Lord Day and Lady Night

30. The Morning After

Lord Patrick Day groaned and slowly opened his eyes—only to come face-to-face with a sleeping Amy, her lips approximately two inches from his.

He froze.

Slowly, very slowly, Amy started to shift, and her lashes lifted. A pair of beautiful green eyes gazed into his.

"Hello dere," she whispered.

He swallowed. "Hello."

Waking up with someone in the morning...someone special. Was this what it felt like? He tried imagining what it might be like to wake up like this in the future, beside a proper lady with at least seventy-seven generations of honorable ancestors, someone eligible to be his future wife. He tried really, really hard. He tried so hard his brain bent! But no matter how hard he tried, all he could see was the girl in front of him and the light sparkling in her emerald eyes.

Amy glanced around at the two of them and the bed, and a corner of her mouth quirked. "Seems like dis is becoming a 'abit."

"Ehem. Well." Trying to find a spot to look at that wasn't tempting him, Lord Patrick's eyes flitted from left to right. "Seems like it." Then, giving up the struggle, his eyes found hers and his gaze suddenly turned fierce. "And...somehow, I can't bring myself to regret it."

A blush tinged her cheeks. "My, my. I must be good. Mayhaps I should raise me rates and ask for more mon—"

In a flash, his finger fell upon her lips, silencing her.

"Don't. Don't you ever mention that again. Not here and now." Letting his finger slide sideways across her soft skin, he cupped her cheek. "Not between us."

What the bleeding dratted heck was he doing? There was no "us"! There could never, ever, ever be an "us"! There couldn't even be a "me and her, tangentially connected"! And yet, and yet...

He didn't take his finger away.

Something flared up in her eyes. Pain? Warmth? Fear? Longing? Or maybe a mixture of all of these.

How could she suddenly be even more beautiful?

Before he knew what he was doing, Lord Patrick Day had leaned forward and placed a soft kiss at the corner of her mouth.

You just kissed a lady of the night! You, Lord Patrick Day, descendant of a noble line tracing its roots back to the days of William the Conqueror, just kissed a lady of the night! Did you go insane?

Yes, he probably did. And he didn't regret it one bit.

The feeling of her soft skin was more intoxicating than anything in his life. And with Titus as a best friend, "most intoxicaticating" was saying quite something.

"Miss Amy..."

Reaching out, she touched his face. "Amy. Just Amy."

He stiffened. "I couldn't possibly!"

She giggled. "We've slept together twice now, and ye can't call me by me first name?"

"That's not the point! Calling a lady by her first name, that..."

That was something taboo. Something special. Something done among people of good breeding only, if ever at all, between...between a man and his...

He swallowed, and nodded. "Amy."

Right then and there, he felt something inside his heart shift, and settle in place. Intensely, he studied her face. Did she feel the same? Did something deep inside her move and—

Her stomach rumbled.

***

A moment or two passed in silence, as Amy tried her best to sink through the bed into the floor.