Cheryl Holt by Deeper than Desire

first and foremost being the chance to take her to his bed, to have her naked, her creamy, smooth flesh crushed to his own.
    The erotic notion was so out of character that he had to ponder whether she hadn’t bewitched him. Or, more likely, the celibacy he’d practiced since his wife’s death had driven him over the edge!
    He was perched much nearer than propriety permitted, touching her all the way down, her skirt tangled around his legs and feet. The contact thrilled him, made him pulsate with vim and vigor.
    Amazingly, his trousers were tight! He was becoming aroused merely from her proximity, while she was too distraught to look at him. Like a shy girl, she stared off to the side, so he shifted into her line of sight. Her eyes were hazel, winged by dark brows, her cheeks rosy from her stroll in the fresh country air.
    She was so fetching, so alluring, and by doing nothing at all, she tempted him beyond measure.
    He had a perception of recognition, as though he’d always known her, and he inquired, “Have we met before you came to Salisbury?”
    “No.” Her mouth quirked in a half-smile.
    “Are you sure? Perhaps in London or—”
    “I’m positive. I’d have remembered.”
    “Yes, so would I.”
    “Are you all right?” she queried, out of the blue. “You seem troubled.”
    So . . . she felt it, too, their bizarre bond. He was doleful over his quarrel with Phillip, and it wasn’t surprising that she would notice his distress.
    As his response, he posed, “Do you ever wish you could alter the past?”
    “Yes, all the time.”
    “I’d like to invent a machine that would enable me to travel back and erase all my mistakes.”
    “That would be grand, wouldn’t it?”
    She nodded, and there was a sadness about her, an ingrained sorrow and solemnity that hinted at prior tragedy, at great adversity and misery that had been routed, and he wondered what had happened to her. Whatmisfortune had she weathered? What hideous event had left its subtle mark?
    Without pausing to reflect, he narrowed the distance between them, and kissed her. The move was so forward and so presumptuous that he thoroughly shocked her—as well as himself.
    For the briefest second, they clung together, so ardent that they might have been the last two people on earth. Then, as abruptly as it had started, the embrace ended. She wrenched away and leapt to her feet, her cheeks flaming, her fingers pressed to her lips.
    His primary reaction was to apologize, but he wasn’t sorry. Instead, he asked, “Would you walk with me some night? In the moonlight? I’d like to see it shining on your hair.”
    “No, I never could.”
    “Why?” he questioned stupidly. As if he needed her to tell him it was an idiotic request!
    Acutely afflicted, she falteringly explained, “You may—or may not—marry Olivia. But if you decide
not
to, the reason can never be because of me. The Hopkins family took me in when I had nowhere else to go. They’ve been kind to me.”
    “I understand.”
    “You shouldn’t beg me to sit again. Or to linger.” She strode farther and farther away. “I’ll want to say yes, but it’s not a good idea. For anyone.”
    “You’re correct, of course.”
    She departed, vanishing behind the shrubbery, and he listened to the brush of her slippers until they faded away.
    Their affinity could only lead to disaster and regret, for it would be the height of disrespect and cruelty to dally with Winnie when he was pursuing Olivia for possiblematrimony. Yet he couldn’t keep himself from fantasizing over how marvelous it would be to have her as his own, or from yearning to make it a reality.
    With a heavy heart, he stood and returned to the house. Alone.

C HAPTER S EVEN
    Olivia sat in the garden, on the bench Penny had shown her, where she could peek through the hedges to spy on Phillip.
    Margaret was visiting one of Edward’s neighbors, so Olivia had come outside with her portfolio, and was pretending to draw the yard. If anyone