“Isn’t that lying?” Fee demanded.
“No,” Delmare answered. “It’sacting, just like in the theater. Right, Uncle Heven?”
“Acting, yes,” he said. “Do you think you can pretend, just while we’re at the inn?”
“But the coachman—” Mrs. Montrose interrupted.
“Has been instructed not to reveal anything about his passengers,” he finished her sentence. “I find flaunting one’s wealth and station when traveling a long distance unwise.”
“Do we have to do acting because you kissed Mrs. Montrose?” Fee asked.
“Hand,”Mrs. Montrose added sharply. “He kissed myhand. And you can just say ‘act’—not ‘do acting’.”
“Do we have to act because you kissed Mrs. Montrose’shand?” Fee’s sly glance said she knew that the kissing would have progressed if the stranger hadn’t appeared.
“Yes,” Hurtheven admitted. Fee wouldn’t settle for anything less than strict veracity, anyway. “By my means of...thanking Mrs. Montrose, I subjected us all to gossip. Better to have the strangers we meet here believe we are what we appear—a family traveling together.”
“I can act,” Delmare bounced as he spoke.
“Me, as well!” shouted Fee. “Better than him.”
“We’ll see whose acting is best.” He pressed down his knees as he rose to his feet. “Now, you may run ahead—just don’t get too far.”
They skipped down the lane.
“Do you think this is wise?” she asked.
“I think the issue is adequately resolved.”For now. “You may trust me.”
She eyed him, wary. Then, she nodded as she took his proffered arm.
Truth was, nothing he’d done since he’d first laid eyes on her had been wise. And, given the heat still sizzling beneath his collar and the profound pleasure he took from her touch, he wasn’t at all certain sheshouldaccept his invitation to trust him.
Because more likely than not, he thought grimly, he was going to continue to be unwise where she was concerned.
Veryunwise.
* * *
No matter how lightly she laid her hand against Hurtheven’s muscled bicep, she could not deaden the effect of his nearness. Nor could she deny the heady, thick-lipped feeling she’d had when she’d thought they were about to kiss.
Good Lord, what a simpleton she was!
You may trust me, indeed! She’d trusted a man with a similar, pyretic lust in his eyes before. She would not make the same mistake again.
And yet, here she was with the duke’s penny in her pocket, her hand on his arm, pretending to be his wife, and wishing they hadn’t been interrupted before she’d tasted the honeyed temptation of his kiss.
But theyhadbeen interrupted. And the stranger had witnessed her reckless behavior, too. Then again, if said stranger hadn’t happened along the road, where would she have been?
Giving Delmare and Fee quite the tale to take home to their parents, that’s where she would have been! And—heavens, how would she answer the question of herreformationthen? She’d never, ever forgotten herself like that with Karl.
With Hurtheven, however, she was not just responding tohisexpress interest.
Shewantedhim, too.
She wanted him with the fever of a gambler begging just one, last card. Her deep blush throbbed in her cheeks. Her urgent sense of need left her alert and breathless. Her flesh still tingled in the spot where his mouth had touched the back of her hand. Not enough to purposely risk her future, but certainly enough to temporarily lose her mind.
What had he said?Keep what you’ve fairly won.
