Simply Unforgettable by Mary Balogh

where she was until he had finished, and then she lay down on him, her legs stretched on either side of his, while he drew the covers warmly over her again and wrapped his arms about her.
    They were still joined.
    This, she thought drowsily, was what happiness felt like. Not contentment, but
happiness
.
    And tomorrow . . .
    But mercifully she slept.

6

    Peters and Thomas had both gone out by the time Lucius appeared downstairs the following morning, even though it was still well before dawn. They returned soon after he had gone out to the stables himself, bringing with them the news that the snow had melted considerably and that the road was already passable, provided one proceeded with extreme caution. Miss Allard’s carriage, though, was still firmly stuck in its snowbank. It would take assistance and the best part of the day to haul it out and dry it off and look it over to ensure that it was roadworthy.
    â€œThough it might be said, guv, that it never was that anytime during the last thirty years or so,” Peters could not resist adding.
    Thomas muttered darkly to the effect that there would be nothing wrong with his carriage if a certain impudent young ’un, who would remain nameless for the sake of peace, had not passed it when he didn’t ought and then stopped dead in front of it in the middle of the road. And in
his
day, he added, carriages were made to last.
    If Thomas’s coach had not been moving so slowly that it was almost going backward, Peters retorted, and if at that pace it could not stop behind another carriage without slithering into a snowbank, then it was high time a certain coachman who would remain nameless was put out to grass.
    Lucius left them to it without attempting any mediation and went back inside the inn and into the kitchen. Frances was in there, busy getting breakfast.
    Knowledge hit him like a fist to the stomach. He had been holding that slender body naked in his arms not so long ago.
    â€œIf you wish,” he said after giving her the bad news about her own carriage, “we will both remain here another day. It will surely be rescued and roadworthy by tomorrow.”
    The suggestion certainly had its appeal—except that the world would find them sometime during the course of the day even if they stayed here. Villagers would come for their ale. The Parkers would return from their holiday. There was no way of recapturing the charm of yesterday’s isolation—or the passion of last night’s.
    Time had moved on as it always and inevitably did.
    She hesitated, but he could almost read her mind as it turned over the same thoughts and came to the same conclusions.
    â€œNo,” she said. “I must get back to the school today somehow. The girls return today, and classes begin tomorrow. There is so much to do before then. I will see if a stagecoach stops somewhere in the village.”
    She was not quite looking into his eyes, he noticed. But her face was flushed, and her lips looked soft and slightly swollen, and there was something more than usually warm and feminine about her whole demeanor. She looked like a woman who had been well and thoroughly bedded the night before.
    He felt partly aroused again by the sight of her. But last night was over and done with, alas. It ought not to have happened at all, he supposed, though of course he had gone to some pains to see that it
did
happen. And to say that he had enjoyed the outcome would be to understate the case.
    It was simply time to move on.
    â€œThere is none,” he said. “I have asked Wally. But if you are willing to leave Thomas here to take your carriage back where it came from tomorrow, you may come with me this morning. I’ll take you to Bath.”
    She raised her eyes to his then, and her flush deepened.
    â€œOh, but I cannot ask that of you,” she said. “Bath must be well out of your way.”
    It was. More than that, since yesterday could not be recaptured, he did