“As you may also recall, I had no notion who was prowling about in the night beyond my chamber door. I was only seeking to protect myself and my home.”
“You truly want to revisit what happened, Marchioness?”
His question had her in such a state that Pamela dropped her porte-crayon. It landed in the gravel at her feet with a metallic clink, and when she bent to retrieve it, her folio fell as well, the leather-bound volume cracking open to the page she had been working upon when he had appeared.
Cheeks stinging, she made to snatch it up, but Beast had knelt as well. The realization had her jerking her eyes to his. At this proximity, both of them lowered to their haunches, they were at the same height. A breeze kicked up, bringing his scent to tease her senses.
He had not shaved again this morning, the evidence of the omission shading his strong jaw. The absurd urge rose to run her fingers over it, to test the prickle of his whiskers against her fingertips. Bertie had always been cleanly shaven by his valet each morning. She’d never felt even the hint of stubble. That she should be so close to another man, thinking of such intimacies, should be shocking. Her mind had not caught upon the complexities of another man’s morning ablutions until this very moment.
“You, sir, are a scoundrel,” she told him with not nearly enough bite.
Her words sounded hushed. Almost breathless. She hated herself. Hated him. Hated the way he made her feel.
“I’m a great many things, Lady Deering,” he told her, taking up her folio with a show of care that took her by surprise.
How gently he touched it, as if it were fashioned of spun gold rather than leather and paper. Her hasty sketch work taunted her from the opened page, the lines of his form, the doorway surrounding him. She saw it so clearly when she looked upon it, the black marks of her chalk mocking her. Bringing more heat to flood her cheeks.
“My sketchbook, if you please,” she said, extending her hand to receive it, palm up.
But he didn’t return it to her as she had demanded.
Instead, he lingered, perusing her with a thoughtful sweep of his cool eyes that made her feel as if he had run his hands over her body. “I’m surprised you’re wearing slippers today. I thought you preferred to draw in bare feet.”
A surge of indignation rushed through her. How dare he refer to her feet? To her lack of stockings and shoes yesterday?
But just as quickly as her outrage peaked, it faltered. For she realized how silly it was, to fret over her toes when she had kissed him as boldly as any strumpet. When she had, as he had so boldly phrased it, had her tongue in his mouth.
“A lack of footwear is inadvisable out of doors,” she told him, grateful to have found her wits.
For the composure she somehow managed to cling to in the face of his stunning magnetism. He was so potently, powerfully male. And his features, his mannerisms, were quite different from the gentlemen of her acquaintance. She was accustomed to preening fops with starched shirt points and staid widowers who rambled on about the need for a second wife whenever they tried to lure her to their beds. She had withstood them all. Every invitation, every lewd look, each intimation. No one had turned her head.
“I can imagine how it would sting, the sharp points of these stones against your soft skin,” he commented, snapping her folio closed.
She would have demanded how he knew whether or not her skin was soft, but that would be reckless. He knew because he had touched her. The sensation of his hand wrapped around her bare thigh was emblazoned upon her flesh. Her gaze slipped to his long fingers, to the ring on his forefinger that she had felt intimately gliding over her, and yearned to have those hands on her body again.
“Of course it would,” she snapped, shaking herself from the reverie but not able to banish the desire. She moved her fingers in an impatient gesture. “My folio, if you please.”
But he didn’t relinquish it as she had expected he would.
Instead, he trailed his fingertips over the leather cover, the gesture somehow idle and yet sensual all at once. “Do you draw often, Marchioness?”
She plucked the folio from his grasp quite rudely, grappling for the self-preservation and sangfroid that had both fled her the moment he had arrived on the path. “It’s no concern of yours what I do.”
“Hmm.” His noncommittal hum nettled her, but he seemed remarkably unaffected by both her proximity and her ire as he reached for her fallen porte-crayon, retrieved it, and offered it to her as well. “What bothers you more, the fact that you kissed me back last night, or the fact that you enjoyed it?”
His question, issued so calmly, took her aback.
Made heat flood between her legs.
“I didn’t,” she lied as she snatched the porte-crayon from his grasp, once more unable to utter the wordkissin his presence.
To give voice to what had passed between them in the darkness.
“You didn’t kiss me back, or you didn’t enjoy it?”
Heat crept up her throat, and she was sure she was red as the roses that had withered on the bushes behind her when they were in full bloom. “Neither.” Her distress was so great that she didn’t even know what she was saying. “Both,” she corrected.
Why was she lingering here, crouched in this position, continuing to engage with a lowly guard who called himself Beast? Surely he had a given name. He didn’t look like a beast at all to her just now. In fact, he looked quite appallingly gorgeous. He was even dressed as a gentleman, in black trousers and a crisp white shirt beneath his coat and waistcoat that only served to enhance the mysterious color of his eyes.
