“’Tis but a custom, my lady,” came his voice again. Deep, smooth, and much nearer. “A token courtesy, the execution of which means nothing.”
Caterine’s pulse skittered at his words. He erred. The extending of this particular courtesy would cost her much. And not in the way he’d believe were she to voice her hesitation.
Her willingness sealed, she locked her gaze on his. He stood not four paces away, one arm slung about his friend’s bare shoulders, his own broad chest equally clothes-free.
And so perfect, her knees went liquid at the sight.
His hard-muscled magnificence, every taut well-defined plane, stole her breath and sent a floodtide of stunned surprise spiraling through her.
Wave upon wave of something so intense, so thoroughly different from anything she’d ever experienced, she could only stand and stare at him.
A dusting of crisp dark hair arrowed down the sculpted tautness of his abdomen to disappear beneath the rolled waistband of his braies. The light woolen cloth, still damp from his rigors in the bailey, hugged his muscular thighs and clung to his maleness in such a brazen manner, nary a secret remained about the grandness of his virility.
Finding her voice at last, Caterine gasped.
He smiled.
A slow and lazy half-smile of such bone-melting potency, the wonder of it reached clear inside her soul to the secret place her gasp had come from.
The place she hid her dreams.
He hid nothing.
And nothing could stop the waves of tight-pitched anticipation spilling through her, the longer she stared.
“Merciful saints,” she breathed at last.
“They had nary a hand in it, I assure you,” he said, a bitter edge marring the beauty of his voice. Slicing through the mysterious bond his oh-so-seductive gallantry had been weaving of her long-slumbering desires.
Hopes and dreams so deeply buried, she’d forgotten she’d ever spun them.
Lifting a hand to his face, he trailed long fingers down the scar slashing across his left cheekbone. “Dear lady, the good saints had their backs turned the day I was thus blighted, but they watch over me now, I assure you.”
“I am sure they do.”
“And as they guard me, so shall I protect you.” He skimmed his knuckles down the curve of her cheek. “Your person, your home and people, your sensibilities.”
“My sensibilities?”
He nodded.
Dear God, he said no more. He just looked at her in that way he had, the one that set her blood to racing. Could it be knew? Did he sense the arousal he stirred in her?
If so, what should she do?
She didn’t know, so she said the only thing that sprang to her mind. “The bath water will chill.”
When he still said nothing, she gestured to the bathing tubs, the steam rising from them undoing her supposed concern. “It would be a shame-”
“A great shame, yes.” He stepped closer, lifted her face with a single finger beneath her chin. “And we shall speak of such matters another time, when we are alone.”
He lowered his hand then, and strode away.
And ridiculous as it was, she wanted to hurry after him.
* * *
Marmaduke ignoredevery warning his good sense roared at him, even the knots twisting in his gut, and spun about, returning to Lady Caterine in three quick strides.
