The Governess Affair

of her pleasure with his own. He let out a hoarse cry while she was still shuddering in the aftermath of her orgasm.
    They sank to the mattress afterward. His arms came around her, warm and comforting. This was right —precisely what she’d needed.
    He cupped her cheek.
    It was a moment of precious, perfect togetherness. No wonder they referred to the act as intimacy . She had never felt so closely entangled with anyone before. His breaths were hers. His body…
    She opened her eyes and looked into his dark gaze.
    He wasn’t smiling at her. If anything, his intensity had grown. “There now,” he said softly. “ Now you understand why I didn’t want to consummate the marriage.”

Chapter Nine
    S HE HAD BEEN ALMOST LIQUID , molded against Hugo’s chest. But he had no sooner spoken then all the tension crept back into her limbs. She stiffened atop him, then pulled away.
    “Hugo. It doesn’t have to be—”
    He set his fingers across her lips before she could give voice to his deepest wants. “It does.”
    “That meant something to you. Something real.”
    “Of course it did.” He sat up and took her hand. “I won’t tell falsehoods about this. What we have is a species of love.”
    She let out a breath in surprise.
    “A transitory, short-lived one,” he explained. “A perfect sunrise—seen once, remembered always. Never duplicated.”
    “Never duplicated?” Her fingers bit into his. “Why ever not?”
    “Because tomorrow you’ll go to your farm. And I—”
    “It doesn’t have to be that way.” Her hair was in wild, chestnut disarray around her shoulders and her eyes were wide and gray.
    Hugo moved a lock of her hair aside. “You can’t stay with me, Serena.” His words sounded harsh. “Recall who I work for.”
    She blanched, but hesitated only a moment before raising her chin. “You could—”
    “I could what? Come with you? I suppose I could, at that. But I won’t. I have five hundred pounds waiting on the outcome of this affair with the duke. That’s the only chance a pugilist like me has to come into that much money. With that, I can truly become someone. If I go with you—”
    “You are someone.” She frowned.
    You’ll never amount to anything. Hugo let out a breath. “Not enough.”
    “You are. Hugo, if you’d only—”
    “It’s not enough,” he repeated grimly. He pushed away from her and swung his feet over the edge of the bed. “Do you hear? It’s not enough for me.”
    “Not enough what? ”
    Such a reasonable question.
    “Because you’re intelligent and successful,” Serena was saying, “and you’re a good man. That thing with the pins—it was lovely. You have a way of putting me at ease.”
    “That’s nothing,” he said. “My mother was always doing things like that for me. She gave me a magic rock when I was young, and told me if I slept with it under my pillow, nothing would happen on the next day that I couldn’t bear.”
    Beside him, Serena sucked in a breath. But he wasn’t ashamed of telling her the truth. He had suffered through days that had made him doubt his mother’s stone.
    He brushed those memories away. “When I was older, she took an old pickle jar to the park. She told me to fill it with all the most important things. Then she buried it deep, deep, where my father couldn’t find it no matter what he did.”
    It had been drizzling, but he’d scarcely felt the wet.
    Do you have a jar, Mama?
    She’d smiled and shook her head.
    We should make one for you.
    Her smile had fixed in place. Then she’d let out a sigh. I’ve buried too many children, she’d finally said. I’m not burying anything else that matters. Never again.
    “Your mother sounds like a lovely woman,” Serena said beside him.
    “My mother told me I would be somebody.” It had been reflexive soothing on her part—sheer contradiction after his father’s tirades.
    “Maybe you should listen to her.”
    You can be anyone, she’d told him, over and over.
    A rich man? he’d asked.
    The richest coal miner’s son in all of England, she promised.
    “When I left home,” he finally said, “I was fourteen. I’d gone into the mines for the first time three days before, and there had been an accident. A little cave-in, nothing serious, but I was caught in the dark for five hours with nothing to do but imagine my air slowly being used up. After I got out, I said I wasn’t going back.” He inhaled. “My father disagreed. He broke my nose and three ribs with a