Her mouth went dry.
Pixie whinnied.
“Oh,” said Artemis, brightly—too brightly. “I need to see to Pixie.”
She whirled around and led Pixie to the nearby sweet chestnut tree, where she tethered her loosely. With great concentration, she attempted to regulate her breath and gather her composure.
A tough proposition when she could hear Bran undressing behind her—the hollow thud of a boot hitting the ground, followed a few seconds later by the rustling sounds of trousers, then socks, being removed.
The man should be quite naked by now.
She searched for something to say that had nothing to do with what occupied the forefront of her mind—Bran … naked—and latched onto the first thing it came to. “Did Lady Gwyneth speak to you yesterday?”
“About?”
“About her intentions regarding her London season.”
“Ah,” he said. “Do you know of a good modiste?”
So, Lady Gwyneth hadn’t yet informed her brother of her plans. As it wasn’t Artemis’s place to interfere, she said, “I can give her the direction of a few.”
Surely enough time had passed for him to have entered the water by now.
She risked a glance over her shoulder.
Enough time hadnotpassed.
His back to her, he’d begun wading into the pool—fully, gloriouslynaked—the broad expanse of his back … the narrowing of his waist … the taut buttocks … the thick thighs … the livid scar running up the length of his right thigh to hip … all man.
A man whom life kept testing.
A man who always rose to the fight and came through to the other side.
In a surprisingly graceful movement, he shifted his weight forward and entered the water, soundlessly gliding forward with smooth strokes.
“You can find your way back to Somerton,” she called out. She must leave—or, at least, try.
He flipped onto his back and, across the short distance of land and water, his naked body met her gaze. “You said you would stay, so stay.”
Heat flushed through her as she tried very,veryhard to keep her gaze locked onto his. But it was very,verydifficult with all those muscles on display, and, well, those other bits, too. “I …” Oh, words wouldn’t come, and besides they were of no use to her, anyway.
So, she nodded and broke her gaze from his, her attention intensely concentrated on the ground before her as she made her way to an outcropping of mossy gray stone at the water’s edge. Bran was now swimming, lost in his own world, she suspected. Instinctively, she began unlacing one of her boots and tugged it off, then the other. She slipped off her stockings and dipped her feet into the water. “Ah, perfect.”
Bran turned, exuding openness and serenity. “You said it’s this temperature all year round?”
“Aye.” Without a staying thought, the next words were out of her mouth. “If you accept Rake’s offer, you could swim here every morning.”
Golden eyes narrowed on her, and she suddenly felt as transparent as this pool, the air between them growing heavy with the unspoken—unspoken words … unspoken intentions … unspoken feelings. “Would you like that, Artemis?”
Yes, screamed everything unspoken inside her.
“It’s your future,” she said, somehow. “It doesn’t matter what I want.”
His head cocked subtly to the side. “Doesn’t it?”
A look, opaque and determined, had entered his eyes—intention—and she couldn’t speak.
“Artemis,” he said, “what you want matters very much.”
