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She believed what she was saying--McKenna saw it in her face It broke his heart, even as it infuriated him Damn her, she knew that the differences between them were insurmountable, and she had to accept that He couldn’t stay here and be faced with constant teive in would result in both their downfalls

Cradling her face in his hands, McKenna let his fingers touch the outward tips of her dark brows, and drew his thumbs over the waruise the reverence of his touch, he spoke with cold bluntness "You think you want e Soet about me I’m a bastard A servant, and not even an upper servant at that--"

"You’re the other half of me"

Shocked into silence, McKenna closed his eyes He hated his own instinctive response to the words, the leap of pri it impossible for me to stay at Stony Cross"

Aline backed away froo I’ else Please, McKenna--you’ll stay, won’t you?"

He had a sudden taste of the inevitable pain that he would experience someday, the lethal wounds that would result fro her Aline was nineteen…he had another year with her, perhaps not even that long Then the world would open up to her, and McKenna would becoerous liability Or worse, an eht She would not want to remember what she had said to a stable boy on the moonlit balcony outside her bedroo as I can," he said gruffly

Anxiety flashed in the dark depths of her eyes "And tomorrow?" she reminded him "You’ll meet me tomorrow?"

"The river at sunset," McKenna said, suddenly weary fro

Aline seeuished whisper descended through the air as gently as falling flower petals as he climbed down from the balcony

After McKenna had disappeared into the shadows, Aline padded back into her rooertips rubbed the kiss deeper into the tender skin His mouth had been unexpectedly hot, and his taste eet and exquisite, flavored with apples that he ined his kiss thousands of ti could have prepared her for the sensual reality of it

She had wanted to e her as a woman, and she had finally succeeded But there was no triumph in the moment, only a despair that was as incisive as a knife blade She knew that McKenna thought she didn’t understand the complexity of the situation, when in truth she knew it better than he

It had been relentlessly instilled in her since the cradle that people did not venture out of their classes Young men like McKenna would forever be forbidden to her Everyone from the top of society to the bottom understood and accepted such stratification--it caused universal discoest that it could ever be any other way She and McKenna ht with black humor

But somehow Aline could not see McKenna as everyone else did He was no aristocrat, but neither was he a ree, he would have been the pride of the peerage It was monstrously unfair that he had started life with such disadvantages He was s, and yet he could never overcome the social limitations that he had been born with

She remembered the day he had first come to Stony Cross Park, a small boy with unevenly cropped black hair and eyes that were neither blue nor green, but soossip, the boy was the bastard of a village girl who had run off to London, gotten herself in a predicament, and died in childbirth The unfortunate baby had been sent back to Stony Cross, where his grandparents had cared for hie of eight, he was sent to Stony Cross Park, where he was employed as a hall boy His duties had been to clean the upper servants’ shoes, help the maids carry heavy cans of hot water up and down the stairs, and wash the silver coins that had come from town, so as to prevent the earl and countess froht have come from a tradesman’s hands

His full name was John McKenna, but there had already been three servants on the estate named John It had been decided that the boy would be referred to by his last name until a new one was chosen for hiotten about, and he had been simply McKenna ever since At first most of the servants had taken little notice of him, except for the housekeeper, Mrs Faircloth She was a broad-faced, rosy-cheeked, kindhearted wo to a parent that McKenna had ever known In fact, even Aline and her younger sister, Livia, were far o to Mrs Faircloth than they were to approach their own mother No matter how busy the housekeeper was, she always seee a hurt finger, to adlue the broken part of a toy back into place

It had been Mrs Faircloth who had sometimes dismissed McKenna from his duties so that he could run and play with Aline Those afternoons had been the boy’s only escape from the unnaturally restrained existence of a child servant

"You must be kind to McKenna," Mrs Faircloth had admonished Aline, when she had run to her with a tale of how he had broken her doll’s painted wicker perambulator "He has no faood things to eat for his supper, as you do Much of the ti for his keep And if he ht to be a bad boy, he ain"

The words had sunk into Aline’sthe bla the sweets that her older brother so hiave her to read And in return McKenna had taught her how to swim, how to skip pebbles across a pond, how to ride a horse, and how to rass stretched between her thumbs