Unforgettable (Mockingbird Square 1)

“I was married within the month,” she said, but she was staring up at him in wonder. “No one told me any of this. My father said nothing of your request, and I certainly never saw your uncle.”

He touched her fingers with his own, tracing their shape. She hadn’t known. He had thought . . . he wasn’t sure what he had thought. He’d written to his uncle, asking him about Juliet, but it was his mother who replied with the news. Her letter had reached him after he had joined his regiment in Spain. He still remembered the feel of the paper and the seawater stains that blurred some of the words.

Miss Montgomery is married now and you must get on with your career. Uncle George says you will make a fine soldier . . .

“I should have told him no, refused to go, but I believed it was the right thing to do. I trusted George.” He shook his head, suddenly weary of the recriminations. “As you say, we could still have been miserable together, regretting every moment.”

Her mouth trembled and he could see she was close to tears. Time to leave the past behind.

“My brother tells me there is a doctor at the hospital here who is rather partial to you.”

She managed a husky laugh. “Doctor Knowles? I am rather partial to him, too. He’s a remarkable man.”

He waited but she said no more on the subject, so he let it lie. But he thought he understood what she was telling him. She had found someone else. No wonder she hadn’t wanted to rekindle what they once had—he had left it too late. Eight years too late. The best thing to do now was to be a gentleman and step away, leaving her to enjoy her new life.

“It’s time you were happy, Juliet,” he said, making a credible effort to smile.

She looked back at him bemused, her lips slightly parted, and suddenly he couldn’t resist. Selfish he may be but he had waited a long time for this. Ash bent his head and kissed her.

Chapter Ten

Summer, 1816, Montgomery House, Crevitch, Somerset

Her lips clung to his. The taste of him went to her head and she swayed against him, feeling his arms go around her, pulling her close. This was Ash, her Ash, and the past meshed with the present until she didn’t know what day it was.

She didn’t care.

“Juliet,” he groaned, tilting his head so that he had better access to her mouth. She couldn’t remember him ever doing that before, and the way he turned her so that they were seated on the dusty sofa, she didn’t remember him doing that either.

He’d loved other women, she would be a fool to believe otherwise, but just for a moment she felt some of her desire for him lessen. Then he was kissing her face, light kisses, like an endless caress, and she laughed in delight.

“Open your eyes,” he said.

She did, and he was smiling tenderly at her. He lent in and kissed her on the lips, a chaste kiss this time, the sort of kiss she remembered from the past. Before they grew better at kissing and touching and making love. And every time they were together the need grew stronger, and more difficult to resist, until they didn’t even try.

Was that

truly love? Or had it simply been lust?

Ash’s chaste kiss had deepened and for a time she couldn’t think at all. She twined her arms around his neck and ran her fingers through the hair on his nape. There was a scar just below the crown of his head, where the bullet had glanced off him—she remembered reading it in the newspaper—and she touched it gently.

“You were hurt,” she whispered.

“I was,” he agreed, and kissed her again.

She undid his necktie with shaking fingers, pressing her lips to the warm masculine skin of his throat. Tasting him, remembering. He slid his hand inside her gown, finding her breast, murmuring as her nipple nudged against his palm.

She wanted him. She was already imagining his mouth closing on that pink bud, before his hand slid further down her body, to the heat between her thighs. After all this time she was trembling with need, barely able to restrain herself. In another moment they would be at the point of no return, and she didn’t care.

‘Bad blood’, her father’s voice sounded in her head, making her pause and wonder if somehow they really had travelled back to the past and he was here in the room with them, about to begin shouting those horrible, horrible words.

Ash had stood in front of her, she remembered, while she dressed. He had been as white faced and frightened as she, and yet he had protected her.

“Juliet?”

She was back, and the room was empty apart from Ash and herself. A very grown up Ash compared to the boy she’d been remembering. There was a frown on his face and his blue gaze was searching hers.

“You disappeared for a moment there,” he said. “I lost you again.”