stared up at him. Though she could barely see his face, she could feel his sincerity in the hard lines of his body, the tremor in his arm around her shoulders.
Ethan spoke faster, nearly babbling. “I reckon Sir Alexander will give me the forester job. Old Elkins wants me to have it, and there’s no reason he wouldn’t listen to him. Can’t see why Hobbs—he’s the steward—would fight it. Would you marry me, Lucy, and come live in Derbyshire? There’s a cottage, with a garden and all. It’s a right lovely spot.”
Lucy’s head spun. Feelings she’d denied or ignored when she thought Ethan was only flirting broke free, like water from a burst dam. Tenderness, desire, trust, love—yes, love—flooded through her.
“Lucy?” Great hulking Ethan Trask sounded nervous as a boy. “We’d be happy there. I know we would. I’d do my utmost to make sure you had everything you wanted.”
She turned under his arm, gazed up at him. The moon was just peeking over the top edge of the garden wall, and she could make out his face now, despite the growing darkness. He looked scared, and that touched her heart as nothing else could have done. Her arms slid around his neck. Ethan bent his head and pulled her even closer. Their lips met, and the touch vibrated through Lucy’s whole being, set her afire. It was like nothing she’d ever experienced. The kiss paused, and renewed, even more intense. It shook her to the very soul. She gave herself up to him and to her own desire. Ethan’s hands strayed over her, leaving trails of warmth along her skin, bringing more and more of her to pulsing life. Lucy lost herself and the world in his embrace.
At long, long last, they pulled back a little. Lucy gazed up at him, open in all ways. “I’m thinking that’s a yes,” said Ethan, sounding as shaken as she felt.
She laughed, trembling and suffused with heat. She could stay here forever, she thought, encircled by his arms. And then reality came rushing back. “I’d have to leave Miss Charlotte here alone.” Lucy’s elation died. She had cared for Charlotte Rutherford since she was a child who’d just lost her mother. It was more than simple duty. There was a bond between them older than the new one with Ethan. His promise of a different life came at the cost of someone else’s suffering. Lucy couldn’t bear that. Life stretched out bleak before her once more.
“Maybe we could fix that,” Ethan said.
“Fix… what do you mean?”
He hesitated.
“Oh, Ethan, what could we do? I’m trapped and no mistake.” She hated thinking of Miss Charlotte in that way, but the fact was, in this moment, she did. She threw herself back into his arms and huddled there. He held her.
***
Strolling into the rout party, Alec found it like a hundred others. Musicians played unheeded in the largest reception room; in another, young women were taking it in turn to show off their musical talents, and their shapely arms, at the pianoforte. Older guests hunched over their hands in the card room; servants laid out a lavish buffet. And everywhere people talked and talked. He’d often wondered where society found the words night after night to generate this roar of conversation.
He moved through the rooms looking for Charlotte, often obliged to stop and respond to acquaintances’ greetings. He barely avoided having to listen to a deb warble the latest ballad. He glimpsed Aunt Bella and her cronies interrogating some hapless fellow beside a potted palm. God help the man if he was trying to conceal a juicy bit of gossip from them. He’d begun to wonder whether Charlotte had decided not to come when he spotted her sitting with Edward and his friends. As usual, they had established a corner bastion of chairs and coaxed their own supply of champagne from the servants.
Charlotte wore a gown he hadn’t seen before, of some glistening coppery stuff—silk, he thought—that echoed her eyes and hair and made her a gorgeous monotone save for a necklace of green beads. It ought to be emeralds,