Though he issued it as a warning, his voice was husky with sensual promise.
Her heart beat fast enough to rival the wings of a butterfly. She kept silent, resisting the urge to press her lips to him one last time. If her fingers toyed with the silky ends of his hair as he carried her, it could not be helped. How she wished they were different people, in a different place, a different time.
But they were as lost to each other as they had ever been.
He stopped, jostling her a bit as he opened a door, and crossed the threshold before closing the door quietly at his back. Slowly, he lowered her to the floor, his hands going to her waist to steady her when she wobbled.
“You must go at once,” she blurted, needing to somehow banish the unwanted emotions threatening to overwhelm her. Needing to banishhim. His presence in her chamber so near to dawn would be fodder for belowstairs gossip, and she had no wish to make a pariah of herself or invite undue scrutiny. She still needed to find a way into the locked drawer of the desk in his study.
At the thought, hot shame swept over her. What had she done? She had granted the man she was betraying the greatest liberty of all. She had given him her body. He had kissed her, worked his knowing hands over her. He had used his mouth upon her. How would she look upon him by morning light, knowing she had lain with him?
“I will go,” he said softly, his voice a delicious rumble that did not fail to produce a frisson of something wicked down her spine. “But this is not done between us, Jacinda.”
“It is,” she insisted. For it was. It had to be. Indeed, it had never begun, for she was deceiving him. Plotting against him even as he touched her with such tenderness that she longed to cry.
“Nay.” He caressed her waist, keeping her anchored to him, and yet not attempting further seduction. “It is not. You came to me tonight.”
She swallowed.Yes, she had, for her weakness for him knew no bounds. Even now, her heart gave a pang at what could never be. But she could not forget that even without the shadow of Kilross dogging her, she was naught but a need to be assuaged for Whitley. He would grow weary of her. She was merely a woman he would bed, not wed.
“I should never have done so,” she forced herself to say, for it was the truth, stark and bitter, torn from her.
“I am glad you did.” His hands slid up her back, warming her through the layers of her nightrail and dressing gown.
Her cheeks heated at the realization he must have dressed her. When she had fallen asleep in the warm, soft cocoon of his bed, she had been naked, sated, and tired. He had held her to him, his heart thumping with steady reassurance beneath her ear, and she had been too sated and content to move.
How could she have so thoroughly lost sight of what she must do? How had she allowed herself to become so vulnerable to him? Her hands stole to his shoulders, but instead of pushing him away as she knew she must, she remained as she was, absorbing his quiet strength. He had donned a robe for their journey down the hall, and she missed his skin.
She trod on most dangerous ground, just one more kiss from ruin. “I do not regret coming to you, but we cannot engage in such folly again.”
He shocked her then by drawing her to him in a tight embrace and burying his face in her hair. “The only folly would be in never holding you in my arms again. I need you, Jacinda.”
With the faint light of dawn stirring beyond the window dressings and the jingling of tack, a sign of London coming to life on the street below, reality intruded. His gentleness disarmed her. How she wished for his bite rather than his purr.
But she could not forget that at any moment, the servants would stir. “The domestics will soon be about. Please, I beg of you, leave me.”
He kissed her crown before releasing her. “I will do as you wish, but do not think I will concede defeat so easily. We have only just begun.”
With that promise, he left her standing alone, mourning the loss of his comforting presence and touch. The realization of what she must do next left her colder than she had ever been.
*
The morning haddawned grim and gray and raining, forcing Crispin to take his curricle to The Duke’s Bastard. Foul weather never failed to make the wound in his thigh ache and his disposition to turn sour.
But the drizzle and the chill were not the sole reason for Crispin’s sullen mood as he stalked into Duncan’s office unannounced, slamming the door at his back. He had finally had Jacinda Turnbow where he wanted her most—on her back in his bed—and yet by the light of day, it was as if she’d never been there.
He had nothing but the lingering scent of jasmine on his pillow and one long, unruly strand of sunset hair in his sheets as proof that making love to her had not been a strange fabrication of his war-maddened mind.
Duncan looked up from the ledgers he’d been reviewing at his desk, raising a golden brow. “Whitley, you look as if you have just attended your own funeral.”
Crispin threw himself into an overstuffed chair opposite Duncan’s desk, sighing. “Do I resemble a corpse to you, Duncan?” he asked irritably.
His friend studied him silently for a beat. “Whisky, Cris?”
“In the morning?” he returned, continuing their little game as if he hadn’t given many a bottle the black eye before midday with nary a speck of guilt.
Duncan sat back in his elaborately carved seat. Hades rose in stark relief from the polished walnut at his right shoulder and Persephone at his left. The dichotomy seemed appropriate. Hades certainly represented Duncan, though his Persephone had yet to be discovered. “You have yet to tup the governess, then?”
Crispin’s ears went hot. “You have tongue enough for two sets of teeth, Duncan.”
