“Greentree Manor isn’t far.” Francesca was eyeing him as if she was afraid he might fall over at any moment. Thunder rumbled threateningly. “Are you certain you can walk, Mr. Thorne?”
“Of course I can walk!”
She lifted an eyebrow in disbelief.
In reply, he strode off up the hill, just to show her. She followed, and for a time they carried on in silence. When his steps began to lag, she slipped his arm over her shoulders to support him.
He sighed. “I can manage, blast you.”
“No, blast you, you can’t manage,” she retorted. “I have better things to do than rescue you from the mire again, Mr. Thorne.”
She was tall for a woman, but he was taller. He must be a burden to her, although she did not say so. Sebastian thought about protesting and pulling away, but frustrating as it was, he knew she was right. He needed her help.
Several times he had to pause, and once he found himself leaning on her shoulder, his head bowed, breathing hard. But when she asked him again, her own voice breathless
, whether he would prefer to wait while she fetched help, he gruffly refused her and began to walk, muttering curses under his breath to disguise his discomfort.
“You really do swear a great deal,” she said, not in the least shocked.
“It helps.”
“How?” she asked curiously.
“It makes me feel better.”
“How can behaving in such a childish manner make you feel better?”
Sebastian took the opportunity to stop for another rest. He looked down at her, tucked beneath his arm, wiping the dripping rain from his eyes so he could see her better. The rain was causing her hair to curl even more wildly and the cold had turned her skin white, apart from two red circles on her cheeks.
She blinked, and he saw that her lashes were clubbed together. He had the urgent desire to reach out and touch them with his fingertip.
“This is ridiculous.” Francesca tugged him forward, her wet cloak flapping around them, her boots slipping on the sodden ground.
He leaned down so that he could whisper in her ear. “You feel it, too, don’t you?”
She gave him a suspicious glance and leaned away as far as she was able. “Feel what?” she said.
“Francesca,” he murmured.
“I beg your pardon?”
“It makes me think of the sun and hot days and nights, and passion. Oh yes, definitely passion.”
She blinked. “Stop it.”
“Desire, Francesca. Lust…”
“Mr. Thorne!”
“What do you want me to say? Do you want me to lie to you and pretend we are two halves of a whole? Two sides of the same coin? Two souls amid a sea of—of…?”
“Run out of metaphors, Mr. Thorne?” she mocked. “No, I don’t want you to lie to me. I know we are nothing of the sort. Let us just say we are strangers in a storm, and our acquaintance, I hope, will be mercifully brief.”
He laughed. “Then we agree on something, Miss Greentree. Neither of us believes in destiny. But desire…now that’s another matter.”
Francesca made a sound and turned away. But her foot slipped on the wet ground, and she stumbled and began to fall. He caught her and swung her around, and she cannoned into him. The sensation was like fire. Somehow he kept his feet. For a moment they stood clasped together, both too shaken to move, and then she lifted her head, her eyes very wide.
“I want to kiss you, Miss Greentree,” he said.