With This Kiss

he had said it.
    He should let her go to a decent man, a man who wasn’t as mad as he was. What was he doing, taking her? Seducing her? Marrying a woman like her, given the kind of damaged man he was?
    He forced his fingers to uncurl and pulled his hand away. “You’re right,” he said, the word burning his chest. “You deserve better than I.”
    “Mmmm,” she said, and then he felt the light touch of her fingers on his neck. “I like the fact that you knew we were having a conversation, even if you didn’t contribute very often.”
    “I was too much of a coward.”
    “You were in pain.” Her fingers slipped up his neck to his cheek. “I have no idea how you survived the pain and guilt, Colin. You are so strong.”
    There was a sudden stinging in his eyes, and he spared a second to thank God for the bandage. “No,” he said, his voice miraculously steady. “I am not strong. You need to understand that if we are to be married, even though I don’t see how either of us can back out now, Grace. We made love in that carriage, and the fact won’t disappear simply because you wish it would. I ruined you; I took your virginity. You had no choice in the matter.”
    “I meant to seduce you,” she said, her voice barely a thread of sound. “Or announce that you had compromised me, if I didn’t find the courage to actually do anything.”
    His mouth fell open. “You did?”
    “You didn’t wonder why we were alone in the carriage?”
    He hadn’t had time for that sort of logic; emotions had blown about them as wildly as a winter storm. But now she mentioned it… “The duchess allowed you to travel without a chaperone?”
    “I forced her. If I changed my mind, we planned to announce that I had accompanied you as any family friend would have done, and that would be that.”
    “Her Grace agreed?”
    “She did. I told her…” The words trailed away and her fingers left his cheeks, an unwelcome coolness following.
    “That you wanted me .” He shouldn’t be astounded, and yet he was. “Even though you knew what a coward I am?”
    She sat up abruptly, the bed shifting under her weight. “You are no coward, Colin.”
    “But I am.” It had to be said. It all had to be said, if only to Grace, those things he had told her silently in the night, but never put on paper. “I was afraid, day and night. I still dream about it. Sometimes I think I hear a cannonball that doesn’t exist, even though I’m merely walking down the street.”
    “And you felt guilty that you weren’t injured, that you weren’t killed,” she added.
    He was right. She had known. “Yes. And like an ass, like a coward, still afraid.”
    A small hand cupped his cheek. “Any man not afraid in the middle of battle would be mad.”
    “It’s not manly,” he muttered, thinking that he would never be able to explain how he felt, not to a woman.
    Out of nowhere, soft lips descended on his, brushing a kiss. It was the first kiss she’d ever given him . He could feel the joy of that melting some of the self-hatred that consumed him.
    “I think you’re very manly,” she whispered against his lips. “Your medals show how brave you are, Colin. You saved your men’s lives, again and again.”
    His throat was too tight to answer.
    “A man who was untouched by the violence and death around him would not be a man, but some sort of animal. An uncaring animal.”
    How did she know to say that? He had looked at his friend Philip sometimes, at the way he would tell a joke five minutes after a sailor died at his feet, see his blue eyes untroubled, clear… and think just that very thing. Philip was like a wolf, a predator who killed with impunity.
    Grace’s next question eliminated all his interest in that thought. “Are you going to take off your clothes this time?” Her voice was an enchanting mixture of timidity and curiosity.
    “I didn’t take my clothing off in the carriage?” Of course he hadn’t. His voice rasping, he said, “I didn’t treat you as you deserved, Grace. What an ass I was!”
    “Because you didn’t take your shirt off?” Laughter threaded through her words, making the pain in his chest ease. “ Or your breeches,” she added. “I had to button up your placket myself.”
    “Unprincipled,” he muttered, one hand running down her back and pulling her ruined gown still lower, down around her hips. “Degenerate, repulsive, disgusting.”
    She giggled. Grace. His solemn, sweet Grace. He thought for a