Bertrice Small - Captivated

"My clothes are soaked, Miss Abigail. I want a blanket so that when I strip down I can cover my nakedness."

Abigail stared. The words strip and nakedness momentarily drowned out the pelting rain and the relentless wind.

"Colonel Coally." She drew herself up to her full height. "I will give you shelter from the storm, but I will not allow you to to"

The gray eyes were implacable. "Miss Abigail, there is nothing you can do to stop me."

Abigail bristled, fully prepared to fightor flee.

A crack of thunder shook the cottage.

A warning that she had nowhere to run.

A reminder that she was behaving more like the juvenile Laura in The Pearl than a mature spinster dressed in a faded green shirtwaist and who, furthermore, was already sprouting a few strands of gray in pale-brown hair that was straggling free of its bun.

Clothed or buck-naked, there was little likelihood of a man like him forcing his attentions on a woman like her. Especially chilled through and through as he no doubt was.

Dripping water formed a dark circle about his boots.

"I asked if you are injured."

The coldness in the gray eyes intensified. "No."

"Good," she said curtly. "Then you will have no trouble walking to the table and taking a chair. I shall procure you a towel and a blanket. But first let me stir up the fire in the stove"

"That won't be necessary."

"Colonel Coally"

"Miss Abigail, there is a full-fledged storm going on outside your door. You have a thatch roof. If the wind should remove your chimney, it will, if the stove is blazing, quite probably cause a fire. I would as soon suffer from a slight chill as roast to death."

Abigail took a calming breath. Even her elder brother, the Earl of Melford, was not as overbearing as the colonel.

"Very well." Tight-lipped with anger, she retrieved a towel. While he briskly dried off, she flounced toward the bed and yanked off the top blanket.

When she returned to the table, he had dried his hair and slicked it back from his forehead. It was not black as she had earlier thought it to be, but the color of burnt umber. The water, she noted, did not bead on it, which meant he did not pomade his hair like his contemporaries in London.

Abigail could not recall the last time she had seen a man who did not pomade his hair. His cleanly shaven skin, tanned from the sun, was extremelyvirile.

She dropped the blanket onto the table.

"I will wait over by the bed. Pray tell me when you have changed and I will hang your clothes up to dry."

The wailing of the storm did not hide the creak of the chair as he struggled to remove his boots, or the thunk they made when they dropped to the plank floor. Cloth, too, made a sound, she discovered. It whispered, the outer clothes a harsh one, the inner clothes softer, more beguiling.

She suddenly wondered if all of his body was as brown as his face. And fought the flare of heat the thought engendered.

"You may turn around."

He sat at the table with the blanket wrapped like a toga about his body. The stark gray gaze snared hers as he held out a wet bundle of clothing.

Quickly averting her eyesthe naked brown arm and shoulder sticking out of the gray blanket were indeed as brown as was his faceAbigail accepted the sodden mass of clothes.

They smelled of rain and damp wool and something indefinable. Spice. Or musk. Something strictly male.

Bending down, she grabbed the mud-caked boots.

Only to have a cat's-eye view of a pair of long, narrow feet. He had shapely, muscular ankles.

They were brown, too. And liberally sprinkled with fine dark hair.

Abigail had never before seen so much mannaked.

Cheeks burning, she straightened.

The gray eyes were waiting for hers.

"In the future, draw your curtains, Miss Abigail. Few men can resist a free peep show. And bolt your door. Some men might take more than you are willing to offer."

For a second Abigail thought she would burst with rage at the insinuation that she might welcome such attentions. Humiliation immediately followed, at the thought that perhaps unconsciously she had. Hostility was born, that the intruder should guess at her secret desires that were not at all ladylike.

"Colonel Coally, I have been at this cottage for an entire week and the only man I have encountered who was unable to resist a 'peep' is yourself. Furthermore, how dare you castigate me for not bolting my door when it is you, sir, who are the intruder"

The violence of her feelings erupted in a shatter of glass.

Pivoting, she stared in astonishment at the tree branch retreating through the window closest to the bed. Wind and rain tunneled into the jagged hole it left behind.

The candle flickered and flamed, creating a wild jig of shadow and light.

"Stay where you are!" The colonel's command was pistol sharp. "The floor is covered with broken glass. We need something to bar the windowthe cupboard will do. Hand me my boots, then douse the light."

Abigail gritted her teeth. The colonel had issued one too many orders.

Turning, she took deliberate aim and dropped the heavy, mud-caked boots.

Brown toes curled back in the nick of time.

"Do you move cupboards best in the dark, Colonel Coally?" she asked politely.

"Not at all, Miss Abigail." The gray eyes staring up at her were narrowed. "I thought only to spare your blushes."

He stood up and dropped the blanket.

Abigail dropped the sodden mass of clothes that was the only thing between them and dove for the candle.

The cottage plunged into swirling darkness. At the same time, something brushed against her hip.

She instinctively put out her handand grabbed naked flesh.

Hot, hard, naked flesh. It was shaped rather like a thick pump handle, half-cocked, with skin as smooth as silk. Underneath it was a throbbing vein

She jerked her hand back. "Colonel Coallyyou surprised me."

"Miss Abigail." The voice in the dark was colder than the wind shrilling through the broken window. "If you insist upon grabbing what you cannot see, you will someday suffer from more than surprise. Edge your way over to the bed and stay there. I don't want to have to worry about surprising you again."

Abigail stood her ground. "Nonsense, Colonel Coally. This is my cottage. I am quite capable of assisting you."

"Let me put it another way, Miss Abigail. I am not so much worried about surprising you as I am of being surprised myself. Use your wits, lady: You have no shoes on. I have no desire to minister to both a broken window and bleeding feet."

Speechless with fury, Abigail stared up into the blackness.

Surely he could not have thought that she had grabbed him on purpose. It was he who had brushed against her!

And then, how dare he comment about her witsor her person! A gentleman did not mention a lady's feet.

"Very well, Colonel Coally."

She stalked to the bed, skirting wide the area in front of the broken window.

The mattress sagged beneath her weight. Planting her bare feet firmly together on the cool plank floor, she wondered where the colonel planned to spend the night. Then she wondered what it would be like to sleep with a man. Naked. With his warm flesh curved around hers.

The grate of wood on wood interrupted thoughts that she had no business thinking. The colonel was pushing the cupboard across the floor, steadily, heavily. The gale whistling through the cottage abated to a dull moan.

"There. That should hold it."

Suddenly a hand weighted down the top of her head, slid down to her ear, her cheek. The fingers were cool, slightly damp from the rain. They rasped against the softness of her skin, against her breast

Fire shot through her body. "What do you think"