Oh, not with Griffin, more was the pity, but she was sure she had danced at balls, and been accompanied into suppers by handsome gentlemen, and that they had called or sent flowers the following day.
Slowly, too slowly for Bea’s peace of mind, her memories seemed to be returning to her.
Griffin sat quiet and unmoving as he watched Bea slowly relax, her lids fluttering and then falling softly downwards, dark lashes caressing the paleness of her cheeks, her lips slightly parted, as she fell asleep.
He breathed out a soft and relieved sigh as he relaxed back into the same uncomfortable chair in which he had dozed fitfully the previous night. Sitting at Bea’s bedside seemed to be becoming something of a habit! He continued to watch her for several minutes longer, before his own lack of sleep the night before finally caught up with him and he lay his head back against the chair and fell asleep himself.
* * *
Bea woke to the feel of the warmth of the sun caressing her cheeks, and a deeper warmth down the left side of her body, and with a not uncomfortable weight across her abdomen and her legs. Almost as if—
She quickly opened her eyes, slowly turning her head to the left as she looked beside her, her breath catching in her throat as she saw that Griffin lay next to her, one of his arms curved about her waist, a leg thrown over the top of both of hers.
As if he were protecting her, even in his sleep.
He lay above the covers rather than under them, Bea discovered on closer inspection, the darkness of his hair more tousled than ever as his head lay on the pillows beside her own, his harshly chiselled features appearing much softer in sleep.
Bea’s fingers itched to trace those finely arched brows. The sharply etched cheeks and the length of his aristocratic nose. As for those chiselled lips...
They looked so much softer when Griffin’s mouth was not set in the habitually grim and determined shape it bore when he was awake. Lips so soft and inviting, in fact, that Bea’s temptation to taste them became too much for her, her lids fluttering closed as she began to move her face closer towards his.
‘What are you doing?’
Bea froze with her own lips just inches away from Griffin’s, guilty colouring warming her cheeks as she looked up at him; she had been so intent on kissing the softness of his lips, she had failed to notice that Griffin had raised his own lids and was now looking at her with stormy grey eyes.
Angry eyes?
She moistened her own parted lips before answering him. ‘I was...merely taken aback at finding you here in bed beside me.’ She turned the explanation into a challenge, having no intention of owning up to the yearning she had known to kiss him, to taste the soft temptation of his lips.
Lips that were once again set in that grim, uncompromising line as he sat up in the bed before swinging his legs to the floor and standing up.
‘I apologise,’ he rasped gruffly as he looked down at her between narrowed lids, his back stiff and unyielding, shoulders tensed. He had removed his boots, and unbuttoned his waistcoat, but otherwise was still as fully dressed as he had been the night before. ‘I meant only to hold you for several minutes after your upset, and that blasted chair is so uncomfortable.’ He scowled at the offending piece of furniture. ‘I must have drifted off to sleep myself once you were settled.’
Only one part of that explanation held any significance for Bea. ‘After my upset?’ Her face paled at the thought she might have had another nightmare. One that might possibly have revealed even more of the events of her captivity.
‘You did not wake, just became restless and disturbed, and muttered a little in your sleep.’ Griffin frowned as he recalled how he had been woken from his own fitful dozing in the chair in the early hours of the morning to see Bea thrashing restlessly in the bed, her words incomprehensible to him as she muttered and protested and cried out in her sleep.
Except for...
He looked down at her searchingly. ‘Who is Michael?’
Bea returned his gaze blankly, her face unnaturally pale.
‘Michael?’ she repeated uncertainly.
‘Michael,’ Griffin confirmed abruptly. ‘You called out for him in your sleep.’
‘I did?’ Her expression remained uncomprehending.
He nodded. ‘You kept repeating his name, and then you said, “Michael must be so alone, so very alone!” and then you began to cry.’
Griffin could still remember the clenching of his gut as Bea had called out for the other man in her sleep, and how she had shed tears because she could not be with him.
He had no memory of having fallen asleep on the bed beside her after he had sought to comfort her, but he did recall the weight of her obvious love for the other man as weighing heavily on his chest.
Because he had enjoyed kissing her?
Because he wanted to kiss her again?