Your Darkest Dream (Blackwood & Friends #2)

Chapter Twenty-Two

Chapter Twenty-Two

Nate was decidedly nervous.

It was a foreign emotion for him, wholly unwelcome.

But she didn't have to look so damn beautiful and adorable as she stood in the centre of The Den's receiving courtyard, her head tilted back to the ceiling as she pivoted in a circle. "I had no idea such a thing existed in England," she breathed, her eyes so large and mercurial. She staggered to a clumsy halt, shading her eyes with a hand as she scrunched her nose and squinted up into the frosted glass, slanted roof. "I have read about this before," she mused, almost to herself, then she plunked her hands on her hips, her already rumpled skirts beyond repair, and her chin dipped so that she could regard him with an enchanted smile. "I have seen sketches from my father's books in his study. I remember because I thought it was such an intriguing concept, to have all the rooms surrounding the courtyard."

"They aren't rooms, Bee," he told her impassively. How they had even managed to disengage from each other long enough to come upstairs he would never know, but he had brought her here for a reason... even if that reason had vacated the premises of his brain indefinitely while she continued to look lovely enough to eat whenever he saw her. Her soft yellow gown was not exceptionally notable other than the fact that it was now irreparably creased and dusty from his passionate administrations earlier, but her hair was wildly unbound as it fell down her back, her cheeks still flushed from the last time he had made love to her, her lips swollen and reddened from the abrasiveness of his short beard, her sensitive skin of her neck and shoulders also showing evidence of this. She looked like a woman come alive and with Blanche's already outgoing disposition, the combination was deadly to his wellbeing. "Well, not all of them anyway."

"Whatever they are, it reminds me of Andalusian architecture, touches of Moorish even. Look at the arches, and the open courtyard." Again, she was looking at him as if it were the most exciting thing she had even beheld before.

"Suddenly we are a historian on architecture, Blanche? When did this happen?"

"I can read, Mr Southill." She gave him a prim glare and then studied the courtyard she was standing in the midst of more closely, a jaunty smile on her face all of sudden. "And not much else. Though I am certainly no expert. However, I have never seen the likes before in England." Her smile was radiant then. "And it is yours."

She returned to him and wrapped her arms around his waist, chin on his chest as she stared up at him. Resistance was a futile endeavour when it came to her and Nate ran his hands through her tangled hair, pressing into the small of her back. "It is ours, Bee."

She was looking at him with trust and adoration, her eyes so vibrantly grey and blue his soul was crushed. Being with her, holding her, loving her, made him feel like different person. She accepted his past, the parts of him that were broken and ugly, and though she couldn't fix it, she made him want to try by making a future that was right and good.

He hardly recognised himself. A month ago, he had held on to the belief that by being alone he would atone for his sins, for the parts of his darkness; that he would never be deserving of a woman like Blanche Blackwood, not only because of her title and class, but because of who she was as a person. He had controlled his relationships in the past, especially with women, coordinating and designating their roles as if he could manoeuvre the need for them in and out of his life as casually as walking in and out of his room. But Blanche wasn't like anyone he had met before.

Blanche had raged against a man who had dared to assault her. She had demanded a wardrobe for her dog and made sure to dress it every day to match her own. She lifted her fists even when her arms were shaking and her hair was sticking to the sides of her face from exhaustion. She had crushed an éclair into his face when he had told her about his crime. She had come alive when she had held a pistol in her hand and fired one for the first time. She had danced with a stick atop a ruined stone wall as if there was nothing wrong with the world.