She searched his face. “Can you tell me where youwere? All these years?”
Grief upon his brow, he shook his head.
“Why not?” She cupped his jaw. He was so finely wrought that he could have served as a sculptor’s model for Adonis. He was so handsome she could cry with his beauty. But his serene features told her more about his ability to conceal his secrets. “The war is over, my dear man.”
He grasped her wrists and put her arms down between them. “What I did during the war was classified. The war is done, but no one ever need know my part in it.”
“Your parents did not know. Your friends had no knowledge. And now, not even I should know?”
“My parents are gone to the heaven they prayed for. Most of my friends are, too. And you? Should you know?” He raised a hand and sank his fingers into her hair above her ear. His nails dug into her scalp. “You, my daring rascal, have no need to learn what I did or where or how.”
She opened her mouth to object.
“No, by Christ.” He shook his head just once to quiet her. “I have a suspicion that you could divine my role without me divulging one iota of what I did just yesterday.”
She wrapped her fingers around his wrist. “You aided them. In some covert manner.”
He did not breathe.
She smiled like a wise cat. “I’d wager you…coded messages or ran them. Ran spies, too. Apasseur.”
He stared at her a long moment. His silver eyes flashed. His jaw set. She had him! How wonderful. His expression hardened to feral possession. Desire had never been more evident on any man’s face. Her body knew at once. Her breasts ached and her nipples blossomed. Her torso flooded with the wet welcome no other man had ever inspired in her. “You are a witch,” he accused her.
And she grinned him. “And I am your witch.”
He set his teeth. “Here in this house, you are and will remain, a guest. No more. Never more.”
She studied him as he turned on his heel and yanked open the door.
For long moments, she stood regarding the empty portal. She was not proud that she’d discomfited him. But she had certainly gotten what she wanted.
A beginning.
Chapter 3
Yes, he’d fled the temptation of her body and her words. For the next hours, he filled his mind with his duties. He had work to do! With more than twenty guests residing in the house for eight days, a ball the night of Christmas, plus breakfasts, luncheons, dinners, skating party and greenery expedition. Add to that there were twelve staff to supervise as well as the guests’ valets and maids who came along with their employers, he would have no time to ponder what the illustrious Lady Elizabeth Kent was doing. None.
But then again, he knew what she was doing. Napping in that sumptuous bed. Arms flung out carefree as a child dancing in the rain. Bathing in the copper tub in the boudoir. Nude to her glorious pink skin.
He set his teeth against the visions and the aches of wanting her.
Focusing on his tasks had worked for years. Why not for hours?
Out of sight, out of mind.He kept repeating that. Like a fool with no other mantra.
Until eight o’clock, it worked.
Then he assumed his position at the bottom of the grand staircase to begin the reception of all guests. And he saw her descend the steps and could not take his eyes from her. Graceful, purposeful, enticing her. She wore a cloud of yellow. Not her best color, but hell, he would prefer to see her without any fabric pressed against her magnificent curves. And they were. Very. Magnificent. More…voluptuous than four years ago when last he’d seen her.
That day, the renowned only daughter of the debauched Earl of Leith was eighteen. Just out. Preparing, as one friend had told him, by buying every inch of satin and lace the dressmakers of London could sew for her. Preparing for the flood of proposals that would come her way. Deciding on a husband, a home, a future that had been brightly painted for her. And as for him. He’d been in London for a brief spell to work with his coordinator in Government, the Earl of Dilmouth. At the earl’s club one morning after an exchange of information, Simms had stepped out to the street and come face-to-face with her. Lovely, stunning Eliza.
“Octo!”
She’d called him that since she could first talk. And never changed it, not for her mother, who warned her not to be so familiar with the vicar’s youngest son. Not for her father, who did the same and had once whipped her for it. Bastard. Used his cane on her, he had, until Simms had heard her cries, turned back and pounced to stay the fiend’s hand.
“Eliza,” he’d called her then because that typified everything fast and witty, wild and feline she’d always been to him. Then. Now. All the years in between.
“You’re here? In London?” She was surprised and delighted. Even looped her arm through his. “Let’s have tea.”
