With This Kiss: Part Two by Eloisa James Read Free Book Online Page B

“Grace, please. Tell me.”
    She said something against his waistcoat.
    To hell with his eyesight. Whether he lost it or not, he had to see her eyes. He released her and raised his arms to his bandage.
    “No!” She shrieked it, small hands grabbing his wrists with surprising strength. “What are you doing?”
    “I need to see you,” he said hoarsely. “I have to see in your eyes the pain I caused you.”
    She pulled, hard, so he allowed his arms to descend. “You didn’t,” she said, so quietly he could hardly hear it. Her hands slid down to hold his.
    “What?” His heart beat in his throat, hard. The feeling of her hands in his… it made him crave more of her, all of her. “I didn’t—in the carriage?” He thought back to the bath. “I know we did.”
    “This is so embarrassing.”
    But Colin was feeling a faint hope. Perhaps it wasn’t quite as bad as he’d thought. “Did we make love, Grace, or did I take you forcibly?”
    He heard her take a huge breath, and then she said, “We made love but… but you were making love to Lily and I was making love to you!” Then she burst into tears again.
    He scooped her up into his arms, holding her against his chest. She weighed nothing, this girl who had captured his heart. He waited until she sniffed, rather inelegantly, and then said, “Grace, I can’t see which way to walk.”
    “Do let me down. This is silly.” She began to struggle, so he tightened his arms.
    “Which direction shall I walk?”
    A little shudder went through her body. “There’s a chair ahead of you,” she replied, her voice thick with tears. “Just walk a few steps and I’ll tell you when you can put me down.”
    Put her down? He walked forward until she said, “The chair is directly in front of you.” He tested the distance with his knee, then turned about, and sat down.
    “You could have fallen!” she gasped.
    “I’ve been practicing for almost six weeks.”
    She moved again, as if to struggle free, but he didn’t relax his arms. “Grace.”
    “Let me go,” she whispered.
    “No.” A great, weary sense of peace was coming over him. He’d done something very wrong, and he would spend his entire life trying to make up for it. He’d taken Grace away from McIngle in the worst possible fashion. He’d ruined her, in the old-fashioned meaning of the word. But he hadn’t broken his own sense of honor, and apparently, he hadn’t raped her.
    He didn’t even like thinking about the word. Ravished her, perhaps, but not raped.
    And she was his now. It satisfied a deeply primal side of him, which frankly didn’t give a damn about McIngle. All he truly cared about was the fact that he had hurt Grace. He had made her cry.
    He dropped a kiss on her hair, an entirely inadequate apology. “We’ll have to be married as soon as we can.”
    She sniffled again. “I can’t marry you, Colin.”
    “Yes, you can. And you will.” There was no question in his mind about that.
    “I cannot.”
    “Because of McIngle?” A hint of steel dropped into his voice. He should be sorry for the fellow. But in truth he wasn’t sorry for him. He wanted to kill him for having the pretension to ask Grace for her hand.
    “No.”
    His body relaxed. “Why, then?” His mind supplied a hundred reasons, and he added quickly, “I know you are probably deeply shocked by what happened in the carriage, Grace. We needn’t… I’m so sorry.”
    She started crying again.
    “We don’t have to do it again,” he added, feeling rather desperate. “Not until you feel differently about me.”
    “I’m sorry,” she said, her voice cracking. “I thought… I hoped you knew who I was.”
    Colin frowned, trying to figure out what she meant.
    “In the carriage, I mean. If I’d known you thought I was Lily, I would never have allowed you to touch me.”
    He had forgotten that she had said something about Lily. He adjusted Grace’s curves into the crook of his arm, struggling to ignore the fact that her