Stephanie Laurens - A Lady of His Own

The horses were housed in neighboring stalls; Charles set the lamp on a hook dangling from a roof beam, and they set to work. Penny unsaddled, as adept as he, but when she hefted her saddle onto the dividing wall between the stalls, she paused and caught his eye.

“How was it organized? Granville went out with the smuggling gangs, and the lugger was waiting. How did it know to be there?”

He held her gaze, then nodded. It was precisely the question he’d been wrestling with. “There has to be someone—someone who carried a message, or some way, some manner, some route through which Granville communicated with the French. We haven’t found it yet.”

Grabbing a handful of fresh straw, Penny turned away to brush down the mare. “So we’ll have to keep looking.”

He hesitated, but then said, “Yes.” He wasn’t going to stomach her “we,” but he’d fight that battle when he came to it.

They finished with their mounts. He went to help her shut the stall door. She headed out of the stall; the mare shifted, catching Penny with her rump, propelling her forward—into his arms. Into him.

He caught her against him, body to body, saw in the lamplight her eyes flare wide. Heard the hitch as her breathing suspended. Sensed surprise drown beneath a wave of sensual awareness so acute she quivered.

Her shoulder was angled to his chest, his left hand spread over her back, fingers curving around her side, his right splayed over her waist. He only had to juggle her and she would be in his arms, knew that if he did, she’d look up—and their lips would be only inches apart.

He hauled in a breath and found it almost painful. Gritting his teeth, jaw clenched, he steadied her on her feet and forced his hands from her, forced himself to set her aside and give his attention to securing the stall door.

He didn’t—couldn’t—risk meeting her eyes. With any other woman, he’d have made some rakish comment, turned the whole off with a wicked smile. With her, he was too busy subduing his own reaction, quelling his own impulses, to worry about soothing hers.

Not in the stable. That would be far too reminiscent, too foolhardily dangerous. If he wanted to persuade her to look his way again, that was precisely the sort of misstep he didn’t need.

With the door safely shut, he reached up and unhooked the lamp; she’d already turned and was ahead of him, walking out of the stable. He followed, dousing the lamp and replacing it. Crossing to the well in the middle of the yard, he took the pump handle she yielded without a word and wielded it so she could wash her hands.

He did the same, then they set off once more to walk side by side up the grassed slope to the house.

Except it was after midnight.

Except he’d kissed her the last time they’d walked this way under the spreading branches of the oaks.

She strode briskly along, sparing not a glance for him.

He walked alongside and said nothing; he didn’t even try to take her hand.

Penny noted that last and told herself she was glad. Indeed, now she thought of it, she couldn’t imagine why she’d allowed him to claim her hand over the past days, although of course he never asked. Far better they preserve a reasonable distance—witness that heart-stopping moment in the stable. She really didn’t need to dwell on how it felt to be in his arms, or her apparently ineradicable desire to experience such moments.

When it came to Charles, her senses were beyond her control. They had been for over a decade, and demonstrably still were, no matter how much she’d convinced herself otherwise. The best she could hope for was to starve them into submission, or if not that, then at least into a weakened state.

The oaks neared, the shadows beneath them dense.

It wasn’t the darkness that tightened her nerves.

She walked steadily on, no suggestive hitch in her stride, her senses at full stretch…but he made not the slightest move to reach for her, to halt her.

He didn’t even speak.

As they emerged from the shadows and approached the garden door, she quietly exhaled. Relaxed at least as far as she was able with him by her side. Just because he’d kissed her, almost certainly impelled by some typical male notion over seeing what it would be like after all these years, that didn’t mean he’d want to kiss her again. Her senses might be alive, her nerves taut with expectation, but he, thankfully, couldn’t know that.

He opened the door, held it for her, then followed her in.

The house had many long windows; most were left uncurtained, spilling swaths of moonlight across corridors and into halls. Even the wide staircase was awash in shimmering light, tinted here and there by the stained glass of the central window.

Peace and solidity enfolded her, unraveling her knotted nerves, soothing away her tension. Reaching the top of the stairs, she stepped into the long gallery. She walked a few paces, then halted in a patch of moonlight fractured into shifting splashes of shadow and light by a tree beyond the window. The master suite lay in the central wing; Charles and she should part company. She turned to face him.

He’d prowled in her wake; he halted with a bare foot between them.

She raised her eyes to his face, intending to issue a cool, calm, controlled “good night.” Instead, her eyes locked with his, dark, impossible to read in the shadows, yet not impossible to know. To feel.

To realize that as she often did, often had, she’d misread him.

He did want to kiss her again—fully intended to kiss her again.

She knew it beyond doubt when his gaze lowered to her lips.

Knew when hers lowered to his that she should protest.

She knew when his hands rose, slowly, unhurriedly—giving her plenty of time to react if she wished—just what he was going to do.

Knew it wasn’t wise. Knew she shouldn’t allow it.

Yet she did nothing beyond catch her breath when his hands touched, so achingly gentle for such powerful hands, then cradled her face. Slowly raising it, tipping it up so he could lower his head and close his lips over hers.

From the first touch, she was lost. She didn’t want, yet she did. She told herself it was confusion that made her hesitate, held her back from calling a halt to this madness.

All lies.

It was fascination, plain and simple, a fascination she’d never grown out of, and perhaps, God help her, never would.

His lips moved on hers, bold, wickedly sure; her lips parted, by her command or his she didn’t know. Didn’t care. His tongue surged over hers, and she shivered. Her hand touched the back of one of his; she wasn’t even aware she’d raised it.

Was barely aware when he angled his head, deepening the kiss, and one hand drifted from her face to slide around her waist and draw her—slowly, deliberately—to him.

She went, hungry and wanting, while some distant remnant of sanity cursed and swore. Yet it was she who was cursed, condemned always to feel this madness, this welling tide of unquenchable desire that he and only he evoked, and that he and only he, it seemed, had any ability to slake.

Only with him did she feel this way, did her senses whirl, her wits melt away. Only with him did her bones turn to water while heat rose and beat under her skin.

And he knew.

She would have given a great deal to keep the knowledge from him, but even as the remaining vestige of her consciousness noted that his skills had developed considerably over the years, she was aware that behind his controlled hunger, behind the skillfully woven net of desire he cast over her, he was watchful and intent.

He’d known thirteen years ago that she had been his; as his hands slid beneath her coat and fastened about her waist, and he drew her flush against him, it was abundantly clear he knew she still was.