Page 38 of A Second Chance for Love

“I want—well, I want—Christ,” he growled, his hard chest rumbling against hers as he held her painfully tight. “I want you, Oona. I know it’s too bloody fast, but I feel like—” He gave a growl of frustration. “I thought I was good with words,” he said wryly, “But I guess that’s only when it comes to pounds and pence. What I want to say,” he hesitated. “What I want to say is that I want to see you again when this business with Venable is done. Beekman will take you back to London and I’ve got a lovely little place where you could stay while you considered, er, things.”

He wanted her to be his mistress. Oona squeezed her eyes shut; God, it was the most tempting offer she’d had in her entire life.

But then Katie’s face rose up before her. To be with Juss would be to deny her daughter. Already she only saw Katie mere days every few months. She couldn’t pretend she didn’t exist.

“Oona?” He pulled away and his hand tipped her chin up, until she couldn’t avoid looking at him. His expression was uncertain. How had she managed to make such a powerful, confident man look so vulnerable?

Oona swallowed; she refused to hurt him now—not when they could still spend a few more hours together. No, tomorrow or the day after or the day after that would be soon enough to take the light from his eyes.

Oona forced a smile onto her face. “I will go back to London,” she said, careful not to lie. It was a small, ultimately pointless, distinction, but one that was important to her.

“And you will let me take care of you—just until you make your decision?”

“Yes. I will let you take care of me until I’ve made my decision.” I’m sorry, Juss. So sorry.

His lips curved until he was grinning. “I shall make you a happy woman, Oona. I promise you that—well, you won’t regret it.” He pulled her close. “I—” His embrace grew painful and the very air around them shimmered with expectation. But then his arm loosened and his body seemed to deflate. “I look forward to it,” he said lamely, his voice so sad she wondered what it was he’d really wanted to say.

∞∞∞

Juss was barely a half day away from Compton Abbey when it started to snow. Again.

The carriage slowed down when the sky opened up, creeping along until it finally turned off the road and then ground to a halt in front of a tiny posting inn.

Juss knew what the postilion would say before he even opened the window.

“Sorry, guv, but we ain’t allowed to keep goin’ in this wevver.” He cut a significant look at the sky, as if to draw Juss’s attention to the thick white flakes falling like leaves. “We can wait ‘ere and if it clears up in an hour, mebby go a piece. But ovverwise,” he shrugged. “Well, I’m finkin’ we’ll be spendin’ tonight ‘ere.”

It didn’t clear up in an hour, nor two or three. Juss took one of the four rooms the tiny inn had to offer and parked his arse in a chair, his eyes riveted to the scene outside the window, his brain somewhere else.

He’d been a bloody fool to leave Oona at the Cantrell's farm yesterday morning. Not just because of the foul weather—which had meant yet another night in a roadside inn last night—but because of the way she’d looked when he’d kissed her goodbye. She’d looked deeply, profoundly, sad, even though her mouth had been smiling. Juss had seen it, but had been too much of a bloody coward to ask what was bothering her.

Because you know what was bothering her: You, a man so bent on revenge you would leave her alone to pursue it. You should have gone with her back to London. You are a fool.

Juss couldn’t argue with that.

Not long after he’d left her—maybe not even an hour—he’d suddenly realized his hunger for vengeance had disappeared, replaced by another hunger: for Oona.

Like a sleepwalker who’d awakened from a long nightmare, he couldn’t understand what had been so compelling about destroying Venable—a man who was already doing a fine job of destroying himself—that he would leave a woman he’d been thinking about for years.

There was no point in returning to Compton Abbey, a place he certainly had no desire to occupy or even own—even though he did. No, he would call in the notes through his man of business and then put the place for sale. And that would end this dismal chapter of his life.

Juss smiled like an idiot as he gazed unseeingly out the window. And then he could return to London—to Oona—and begin another chapter. One that would hopefully lead to a more satisfactory ending to his story.

Fifteen

Oona looked up from her needlework, her eyes immediately going to Katie’s strawberry blond curls. It had been three weeks since she’d come to Ightham, a tiny village not far from the school that Katie now attended as a day student, but Oona still could not believe that she had her daughter to herself—not just for a two-day visit, but permanently.

“How much longer, Mama?” Katie asked, looking up from her work.

Oona glanced at the clock on the mantel. “Only until three, darling.”

Katie groaned. “It’s Christmas Eve! I’ll wager none of my friends from school are doing sums today.”

“I hope you will not wager, Katherine Anne.”

“Oh, Mama.”

“Fifteen minutes,” she said firmly, smiling to herself when Katie heaved a huge sigh but turned back to her remaining schoolwork.