Page 90 of A Modest Independence

“And you’re not easy to surprise, are you?” She smiled at him. “I shall consider it an accomplishment.”

What she would consider it was an unmitigated success. She’d never given a gentleman a gift before. It simply wasn’t done. Not by unmarried ladies. Who knew how such things were meant to proceed? Her pulse had been pounding since she climbed into the gharry, the little voice in her head warning her that she was risking too much. Revealing too much.

But it was dark and they were alone together, side by side in the little cab, their legs touching through the vast thickness of her petticoats, crinoline, and linen skirts. She took the small box from his hands and removed the elegant little cravat pin. It was nothing more than a single sapphire chip atop a needle of gold.

He cleared his throat. “The same stone, did you say?”

“That’s what Mr. Chowdhury told me. I trust it wasn’t just a ruse to get me to buy both pieces.” She leaned closer to him, the sapphire glittering between her gloved fingers. “May I?” When he nodded, she reached up to his throat and carefully stuck the pin through the folds of his neckcloth. “There.” Her hands brushed over his shirt and waistcoat. “Not too garish at all.”

Tom stared down at her. When she would have pulled away from him to move back to her seat, he stopped her by the simple expedient of framing her face with his hands. “Do you have any notion how difficult you make this?”

A blush rose warmly in her cheeks. “What?”

“Being with you.”

Her own hands rested flat on his chest. She could feel his heart thumping heavily beneath them. Almost as heavily as her own. “Because I gave you a gift?”

“Because you’re you. Because I can’t be near you without losing all of my good sense.”

“You’ve behaved perfectly well since we left Egypt.”

He bent his head to hers. “When I brushed your hair in your cabin? When I kissed your hand?”

Jenny stretched up to nuzzle her nose against his. “Both of which were lovely.”

“You’re lovely,” he said. And then he leaned down and kissed her, his lips capturing hers so softly and so sweetly that she could do nothing more than melt against him and kiss him back.

The gharry-wallah kept the horse to a walk. Anything faster would have been unconscionable in the heat. It gave Tom ample time to enfold Jenny into his strong embrace, to press tender kisses to her cheeks and temple, and to murmur to her the most delicious things she’d ever heard in her life.

“My dear girl,” he said. “You’ll drive me mad with wanting you.”

She slid her arms around his neck, returning his kisses with anything but passivity. “I don’t care,” she murmured back. “I don’t care.”

Which wasn’t true in the slightest, but in that moment—safe in his arms—nothing of the world seemed to matter. She had no thought for respectability or for keeping up appearances. There was only Tom and an ache for him so acute that nothing would do but to kiss him and hold him and burrow deeper into his embrace.

He pressed his face into her hair. “You will if I harm your reputation any further. We both will.”

She smoothed a hand over the back of his head. “I hate gossip, I do. And I’ve no desire to be ostracized, but really…I can’t see that any of it matters much anymore.”

Tom slowly drew back from her to look her in the eye. His hair was rumpled, his face flushed high at his cheekbones. “What are you saying?”

“Only that we’ve already suffered our fair share of talk. Knowing that, what difference can it possibly make if we—”

“What?” He searched her face, his fingers tightening at her waist, pressing into the hard bones of her corset. “Surely you’re not suggesting—”

“Not that.” A rush of heat swept up Jenny’s neck, setting her face aflame. “I’m not lost to all propriety.” Her hands slid down to the front of his waistcoat. “All I’m suggesting is that…” She plucked at one of his buttons. “Perhaps we might consider traveling to Delhi in the same way we traveled across Egypt?”

“Alone. In a private compartment.”

It was the very thing she’d resolved against that morning on the deck of the Bentinck, the shock of Mrs. Plank’s accusations still fresh in her mind. Gossip was dangerous to a single woman, even more so to one traveling alone in a strange land. Jenny had promised herself then she’d do nothing to exacerbate the situation.

But now, in the darkened cab of the gharry, her lips still swollen from Tom’s kisses, such concerns carried no weight at all.

“Yes,” she said. And then again, more softly, “Yes. I want to be with you like this. I’m not ready for it all to end.”

“Nor am I, but…we’re playing with fire, Jenny. This attraction between us is strong. Stronger than anything I’ve ever experienced.”

“Which is why it’s no use fighting it all the time.”