“Nobody knows where we are. I didn’t say a word. But Thomas will know when he realizes which horse was gone and came back without the rider or the keys to the lodge. Don’t worry; he’ll know how to be discreet.”
“So you do this often?”
“Getting stuck in avalanches because Swan runs off? No, can’t say I’ve ever done that.”
“But seducing women in secluded lodges?”
Sebastian stopped and gave her a once-over. He pressed his lips into a flat line as if he had to suppress a laugh and quirked a brow. “Would you,” he cleared his throat, “Miss Madeleine, like me to seduce you in the lodge?”
Maddie forgot to breathe. She couldn’t tell if he was jesting or offering to make this… this… absurd suggestion reality. She ought to be scandalized. That was for sure.
Except that she wasn’t.
This is what I want.
She shouldn’t; it wasn’t proper.Yes, yes.The handbook would go up in flames if it knew what she was about.
And yet, there was plenty of snow to put that fire out.
Except not the one in her chest.
She was burning for Sebastian, and there was no denying it.
Maddie glanced behind her, at the distant trail Swan had taken, before placing her gloved palm in his. Her steps blended with his as they began the walk back up the hill.
“You do know,” Maddie said as they crunched uphill, “that if the lodge isn’t actually nearby, I shall stage a dramatic collapse in the snow and make you carry me the rest of the way. It might not even be dramatic because it will be true.”
Sebastian glanced at her. “Please don’t. You’ve already collapsed once today. My heart won’t survive another one.”
“Oh? This will be a survival strategy. I heard men can’t resist a woman fainting into their arms.”
“Careful, Maddie,” Sebastian teased. “That sounds suspiciously like you’ve been thinking about falling into my arms.”
She sniffed. “I think about a great many things. Bread. Books. Potions. Doesn’t mean I’m about to swoon over one.”
“A book has never kissed you senseless.”
“That,” she said, slightly breathless, “is an unverified claim.”
“You should be worried,” she said pointedly, “that if we’re found out here alone together, my reputation will be toast.”
He stopped walking and turned toward her. “Then let me be clear. I am the sort of man that takes responsibility.”
Her steps faltered. “Good. But let us hope it doesn’t come to that, because if I’m going to be ruined, it should be for something glorious. Not a cold walk and a lost horse.”
“Glorious?” he murmured. “That sounds dangerously like a challenge.”
“Only if you’re the sort to rise to it.”
“Oh, I do rise—”
“Sebastian!”
“—to challenges,” he finished smoothly, entirely unrepentant.
She huffed, but her cheeks flushed and her smile betrayed her. “You’re insufferable.”
“And yet,” he murmured, his hand brushing hers, “you haven’t let go.”
