With This Kiss: Part Two by Eloisa James Page A

out when you were on leave. You would have answered my letters. You would have kissed me by the river, or any other time when we were together since I turned sixteen. You would have shown signs of desire, if not love.”
    She was starting to sound pitiful, so she rallied her voice and straightened her back again. “You never have, and I accepted that long ago. But now we are going to be married, and I think we might learn to love each other in a different way, over time. I’m willing to try, as long as you don’t lie to me about it! ”
    “But, Grace—”
    She couldn’t bear to hear him say anything, not just then, so she sprang to her feet and cut him off. “Please, Colin, could we not speak of this again?”
    “I will not make that promise,” he said flatly.
    “I’m humiliated enough by the fact I wrote you those letters. Here we are. Almost married. Please, can we start afresh? I believe you when you say you are not in love with Lily.”
    “Your sister is a silly widgeon,” Colin said bluntly. He looked very angry. There were white dents next to his mouth. “I care for her, but I am not in love with her.”
    “Then I’m sure we will get along together as well as we can. Just—just don’t lie to me, Colin. I can’t bear it.” She ignored his characterization of her sister: he certainly hadn’t thought Lily was a silly widgeon when he was waltzing with her.
    He seemed to be frozen, his knuckles white where he gripped the chair arms. “Am I not allowed to say that I love you?”
    “I know that you love me,” Grace said impatiently. “I love everyone in your family, too. Don’t be obtuse, Colin. I just don’t want you to pretend to love me that way, like lovers. The way you might have loved Lily, if things were different.”
    “I do not like being told what to do.”
    “I’m not telling you. I’m begging you.” Then she changed her mind. “Yes, I am telling you! And I think I have the right to that command. I wrote you for years, Colin. For years. You wrote me back perhaps a line or two, whenever it was convenient. I have earned the right to demand this one thing.”
    She could almost see his jaw grinding, but he kept his mouth shut.
    “We’ll just start over,” she said, waving her arm even though he couldn’t see her. “We can earn each other’s love, the way people do who don’t have our sort of past.”
    “You want me to woo you?”
    He needn’t sound so horrified.
    “Of course not,” Grace said, her voice a bit hurt, despite her bravado. “I know I’m not… I’m not the woman you planned to woo. There’s no need to coddle me.”
    “You deserve to be wooed!”
    “Yes, well, I’ve had that experience. John wooed me for almost a year.”
    His scowl was truly ferocious now.
    Grace was swept by an overwhelming sense of panic. This wasn’t going the way she hoped. She didn’t want Colin to think about how pitiful she was. The last thing she wanted to do was remind him of her pathetic infatuation with him.
    Obviously the last thing he wanted was to woo her, a woman he’d— A thought struck her. He made love to her under the influence of laudanum. What if he didn’t desire her without it? When she sat in his lap, he soothed her as if she were a little girl again, distressed by a bruised knee.
    It was a stark contrast to the way he acted in the carriage.
    She hadn’t thought the question of marriage through properly. She couldn’t bear a life of this humiliation. It was impossible. Her heart would break.
    She simply couldn’t do it.
    The very thought of making love to him when he could actually see her, when he knew who she was, made her ill. Given the way he said she deserved to be wooed , he might even try to do that, to say sugary things that would never echo the delirious joy she saw in his face when he danced with Lily.
    No.
    She must have been mad to contemplate it.
    “I have changed my mind,” she stated, moving toward the door. He turned his head, following the