Page 89 of Rival to Resist
“Do you not understand?” he said, looking half-mad. “I have nothing to offer you, Caroline. No title, no seat in Parliament, not even £300 in land. And the one thing Icouldoffer you has been taken as well.”
“What is that?”
His gaze flickered, and he swallowed. “I cannot even sacrifice the election to persuade you of the genuineness of my feelings.”
She stared at him, trying to fathom what he was saying.
She had assumed he was mourning the loss of the election. Of his dreams.
But it was something far deeper than that. It was his very worth.
“Frederick,” she said. “You are more than the property you possess.”
He broke his gaze from hers, looking at nothing in particular, his jaw working. “It does not feel that way.”
She stepped toward him, and this time, he did not retreat. “Do you think I care for any of those things? Ihavea title. I have had a husband in Parliament. I have land. Do you know what I have not had? What I have never even dreamed of until now?”
His throat bobbed, and she could not tell whether the droplets of water on his lashes were from the sea or from tears.
“Someone who sees me,” she said. “Who speaks to me as an equal. Who asks for my thoughts and considers them seriously. Someone who takes my breathandmakes the next breath feel worth taking. Who will laugh with me one minute, argue with me the next, and then kiss me until I cannot remember my own name.” She took his wet face in her hands. “You, Frederick. You are what I never dared dream of. You are what I want. Nothing more. Nothing less.” The truth spilled out of her, frightening, undeniable, beyond recall.
His eyes searched hers for a moment, full of painful hope.
Their mouths came together in a crash of salt and hunger. In the next moment, she was swept into his arms as he strode out of the water, his drenched chest pressed against hers.
Briny spray kicked up around them with every step. Her hand slid into his sea-soaked hair, and the world narrowed to the taste of him.
He lowered her until her feet found purchase on the sand, their mouths breaking apart.
His fingers laced through hers, and his arm stole around her shoulders. He pulled her to him, bringing her close, and Caroline closed her eyes, letting the moment fold around her.
But beneath the warmth of it all was a niggling unease. Tomorrow, she would speak with Oswald, and she did not know what she would say, did not know how to feel toward him.
Would he sense the change in her without even a word being spoken?
She might be frustrated with him, but she wanted to believe there was an explanation for it all, that beneath these actions she could not understand, her friend was still there—that he still wanted the same things she did.
Tomorrow would tell.
For now, though, Frederick needed her, and she him.
22
FREDERICK
When Frederick approached The Silver Pilchard an hour later, he was still wet and disheveled—and even more exhausted.
Never had he experienced a day of such fluctuating emotion—the impatience of the morning as he waited to see Caroline, the devastation of Oswald’s revelation at the church, and then the beach…
He had gone there to see Caroline, but the longer he had waited for her, the more he had begun to despair.
He was going mad, and the cold water had been the only thing to shock him out of his thoughts.
And then Caroline had come.
She had come to find him broken, and she had put him back together, piece by piece, word by word, kiss by kiss.
He opened the door and stepped inside, wrapped up in his thoughts. Caroline had told him the reason for Mrs. Tonkin’s sudden shift toward him. Caroline had been upset, but Frederick had been relieved. Mrs. Tonkin had been his first friend in Trelowen. Losing her friendship had been abigger blow than he had admitted to himself, so knowing the cause was consolation.
