Free With This Kiss: Part Two by Eloisa James Page B

an intelligent, funny, and utterly sweet woman—because he couldn’t see outside his own stupid head.
    It took painful, slow thinking, but he came to some conclusions.
    One was that he couldn’t take laudanum, not unless he wanted to dream about making love to Grace, only to wake with tears on his cheeks. A second was that he would rather die than have Grace come to him out of pity. He had to rebuff her, for her own good. Even if he spent his life knowing what an ass he’d been, mourning her, it was better than tying her to a husk of a man.
    He discovered that making his way to the floor and pushing himself straight-armed up from the floor, over and over and over, allowed him to doze.
    He pushed up a hundred times. A fortnight later, two hundred times.
    He could nap, but he couldn’t sleep through the night. Finally, when he hadn’t slept for two nights, he took laudanum in desperation. And again, he found himself in the ballroom.
    This time, Grace was sitting at the side of the room. She was the most beautiful woman there, her skin like sweet cream, her hair glowing like banked coals. And none of the fools around her saw it.
    He did. Their host introduced them, and then he finally touched her hand. She looked up at him with surprised innocence, and he realized that in this dream, she didn’t know him at all.
    He could woo her the way a normal man would woo a woman he desired. A profound joy filled him, and he smiled at her… the dream progressed through balls and a musicale and a ride in Hyde Park. All the way through, he watched her with a kind of mad hunger, nourishing the little flame of her feelings toward him.
    Time was different in the dream… after weeks, or perhaps months, passed, he knew that she was just as desirous as he was. She kissed him with an erotic longing that matched his own.
    The kiss started to fade, and he realized, while still in the dream, that it was the laudanum, and not Grace.
    Still, he held on to the moment with all his will. He didn’t want to go back to the darkness, to the cabin that always smelled of piss, to the bed where he lay not so patiently, waiting for the English coast.
    In the last moments of the dream, she gave him a private smile, a little wicked and a little tender, and whispered, “Come to me tonight, Colin. I miss you. I miss you so much. I love you…”
    And he woke. Or rather, he thought he woke, but in reality he was just caught up in a different dream. He opened his eyes to find himself on board ship. There was a crack, like lightning, and the mast was falling into the ocean. All around him were screams. He looked down and saw with horror that there was a river of blood running over his boots.
    After that, he threw the laudanum out the porthole.
    By the time the ship finally reached Portsmouth, he had come to a decision: Grace was not for him. He would go to the Ryburns’ townhouse the first night, simply because his parents didn’t maintain a house in town, and the duke and duchess would be mortally offended if he stayed in a hotel.
    But the following morning he would leave for Arbor House. In time, he would buy an estate with his prize money, somewhere far from Grace. Though, of course, she might be living in Scotland with McIngle.
    Good.
    It would be dangerous to be near her. He was her childhood love, and now he knew he loved her too. All he had to do was revert to the sort of cold bastard who wouldn’t answer the letters written by a twelve-year-old girl.
    He could do that.
    The miracle was that he had a heart that could break, considering what a cold bastard he was.

 
    Three
    June 12, 1837
    G race was in the entryway when the carriage bearing Colin Barry drew up, though she had no idea of that quite yet. She had just taken a cloak from their butler, Featherstone, as she and John McIngle, her new fiancé, were on their way to visit a private showing of Constable’s watercolors and preliminary sketches, which John had arranged as a special treat.
    Then