She took it as Do go on, please. “Truly. People just naturally want to please you. Take Rufus and Finn. You don’t know them well enough to see it yet. But I do, and those boys worship the ground you limp on.”
“Those boys just need a man to look up to.”
“Well, they couldn’t have chosen a better one.” She wreathed her arms around his neck.
Cool water swirled around them, emphasizing the heat where their bodies met. Right now, he felt closer to her than ever, and still he wanted more. Every cell in his body craved that perfect union of bodies they’d achieved under the willow tree. But if he ignored the frantic clamor in his loins and took time to hear the insistent, steady message of his heart . . . simply holding her was lovely. Peaceful. Right.
“If I’m such a remarkable leader,” he said, “why is it I can’t bring you in line?”
“Because you don’t want to. You like me this way.” She smiled the smug little smile of a woman who was utterly convinced she was right.
But she was wrong. He didn’t like her this way.
He thought he might love her this way.
Damn. Love. It wasn’t something Bram had much experience handling. The very idea of it seemed dangerous, unsafe. So he dealt with it the same way he treated other hazardous, explosive things. He tucked it away in a cool, dark place inside him—to be examined and measured at some later time. When his hands weren’t trembling, and his loins weren’t aching with unspent lust. And his heart wasn’t pounding so damned loud.
“I’m going to marry you,” he said.
“Oh, Bram.” Her features screwed into an expression of dismay.
“No, no. Don’t make that face. Every time I propose to you, you make that twisty, unhappy face. It wears on a man’s confidence.”
“I might be making a different, much more pleasant face—if only you were planning to stay. Not just marry me before you leave and get on with the rest of your life.” She glanced out toward the open sea. “There’s a peculiar curse to residing in a holiday locale. Friendships are abundant, but brief. Ladies stay for a month or two, then they go home. Just when I’ve grown close to people, they leave. It’s bearable, for a friendship.” She eyed him. “Perhaps even for a scandalous, clandestine affair. But a marriage?”
“I can’t offer to bring you with me. The way you describe your life here sounds rather like life on campaign. With one notable difference. Just when I’ve grown close to people, they die.” His own mother had been the first in that succession, but far from the last. He could never put Susanna at risk.
“Perhaps,” she said slowly, teasing her fingers through the hair at his nape, “you and I could grow very, very close. You could promise not to leave. And I could promise not to die. Wouldn’t that be a welcome change for us both?”
He sighed. “I can promise to come back. Eventually.”
“From war? Bram, no one can make such a promise. I wish I understood why returning to field command is so important to you. Is it just a matter of proving you can?”
“Partly.”
“But not entirely.”
She looked up at him, those patient blue eyes sparkling in the night. If he couldn’t talk to her, he couldn’t talk to anyone.
“I just don’t have anything else. I’m an infantry officer, Susanna. It’s all I’ve ever been, all I’ve ever wanted since I was a boy. I wanted it so badly, I left Cambridge the month I turned twenty-one. That was when I could finally access the small legacy my grandfather left me, and I used it to purchase my first commission. My father made a show of being angry, but I know he was secretly pleased that I’d done it on my own. I never relied on his influence. I paid my dues, rose up through the ranks. I made him proud. When news reached me of his death—” He broke off, unsure how to continue.
Beneath the water’s surface, her hand found his. “I’m so sorry, Bram. I can’t even imagine how devastating it must have been.”
She couldn’t imagine, and he didn’t know how to explain. Bram thought of his father’s last letter. He’d received it through the usual mail, a full week after the express informing him of the major general’s death. The letter’s contents were nothing out of the ordinary. But Bram would never forget the closing. Don’t feel rushed in writing back, his father had written. I know you’ve been writing too many letters, of late.
His father had obviously learned of Badajoz, where the allied forces had taken the garrison at human costs so great, Wellington himself wept over the carnage. And therefore he’d known Bram was writing condolence letters by the dozen, to the surviving families of his fallen men—to the point where his hand cramped up and his vocabulary went dry as the inkwell. There were only so many words for “regret.”
His father hadn’t offered any hollow words of comfort or tried to impose meaning on senseless death. He’d simply let Bram know he understood.
Bram couldn’t voice what it meant, to know they’d reached a place where they understood each other as men, as fellow officers. As equals. If he retired from command and became just another privileged lord loafing around England . . . He wasn’t sure his father would still understand that man. Bram wasn’t sure he would understand himself.
“Losing my father was hard,” he said. “Damned hard. But what it made it a little easier was telling myself I’d continue making him proud. Carry the family banner forward. Keep his legacy alive.” He released a breath. “That lasted all of a few months, and then I was shot. Couldn’t be so lucky as to have a glorious, noble death on the battlefield. Now I’m just another lamed soldier with no prospects of returning to command.”
“Oh, Bram.” She brushed his face with her free hand, pushing aside drops of salt water on either cheek. He feared they weren’t all from the sea.
“Sir Lewis was my very last chance. I’ve written to every retired general I could imagine, asking for a good word. I’ve felt out every colonel who might be in need of a lieutenant, hoping one of them would put in a request. Nothing. No one wants me like this.”
The night’s silence was profound.
“Well, I do.”
At her words, his heart seized. He clutched her tight with both arms, as if this tiny cove were a bottomless ocean, and she a life preserver.
“I want you like this,” she said again. Bending her head, she kissed the underside of his jaw. Her lips lingered there for a hot, sensuous moment. Then she ran her tongue down his neck and brought her body flush with his. “Just as you are. Right here, right now.”