With This Kiss: Part Two Read Free Page B

his thighs.
    “Colin!”
    “Are you a dream or not?”
    “I most certainly am not! I’m Grace. Don’t you remember me?” She was starting to babble.
    “You’re betrothed to McIngle, and God knows what he would think of the fact you’re in a man’s bedchamber.”
    “I’m breaking off my betrothal,” she blurted out.
    He said nothing to that. She shouldn’t stay here, perched on his legs. Under her bottom she could feel his thighs as he shifted. He was all muscle, contained power.
    Yet he was home safe. The bolt of joy that hit her was so intense that it swept away her panic about the state of his eyes.
    “You should leave,” he said, ignoring her announcement.
    “What happened to your eyesight?” she asked, desperate to stay on this side of the door rather than on the other.
    “A cannonball exploded directly in front of me,” he said, his voice flat and uninterested. “The flash blinded me. I should lie down now.”
    She stood up, feeling a pinch of anger, but it was nothing new. He’d been rejecting her for years. The fact that he was pushing her away now was unsurprising.
    She stepped away, and he stood up as well, but then he swayed slightly, his big body quivering for a moment.
    “I’ll help you,” she said, taking his arm the way John had.
    “I know where the bed is,” he said, sounding even groggier than he had a moment earlier. He turned in the wrong direction. “I found my way to this chair from the bed after the doctor… What did the doctor do? I don’t feel well.”
    “That’s not the right direction.” She tugged on his arm.
    If the truth be told, she was still in love. She was greedy to be with him, to be next to him. She didn’t care that he was blind. She didn’t care if he never regained his sight, if he growled at her. Maybe she could take a position as his housekeeper, and he wouldn’t realize who she was.
    “You smell good, like a girl I once knew, but that was a dream,” he said, sounding tipsy, like Fred after he drank too much punch.
    Grace gave him a little tug. “Your bed is this way.”
    His hip was pressed against hers, causing little ripples of fire to spread over her skin.
    “Colin,” she said, realizing that her voice had become husky and low.
    “The bed,” he stated. His arm went around her waist and he hauled her closer to him. “You have beautiful curves.”
    He really sounded inebriated. The drug must have taken hold.
    “This way,” she whispered, gently tugging him again. She managed to get him to walk a few steps, and then he toppled forward onto the bed and rolled on his back.
    The door opened. “Grace!” She’d never seen her mother look so irate. “Out of this room, at once. Colin’s incapacity is no grounds for discarding every rule of polite society.”
    “I’m coming,” Grace said, shaking out a blanket and spreading it over Colin. He was so large that his feet stuck out the bottom.
    “Grace!”
    She turned her head and smiled giddily. “He’s home, Mother. He’s home, safe and well. I’m sure his eyes will heal. And if they don’t, it doesn’t matter because he won’t be dead. He’s home .”
    The duchess came to stand at her shoulder. Even with the bandage, Colin looked outrageously handsome, his lips cherry dark and full. “He always was a gorgeous young man.”
    “He still is,” Grace snapped.
    “I didn’t mean that he wasn’t. I’m worried for him. His life will be difficult indeed if he doesn’t regain his sight.”
    “He will heal.” Grace reached out and soothed the blanket over his shoulder. “Everything will be different now he’s home.”
    Her mother looked at her, and then turned on her heel. “I think we’d better go to my sitting room and have a talk.”
    Grace pulled the blanket a little higher and made sure that Colin’s arm was comfortably tucked against his body.
    “Grace .”
    She followed her mother.

 
    Five
    B y the time Grace reached the duchess’s sitting room, she was feeling quite