His thumb stroked her cheek, his fingertips slipping into her hair, and it was sublime, the most tender touch, reverent and delectable like the opening up within her that needed him. She lifted her hand and skimmed her fingers along the taut strength of his forearm. It made her hungry. It made her delirious with pleasure. A sound came from his chest and he sought her deeper, capturing her tongue and making her desperate for more, for his body against hers, for his hands all over her. She slid forward on the stool.
The cow lowed.
Wyn pulled back and his hand fell.
Diantha sucked in breath and opened her eyes. His looked unfocused. Then something else flickered within the gray, something unsettling that made her stomach plunge.
She leaped up. “D-Don’t say ‘God, no,’ ” she stuttered. “Please.”
“What?” He seemed confused. “I wasn’t going to say—”
“I did not ask for that.” She pressed her fingertips to her damp lips. “You cannot stuff me into my traveling trunk and take me home.”
He bent his head and ran his hand around the back of his neck. Each motion struck her with agonizing beauty. She couldn’t bear it. She wanted him so much. Not just in her feminine regions where she was becoming accustomed to feeling her response to his male angularity and elegance. This need spread in her chest and limbs. She felt moved and deep down inside her this all felt right, like she was meant to be kissing him and only him.
She backed away. “Don’t say something horrid or make threats.”
His gaze snapped up, a spark of anger in it. “I won’t. Damn it, Diantha—”
“And don’t swear at me. It is against the rules. Number Seven.” She darted forward and snatched up the bucket. “Thank you for teaching me how to milk a cow. I’m leaving now.” Dragging the bucket at her side, she hastened from the stable because she knew she must run away or throw herself at him, and the first seemed a better alternative for eventually reaching Calais.
But at present she did not wish to be in Calais. She wished to be in his arms.
Chapter 19
If Mrs. Polley noticed that her employers were not on speaking terms with each other at supper, she was remarkably discreet about it. Fortunately Owen prattled on—as always—and the meal was consumed until Wyn excused himself courteously—as always.
Mrs. Polley ushered Owen to his gatehouse. “That man will have us at an early start tomorrow and we’ll be in the rain and mud and Lord knows what other troubles again, so you’d best have yourself a good sleep, boy.”
He snatched up another biscuit, tipped his cap with an “Evening, miss,” and whistled for Ramses to follow.
Diantha took her plate to the washbasin. “We must have straightening up to do before departing.”
“I saw to that already, miss.” Mrs. Polley wiped the table.
“Thank you, Mrs. Polley. You have been a great help this past fortnight and I’m very glad you agreed to come with us.”
“Well now, miss, I couldn’t let a fine young lady go off on a wild goose chase with that dark man intending no good.”
Intending no good. If that meant he had intended for her to develop an enormous partiality for the caress of his mouth and hands, then yes certainly he had intended her no good.
“It is not a wild goose chase, Mrs. Polley. And despite all I have demanded of him, he has tried diligently to behave as a gentleman.”
“A gentleman is as a gentleman does,” she muttered, packing away the remaining oatcakes.
In their bedchamber, Mrs. Polley unlaced her stays and Diantha laid her stained, wrinkled gown across a chair and could barely remember what it was like to live in her stepfather’s house and wear fresh garments and not know a dark, handsome Welshman.
Without conversation, her companion fell asleep. Diantha had become accustomed to this, missing Faith’s chatter at night, and occasionally talked herself to sleep because Mrs. Polley never woke anyway. But she could not rest now. Too much had happened to her lips and sensibilities today, and her stomach rumbled.
Finally she arose, slipped into her green gown and tied it about her waist with a sash, then stole on quiet feet down to the kitchen.
The scent of tobacco smoke met her in the foyer. She ought to have anticipated this; the nights when he had touched her he’d been awake late too. But on those nights he had been foxed.
Stomach wild with butterflies, she went along the corridor to the kitchen. He stood by the hearth. A cigar burned atop the simmering remains of the peat fire.
“Good evening.” Without seeing, he knew she stood there. He seemed to have an uncanny sense of such things.
“I thought the cigar that you let me smoke today was your last,” she said, because what else, after all, could be said?
“This is it.”
“But why aren’t you smoking it?”
He turned toward her then, and his silvery eyes gleamed unnaturally. Hot.
Fear jerked through her. “It hasn’t passed entirely, has it? The illness. It has come back.”
“No.”
“But you have that fevered look in your eyes again. You want a brandy, don’t you?”
“Of course I want a brandy.” He ran a hand through his hair and gripped the back of his neck. “But I want you rather a great deal more.”
Her body flushed with an achy thrill.
“You can have me,” she said shakily. “Only for the present, of course,” she added, because the flash of panic in his eyes was worse than the feverishness. “I must eventually accept Mr. H since that is the plan. But you can have me first.”
“I cannot.”
“I am compromised anyway. But I was perfectly aware that would be the case when I set out from Teresa’s house. So if anyone were ever to discover—”
“They will not,” he said firmly. “It is my job to ensure that they do not.”
“My family will.” Very soon they would find her absent from Brennon Manor and begin looking for her.
“Certain members of your family have reason to trust me in this.” He seemed very serious.
“I knew there was something more to—to everything about you,” she said in a hushed tone. “Mr. Eads called you the Raven, and I’m not such a ninny that I don’t understand special names like that have some significance. But I don’t know why that would mean my family would trust you if they were to discover I’ve been with you these past weeks. Anyway, they are fully aware that I am prone to inappropriate behavior. My stepfather tells me nearly every day.”
He took a tight breath, his shoulders rigid. “Rescuing girls like you is what I do.”
“Rescuing girls? Like me?”
“Lost girls, in particular. Runaways. Though occasionally a child or amnesiac if I am fortunate. Or a horse.” He seemed to speak ironically. “But mostly it seems to be the girls they assign me. I am, it seems, adept at encouraging young women to do as I wish.”
“Assign you? Who are ‘they’?”
“There really isn’t any more I can say.” He turned away. “Now, if you will be so good as to absent yourself from this room and not reappear until the morning, I will be much obliged.”
“But I want you to kiss me.”
“You haven’t any idea what you’re saying. You are an innocent.”
“I am quite ready not to be so any longer. I’ve been quite ready for an age already. Perhaps it runs in my blood, my mother being what—” She halted, desperation rising in her breast. “I’m not really asking all that much.”
“You’re not asking . . . ?” He was clearly struggling. “Allow me to put it in terms you may understand better: Heroes do not deflower innocent girls.”