She wasn’t even wearing a hat. There hadn’t been time to stop for one. They had slipped out through one of several hidden passages Wingfield Hall possessed, and onto a side path that had led them to this spot. It was a place he had previously thought ideal for a seduction. But today, he had put it to better use as a location for a picnic.
“This truly is a lovely, secluded little spot,” she said, looking around at the tranquility of the rolling grasses around them.
“You see? I told you. No one knows how to steal about in secret better than I do, darling.” He winked, but he very purposefully neglected to mention the reason for that.
He had become adept at fleeing a bored wife’s bedroom just in time to avoid an unpleasant confrontation with an irate, cuckolded husband. And naturally, the house parties being held at Wingfield Hall had lent themselves to the further investigation of the sprawling manor house. He had discovered the secret passages in short order and used them whenever it suited him.
“In this instance, you were not wrong, Your Grace,” she allowed, fidgeting with the drapery of her dove-gray skirts.
Her insistence upon reverting to formality between them was not lost on him. It was her attempt to rebuild the walls she was so set on erecting. The walls that allowed her to tell herself she would never be his mistress. Walls that were an illusion, as it happened. He would be more than happy to prove them so.
“Kitten, if you don’t cease calling meYour Grace, I’m going to have to resort to nefarious means of persuading you otherwise,” he warned lightly, loving the fire that sparked in hereyes whenever he used the pet name for her he had settled on in partial jest.
She had been like a trusting kitten that first night, and he hadn’t forgotten. Nor had he forgotten the way her curves felt pressed against him, how warm, how soft, how right. He intended to feel them again.
Soon.
A sultry smile curved her lips. “Perhaps I’ll stop calling youYour Gracewhen you stop calling mekitten.”
God, he wanted to kiss her. He was beginning to think himself rather a bit obsessed with Miranda. Ever since their meeting at her school, he’d been perpetually randy, haunted by thoughts of her when she wasn’t in his presence, and consumed by the need to touch and taste her when she was. Last night, he had even dreamed of her, for Christ’s sake. It was a troubling progression indeed for a man who ordinarily tired of his lovers the moment the passion between them inevitably cooled.
And yet, conversely, the more time he spent with Miranda, the more he wanted her.
At this very moment, he thought it reasonably possible that he would crawl through fields of burning coals and broken glass just to be inside her again.
He pushed these heavy notions aside in favor of grinning back at her, as if he hadn’t a care in the world. “Now that I think upon it, I rather enjoy hearing you call meYour Grace. It makes me think of other circumstances in which you might say it. For instance,oh Your Grace, please f?—”
“Rhys,” she interrupted, her tone scandalized.
“What?” He gave her his most innocent look. “I was about to sayoh, Your Grace, please fetch me my smelling salts.Because you are so unfairly handsome that I fear I am about to swoon.”
She laughed at that—her levity an uncommon prize indeed, and one he would happily claim as his own. Miranda’s laughterwas throaty and mellifluous, and like everything she said or did, it made him want to fuck her with a desperation that was truly bordering on pathetic. His cock was being maddeningly insistent at the moment.
“I suppose you often have ladies swooning over you,” she said when her laughter had subsided. “However, I hate to disappoint you. I don’t own any smelling salts.”
“However shall I revive you when you faint, then?” He gave her a wicked grin. “I’m certain I can think of at least one means of doing so.”
She compressed her lips in that way she had when she was trying valiantly to keep from letting her amusement show. “You are outrageous.”
“And as we have already established, you enjoy it.”
He was teasing her, his tone light, but there was something in her emerald eyes—a deep, searing recognition—that stole his breath. Although there were plates and cutlery separating them, he was half tempted to thrust them all aside and go to her.
“Thank you fordéjeuner,” she said, growing serious. “It was very kind of you to go to so much effort, just for me.”
“Ah, but as I’ve already said, I’m a selfish man. It wasn’t just for you. It was for me, also.”
“I am sure you were hungry as well.”
Yes, he was. He was positively bloody ravenous. But not for food.
Rhys held her gaze, keeping that to himself. “I could have taken my repast earlier. But then I wouldn’t have had you for company. I wouldn’t have had the privilege of your laughter and smiles. I wouldn’t have had this glorious image of you in the sunshine, the light glinting off your gorgeous hair.”
At his words, she patted her head, looking self-conscious. “I ought to have worn a hat. It’s most unseemly to be out of doors without one.”
Rhys busied himself with packing some of the empty crockery back into the picnic hamper. “I like you this way. To the devil with hats. Besides, I haven’t one either. We have flouted all the rules together. Doesn’t it feel lovely?”
“Too lovely, I think, and that is what makes it so very dangerous.”
