“You were vulnerable before,” she prodded him.
“I believed in the promises of another. I was wrong.”
But still, he would not acknowledge what she needed to hear.
“The widowed Lady Anglesey,” she persisted.
He sighed, the sound heavy. “I would prefer for the past to remain where it belongs.”
Her frustration mounted. “Do you not see? The past is not anywhere but here. She is familiar with you, and I do not like it. Shewatchedus together.”
The moment the words fled her, she wished she could rescind them, for they revealed far more than she had intended. And the intimacies they had shared were still new, the cause of the sting in her cheeks. As much as she had loved Arthur, he had never taken such liberties with her, and nor had she with him. Likely, if she had attempted it, he would have swooned.
The notion made her bite her lip to withhold a startled laugh.
“Fine.” Anglesey’s jaw tensed. “You wish to speak of it, to dissect the past? We shall. But not here. Come with me. Come away from everyone, where we can be alone and where we need not fear interruption again.”
He extended his hand to her.
It was gloved, large-palmed and long-fingered. So very masculine. She knew from experience how that hand felt against her, trailing over her bare flesh, caressing and holding her so tenderly she ached with the remembrance of it.
“Izzy?”
With another sigh, this one of acceptance, she placed her hand in his. “Very well, my lord. Take me where you wish.”
CHAPTER10
Take me where you wish.
Those words, despite their innocence, filled Zachary with fiery, scalding lust as he walked with Izzy along the footpath leading them away from Barlowe Park. The air was chilly and damp, and the accompanying mist should have proven conveniently quelling. But ever since he had known her on his lips and had spent inside her mouth the night before, concentrating on anything other than a repeated tryst was proving damned difficult.
The past, he reminded himself.Beatrice. Betrayal. You are not taking Izzy to the little falls for seduction but to reveal the sordid details of what happened so long ago.
Yes, that damned well succeeded in ameliorating some of the frenzied need. Nothing like treachery to make a man’s cock go limp.
“Where are we going?” Izzy asked, clinging to his arm as they navigated the cobblestone trail, which had become choked with vines and other dense vegetation from all sides.
When he had been a lad, the head gardener had kept the paths and grounds of the manor immaculate. They had been his coldhearted father’s pride. As a reckless youth more interested in gadding about the countryside shooting and riding and fishing, he had not understood his father’s fascination. Returning as a man grown brought a different sort of appreciation, albeit a reluctant one, that he had not possessed before.
“I am taking you to what we call the little falls,” he answered. “Watch your step there, my dear. It would appear the main house is not the only part of the estate that is in sore need of attention. I recalled this path being far easier to navigate. Shall we turn around?”
“Of course not. Now that you have promised me the little falls, I must see them.”
He might have known she would be determined.
“It is one of the only natural elements left untouched by the architect who designed the additions to Barlowe Park over a century ago,” he found himself saying, as if he were the same sort of pompous prig his brother had been.
Christ.Was he turning into Horatio? First marriage, and now returning to the family seat? He refused to think it.
“Barlowe Park is important to you,” Izzy observed at his side, deftly making her way over some oak roots which had buckled the path before them.
“It is,” he admitted, for those old memories, the part of his youth that had been happy, dwelled here. It had been the reason he had wanted their marriage to occur at Barlowe Park. “Or at least, it was, once…”
He allowed his words to trail off, for they had yet to reach their destination, and to fully explain, he would necessarily have to revisit the reason he and his brothers had ceased speaking. The reason he had been unwelcome at Barlowe Park for so many years.
But to get to that reason, he needed to start at the beginning.
He ducked under some low-hanging branches and narrowly avoided losing his hat. Why the devil had Horatio done such a poor job of caring for the estate? It looked to Zachary’s eye as if his older brother had lifted nary a finger to keep Barlowe Park in the fashion it deserved. This was not a lack of care caused within the months since his death. The estate must have been unkempt for a long time on Horatio’s watch.
