Her tongue, cool from the ice, heated his blood. She tasted of grape ice and lemon and if he could drown in the sweetness of her, he’d be content to go forever thinking of her in this moment. She twined her hands about his neck and pressed herself to him. Their tongues met in an age-old dance.
He groaned again, encouraged by her boldness and pulled her close. More than a foot smaller than his own frame, she molded to him as perfectly as if she’d been made for him and only him. Help me, I want more of her. Knowing now the battle faced by Adam in that garden of sin, Weston drew back. He lowered his brow to hers. “Forgive me now, then,” he repeated. He should step away. He should set her from him. But he could not do either of those things. Instead, he touched his lips to her forehead.
Patrina brushed her fingers over his cheek. “There is still nothing to forgive.”
He clenched his jaw. Except there was. She was an innocent young lady. “There is everything to forgive.” He dragged a hand through his hair. He was not one of those depraved lords who went about kissing marriage-minded misses, in the midst of Hyde Park, no less. Weston glanced around at the snowy scape. It mattered not that the ton didn’t tend to come out in such inclement weather and the threat of discovery was unlikely. It mattered that he’d acted in a wholly dishonorable manner.
* * *
Weston, the 4th Marquess of Beaufort, had of course drawn the erroneous assumption she was in fact a proper, young lady.
Patrina folded her arms to her stomach. What would a gentleman such as him say if he were to know how truly dishonorable she was? Guilt knifed at her. She’d managed to delude herself into believing it was entirely respectable to have her maid join her in Hyde Park for her daily constitution. Mary allowed her the privacy of her own thoughts, which was so very appreciated. Only now, Patrina had betrayed that trust. Just as she’d betrayed her mother. And brother. And three sisters.
And now… She gazed off at the distant crest, Charlotte and Daniel had disappeared to. The peel of their laughter spilled out into the cool, winter air. And now, by being in their presence, she posed a risk to the reputation of Weston’s children.
She drew in a shuddery breath. She could not be selfish. Not again. Not as she wanted to. Not when her own self-centeredness had cost her family so much. She’d stolen from her sisters the opportunity to make, advantageous matches with good, honorable gentlemen. Shame burned like acid in her throat. She could not force that misery upon Weston’s children.
“You’ve gone quiet, Patrina. Have I said something to offend you? If I have—”
Patrina waved a hand. “No. No. Not at all.” He’d not offended her. Rather he’d unknowingly wounded her with the memory of mistakes she’d gone and made. He’d merely reminded her of the need to be truthful. “I’m…I’m just a bit melancholy at the mention of my father. What of you, my…Weston? I imagine you think of your wife quite often.”
His jaw tightened. A flinty glitter sparked in his eyes. “I think of her with no real fondness.”
Charlotte’s infectious laughter behind them mocked the coldness of such an admission. They paused and turned as Charlotte and Daniel darted about the snow, tossing snowballs at one another.
Burning fury laced his curt words. Under her cloak, gooseflesh dotted the skin of her arms. Questions burned her lips, but she tamped them down. She’d learned after Albert’s treachery the pained awkwardness of people posing their questions; questions they didn’t deserve answers to.
In the absence of any suitable reply for Weston, she said, “I’m sorry you feel that way, my…Weston.”
A muscle ticked at the corner of his eye. “I imagine you think me heartless.”
Patrina shook her head. “No. Not at all.” Not heartless. She suspected Weston was a man who’d surely been burned by the sentiments of love—much the way she had. “I wonder as to your response, is all. Of course, it is none of my affair,” she said on a rush when he opened his mouth to speak.
He chuckled, the grating sound mirthless and devoid of any real humor, belied only by the warmth in his gaze as he stared at his playing children. “You wonder because you’re young, Patrina. You can’t be any more than eighteen, perhaps nineteen? A lady such as you is surely filled with hopes and dreams of a future that doesn’t exist as anything more than the sonnets penned by silly romantic poets. You can’t know the ugliness of a faithless mother such as my children’s mother.” Something hard and condescending laced his heated charge, more in line with the man who’d first berated her at Hyde Park nearly a week ago.
Patrina straightened her back. How dare he presume to know what she had and hadn’t experienced in her now nearly twenty-one years of life? “You speak with such absolute certainty. You speak as though you know how I live and of my experiences based on nothing more than my age and your perception of what a young lady is.” No, he didn’t know she’d loved and lost in the cruelest kind of way.
He scoffed. “Would you disagree with my supposition?”
“I would,” she shot back. “I don’t presume to know anything about your life because I see you in the park with your two children and a serious expression on your face.” He might have known pain at his wife’s cruel hands, but ultimately he’d become a parent, and now had two precious, if precocious children—two impossibilities Patrina couldn’t even hope to have.
Weston studied her with such intensity she shifted on her feet. He opened his mouth, as though he wished to ask the very same questions she herself had fought back a short while ago, but then pressed his lips into a single, tight line instead. “You are correct. I should not presume to know your life. Forgive me.”
Patrina gave a brusque nod, unaccustomed to others making apologies to her. She’d grown up in a noisy household among siblings who believed they were each, always in the right. A gust of winter wind stirred the untouched snow around them, and sprinkled her skirts with tiny remnants of the flakes. A stray curl escaped from the brim of her bonnet, and she shoved the recalcitrant strand back, but it only fell over her brow yet again.
“Here,” Weston murmured softly. He lifted her bonnet slightly and her breath caught as he tucked the strand behind her ear, and then lowered the velvet piece back into place.
Her heart pounded wildly as she studied the chiseled planes of his face. “Th-thank you,” she whispered. He possessed a hard beauty, like a marbled Adonis, so very different from Albert’s stocky, non-descript plainness. Only, Albert’s appearance hadn’t mattered. She’d been so blinded by his false adulation.
“I wish I could ask you what causes such sadness in your eyes,” he said quietly. “But I suspect you’d not answer, nor do I deserve one.” He captured her fingers and turned them over. Even through the fabric of their gloves, her palm warmed at his gentle touch.
She should pull away. She should be indignant at his bold touch. But then, she’d done a whole number of things in her life that she should have done altogether differently. But he was wrong. “You deserve an answer.” Because she couldn’t allow him to meet her here with his children and risk jeopardizing Charlotte’s future opportunity of making a match.