“Thank you,” she whispered, and looked up at him through her long lashes. “That was difficult to hear, but I appreciate knowing it all.”
“If I can give you nothing else, I vow I will always give you the truth from this point forward,” he said. “It won’t make up for the lies before, but I owe you that, Flora. And so much more.”
Her fingers tightened against his and she let out a shuddering breath. “Theo will do everything in his power to protect your mother.”
“Yes,” Roarke said, and relief flooded him. “And I believe he’ll get to her first. I injured that villain as much or more than he injured me. I’m guessing it will take him a few days to limp back to Philip and report his failure. I doubt any moves will be made against my mother until then. So I can be relieved, and even more so when I hear from Theo that he has arrived and moved her to a safer place.”
She leaned closer and now he could smell that sweetness to her skin. It reminded him of how she tasted when he kissed her lips. When he kissed other places.
“Thank you,” she murmured. “Coming here has made your life more difficult, I know. That you did it means a great deal.”
“I don’t deserve to tell you why,” he whispered. “Though I think you know why. I hurt you, Flora. And I never want to do that again, I never want to aid or abet someone else doing the same.”
“I know,” she said, her voice shaking.
She slid her hand up his bare arm, across his shoulder. They both watched it move together and he shivered at the warmth of her touch. He was trying to control himself, trying not to take something he didn’t deserve. But she was making that very difficult.
She cupped his cheek again at last, her fingers splaying against his skin. She leaned in, her breath stirring his lips. When she kissed him, he couldn’t hold back any longer. He gripped his hands against the coverlet so he wouldn’t become too swept away, but he opened to her instantly.
And she took. Her tongue touched his, her lips became more seeking and she let out a soft moan that seemed to crack the world open before him. He drowned in her, tilting his head to deepen the kiss. It throbbed when he did so, but he didn’t care about the pain, not when he was tangling with her tongue the same way he wanted to tangle with her body.
At last, he couldn’t help himself. He cupped her neck with one hand, drawing her even closer until it was almost impossible to feel anything but her. Everything was her and he never wanted that to change.
But she stopped it at last. Not with haste, not with regret. She just drew back, her face still close to his, her hand curled around his arm while the other balanced against his bare chest. Her breath was short.
“I’m…still angry with you,” she whispered.
He nodded slowly. “You deserve to be.”
“And I don’t know where to go from here.”
He swallowed hard. “I’ll go wherever you want to go, Flora. If I can make up to you even a fraction of the damage I did, I will move the world to do it. And if you kiss me now and never want to look at me again, I’ll have to accept that even if it breaks my heart.”
Her expression softened, but she stood up at last and took a step back to create more distance between them. “I know you must rest in the next few days and there will be a great deal to discuss when it comes to my future and how to manage the escalating situation with my stepchildren. But I…I also know we’ll spend a great deal of time together. So I suppose we’ll just have to see what happens.”
“Yes,” he said, and somehow masked the swell of hope those words she said gave him. And flattened by the realization that followed: he was in love with this woman.
She stepped to the door and opened it. “I…I hope…”
She shook her head and said nothing more, but slipped out, leaving him alone with a throbbing head and a sliver of the possibility that perhaps the future he’d thought he’d destroyed could be rebuilt.
Hours later, as Flora stood in the parlor with Bernadette, Valaria and Callum, she couldn’t stop looking at the door. Waiting for Roarke. Thinking about the kiss they’d shared in the bedroom a few hours before. It was strange. She’d kissed him in London, done more than kiss him, but this almost felt like the first time.
Perhaps because there were no longer lies between them.
She shifted her weight and then looked at Valaria. Her friend was standing with Callum, but she was watching Flora right back. Flora huffed out a breath. “Are you going to invite him to join us for supper?
Valaria didn’t ask her to clarify the him. She folded her arms. “He’s resting.”
Callum barked out a short laugh at his fiancée’s response and then briefly rested a hand on her lower back, a show of support that Flora wished she could have so easily. Then he moved forward, his attention shifting to Flora. “I think you want to forgive him,” he said gently.
And there it was, said out loud at last. She felt like a thousand candles were shining on her now and she was utterly revealed. She glanced first at Bernadette and then Valaria. Both her friends looked concerned, but there was no surprise to their expressions.
“I…don’t know,” she murmured. “He misrepresented himself and hurt my feelings. But I look at him and I…” She broke off and shook her head. “You all must think me the worst kind of pathetic fool.”
To her surprise, it was Valaria who stepped forward, her expression much softer now. She wrapped her arms around Flora and hugged her. “Not at all. I know I’ve been…harsh about this. It’s only that I worry about you. I was with a man who hurt me, and I want to protect you from ever feeling pain.”
Flora squeezed her back and then stepped away. She held Valaria’s gaze. “I love you for that. But you can’t protect me from feeling pain. Just as I couldn’t protect you when you were finding your way with Callum. Sometimes the way out is through, as much as we would try to stop those we care about from suffering.”
Valaria blinked and Bernadette caught her breath. Even Callum seemed taken aback by that statement.
“I know you’re right,” Valaria said. “And I’ll be more mindful of that. But I have to ask…do you think Roarke could mean as much to you as Callum means to me? Is that how deeply you feel for this man?”
Flora glanced at Callum, always at Valaria’s side, her protector and friend and lover and future. And she could picture Roarke in the same position for herself. If they could overcome what had happened at the start, she believed in the deepest core of herself, that they could be happy in the future.
“Perhaps,” she said slowly.
Valaria blanched, but then she straightened up and smoothed her skirts. “Then of course we will invite him to join us if he’s up for it. I can ring for—”
“No, I’ll go to him,” Callum said. “I’ll take care of it.”
He gave Flora a soft smile before he slipped from the room. Her heart immediately began to pound as she watched him go, knowing that she had perhaps just begun a new chapter in the book of her life. And she hoped it would end well.
Roarke lay on the bed, staring up at the ceiling. He ought to have been sleeping, he supposed, recovering from his injuries. God knew he felt them. His head still ached dully and the stitches on his gash itched. But it wasn’t those things that kept him from sleep.