Adam stood on Tregereth’s freshly renovated belvedere, pulled his sketchbook from his pocket, and began to draw the cliffs.
He’d come here every afternoon since returning to Cornwall. He told himself he did it because it gave him a clear view of Tregereth’s property from which to survey the fruits of the day’s work. But really, he did it to hope.
To hope. For a letter, tattered after a week lost in the post. A light, burning from the window of her shuttered house. His daughter’s voice, squealing Seraphina’s name as she looked out at the coastal path.
And yet, with every day that passed without word, the possibility she might not come grew more akin to fact: she hadn’t.
He turned a new page in his sketchbook, and began to draw her, the way she’d looked that day that he’d first met her here. Long limbs beneath a billowing, sheer dress. Green eyes sparkling with intrigue. Lips turned out in a smile that seemed to say I already know.
Something brushed his shoulder—his cravat in the wind. He adjusted it and kept on sketching—absorbed in the detail of her hair, the shadow of her lashes.
“Adam.”
He turned around.
“I wanted to surprise you,” Seraphina Arden said, looking at him like she’d never seen a finer thing in all her life.
His sketchbook clattered to the floor.
He lost sight of what he did then. He might have kissed her with all the longing he’d been afraid to feel since he’d left London. He might have ripped her hair out of its pins. He might have growled, Get closer, woman. He could not attest to what passed in those five minutes except that when he came to something like his senses they were in such a state that chance passersby would be witness to obscenity.
He pulled himself away and looked at her, his Sera.
“I was so afraid you wouldn’t come,” he whispered.
She took a shaky breath. “So was I.”
He took her hand and brought her palm to his lips. “This time, let’s try not to be afraid.”
“Oh, Adam,” she said, with liquid eyes. “It’s a promise.”
She leaned in and kissed him, and he was lost again, and then her hands were on his hipbones and he realized that if he did not stop this here and now there would be no stopping it at all.
“Not here,” he gasped, dragging himself away from her, though the loss of every inch of her flesh against his stung him.
She groaned. “Don’t torment me. It’s been too long. I am . . .” she shivered despite the unseasonal warmth of the autumn afternoon “. . . wanting.”
She looked wanting. He felt the hunger of her gaze in the hollow of his sacrum.
“Come.” He grabbed her hand. “Tregereth’s the only client I have left. Can’t get myself dismissed for having my way with his neighbor on his belvedere.”
“Wait,” she said. Her eyes were playful. “It’s low tide. We can reach the caves under the cliffs. They are private and can be quite . . . inspiring. Would you like me to show you?”
Cave. Private. Seraphina.
He looked at her gravely. “I suspect I would like that very much.”
She led him to a scraggly footpath that wound through the jagged rocks down to the shoreline. She stopped to remove her slippers, wriggling her toes in the wet sand.
He stripped off his boots and stockings and followed her between twin pillars of rock that protected a little opening beneath the jetty. The floor was lined with clumps of seaweed and bright yellow sponges. A shaft of sunlight lit up the cave, making the water lapping at their ankles twinkle a thousand pastel shades, and dappling the rocks with veins of gold and copper.
Sera draped her cloak over a large, sea-smoothed rock in the center of the cave. “Come here.”
He let her remove his coat, and then his shirt. It was cool and damp inside the cave, and his skin prickled with gooseflesh. She ran her hands along his waist and up to his nipples.
“You’re cold,” she observed. She raised her shift over her head and pulled him against her bare skin, rubbing his arms to warm him up.
“Ah,” he sighed. “That’s better.”
“Back to the matter we were discussing,” she said. Her hands drifted down to the trail of hair that led from his navel to his groin, and she followed it until her hand was inside his breeches, caressing his cock.
He closed his eyes and let the feeling overwhelm him. He felt like he was in one of his dreams in which they frolicked in the surf.
A large wave crashed against the rocks, stinging his calves and ankles with cold water. His eyes shot open.
In those dreams he always lost her.
“Adam,” she murmured.
He looked down at her, and she was smiling up at him, her eyes tender and alive in a way he’d never seen before.
“I’m here,” she said, drawing him closer. “I’ve got you.”
Chapter Thirty-Two
“The tide is coming in. We should go,” Sera said.
Adam’s arms tightened around her. “I don’t want to let go of you.”
“I don’t want that either,” she murmured. “I would not suggest it were it not that we will drown.”
He squeezed her one last time before sitting up. Every time he did that, another bolt of certainty went through her.
She was so glad she’d come.
They helped each other collect their things and dress and climbed up to the coastal path. Adam took her hand. “I have to go see the children for their supper. But I’ll walk you home.”
She smiled at the thought of Jasper and Adeline, waiting in the window for him. “Are they happy to be back at the seaside?”
“Yes. They have been asking me if you will come.”
Oh, Adam. He said it so lightly, but she wished she had not caused him a fortnight of uncertainty.
“What did you tell them?”
He looked at her from the side of his eye. “I said I hoped so.”
Her heart.
“I’m sorry if I unnerved you. I had to be sure. And then once I was, I figured I’d get here as quickly as a letter.”
“The only thing that matters,” he said softly, “is that you’re here.”
Her throat felt tight. She cleared it, lest she become unstrung again. To think she’d spent years—years—without shedding a single tear only to become a faucet at the age of thirty-three.
“Would you bring the children over for luncheon tomorrow? And Marianne? I’d like to see them.” She paused. “Actually, on second thought, the house might be a mess. There wasn’t time to send Maria in advance to open it up and I haven’t been inside yet.”
He quirked his mouth. “You came directly to find me without going inside?”
She nodded.
He raised a brow lasciviously. “Eager of you.”
She rewarded him with a coy smirk. “Quite.”
“Let’s have a look,” he said, as they climbed up her terrace stairs.
“Maria’s managed to open all the shutters. That’s a good sign.” Sera paused to inspect the one that was always loose and banging at the window. Someone had fixed it.
She looked over at Adam. His face seemed curiously innocent, as though he didn’t notice.
She opened the terrace doors and found the hinges no longer creaked. When she stepped inside, the loose floorboard did not squeal beneath her shoe.