What was new and special to her, was tritely familiar to Ashbey. A man did not display such ease in his skin without extensive experience in the nude. And if she wanted to keep her head...and her heart...she must keep that in mind.
What was new to her was commonplace to him.
What had happened to Ashbey last night had never happened before.
His wild and uninhibited release had filled him with indescribable pleasure and yet, in the moment just before sleep, he’d felt as if he’d given over part of his soul—complete surrender. Last night had been everything he had hoped, but this morning brought home the incalculable cost.
Cerberus, his Arabian, sensed his unease and danced. Ash calmed the horse with a soothing stroke to his neck.
He could not have given over his soul. Mystical connection was for poets and artists and men who lived for sensation, not for men born to privilege and responsibility, and certainly not for a man hemmed by a legacy of madness and murder.
Danger lurked in the mere acknowledgement of how deeply he’d been moved. What good would it do? Chev had warned him not to create a scandal for the young widow. And, that wasn’t the only reason. He could have no future with Lady Stone.
Lady Stone—he snorted—he did not even know the woman’s name.
Ash could not promise Lady Stone a future. He had no future to promise.
Her strange magic had breathed new animation into his veins, but how long could such a feeling possibly last? How long did he have before the darkness converged once again? This strange quickening would pass, and he’d be returned to his numb, void prison.
Lady Stone deserved more. She was far too lovely to imprison as well.
Lovely? She was more than lovely. She had a quality to her, an artless openness in want of nurture and protection. What kind of monster would he be if he forced her to live in his world, knowing what had happened to Liza? To Rachel? To his mother?
If he could, he would have sworn to protect her light. But experience had shown him what would happen if he stayed close. His gloom would attach to Lady Stone. Gloom deadly as smoke from an unquenchable fire. The same gloom that stole everyone close to him.
Fog below cloaked the village, the harbor, and the sea. Its fingers even covered the charred portion of Wisterley, vacant since the fire that had claimed both his father and his wife. The single, visible structure was the tower peeking out of the mist. A tower which held Lady Stone.
Ash understood a warning when he saw one.
Chev was right. Lady Stone had suffered enough. For now, Ash could give her pleasure, for a time. She would not wish the alternative.
No one wished to be chained to a man haunted by ghosts.
He urged his horse to a gallop although the rain hit his face in stinging drops.
Two more nights was all he would permit himself to steal. Two nights he intended to savor.
Alicia spotted Ashbey out the entry hall window. He emerged from fog as if he’d been formed by the storm. The beast he rode was as ferocious as Satan, and galloping so fast, Ashbey’s greatcoat flapped wildly in the wind. All the discomfort and fret building since his absence, all the annoyance she’d cultivated to protect her heart, vanished.
Together, man and beast formed a breathtaking vision. She sighed. He couldn’t help that he was striking.
She could never mean to him what he could—if she allowed—mean to her. However, to be angry was a fruitless endeavor. Anger at Octavius had been equally absurd.
She meantsomethingto the duke. Just like she’d meantsomethingto Octavius. Something that made Octavius rescue an orphan from a near-deserted isle and keep her the way one kept an antique doll—a pretty thing to be displayed and never touched.
Octavius had never even carried her over the threshold.
Perhaps Octavius believed her a waif incapable of giving or receiving great passion. If that was so—she smiled—she had certainly proven otherwise.
She shrugged. She had Ashbey. For now. That was all she could ask for. All, in fact, she wanted. Ashbey and his world belonged to some different strata. She had reached too high once before, and intimately understood the consequences.
She turned away from the window and back to her book.
First, he’d stable and brush down his horse, then he would want to wash, then he’d need a bite to eat, and then—
The door clattered open and he strode into the hall, stopping short two long strides past where she sat by the window. His coat arced out as he swiveled.
Intoxicating, those eyes.
