Before she could form a suitable response, he laced his fingers through hers, tugging her as he moved down the path. “Come.”
“It is dark,” she protested, even though the moon was large and high in the sky, shining brightly enough to illuminate their progress.
“Stay close to me.” He tugged her into his side, keeping her near. “I know the way.”
They were not headed back in the direction of the main house. Her fingers tightened on his as she matched his long strides. “Where are you taking me?”
She knew she ought not to protest. That he was holding her hand in his and hauling her along for his impromptu journey was in itself as miraculous as his kisses had been. But she was so uncertain of where she stood with him. Her lips still tingled with the knowledge of his. Her body yet thrummed with desire.
“To the temple,” he said calmly, as if he had not just upended her world with his kisses. “I thought you might like to have a look inside.”
Such a thing could have waited for daylight. For a day when she had not spent hours traveling and frantically attempting to make Marchmont inhabitable. The Earl of Rayne escorting her, however, was a rarity indeed.
“That would be lovely, thank you.” She held her tongue about the rest, shivering at the realization of how different he was here. He was almost at home.
There was no doubt Alessandro did not find London to his liking. In Town, he had been a caged, wild animal. Here, he belonged. The land changed him. The home changed him. Even with the unexpected tumult and devastation they had arrived to, he seemed lighter somehow. More intense, though less unhappy.
Still a man at war with himself. But mayhap a man who could win the war rather than allow it to defeat him.
“You are shivering,” he observed into the silence, stopping on the path to shrug his jacket from his shoulders. “I am a beast to haul you all over Marchmont like this. Forgive me?”
She would have told him she was not cold at all, that rather it was her reaction to him and the subtle changes she noticed within him that made her shiver. But he was behind her, draping his coat over her shoulders, running his hands over her in soothing strokes to settle the garment into place. The jacket was warm from his body, and his scent drifted to her. Even had she been suddenly thrust into the midst of a sweltering desert, she would not have denied his coat.
“I will forgive you anything,” she told him.
“Ah,querida,” he said softly. “Do not make promises you cannot keep.”
She could not argue the point. “Very well. I shall forgive youmostthings. That is, perhaps, far more accurate.”
His hand was in hers again, and they were walking once more down the path.
“I am not even certain you should forgive me most things,” Alessandro told her, maneuvering them around a fallen branch obstructing the path.
One more sign of the lack of care the massive estate had been receiving in his absence.
“Half the things?” she suggested, seizing the sudden nonchalance of the moment, for she sensed it was what her husband needed.
“Which half?” he quipped, his tone rueful. “What would you not forgive me for?”
“I would not forgive you if you sent Olly away,” she said, returning to the cause which had so concerned her until he had distracted her on the path with the glistening lake and the looming temple and his soul-stealing kisses.
“What has the miscreant to do with either of us, hmm?” he asked, leading them to the left when the path before them diverged into two separate routes.
“He is a child,” she said, holding her breath after the words emerged from her. For Alessandro had told her he did not like children, just as he had told her he did not kiss on the mouth.
But he had kissed her tonight.
A child may be more than he could handle.
Particularly when the child in question was a rude, dirty little scamp with a pet mouse named Ashes.
“You want to keep the littlepícaro?” he asked.
They wound around a bend. “What is apícaro?”
“A rascal, a rogue.”
She frowned at him. “Olly is none of those things. He is a child. An innocent child, who cannot help the situation in which he has found himself.”
