Making light of it was all that kept Rhys from throttling Kenna. He knew the risk he had taken by making love to her, knew that she was unprepared to allow a few moments of pleasure speak to her after years of nurturing animosity. He found no satisfaction in realizing he had anticipated her reaction correctly when he would have given almost anything to have been wrong. He sighed deeply and turned on her. “Tell me truly, Kenna. What was this evening in aid of?”
“I told you.”
“I know what you told me. But why? Where did you get such a notion?”
She would not tell him what she had overheard in Nick’s study. It seemed safer to share other truths. “I am twenty-three years old and no man has ever looked at me with anything but polite interest.”
Rhys wondered if Kenna merely did not consider him a man or if she had been oblivious to his interest. “You don’t know many men,” he said. “You refused your season and shut yourself here at Dunnelly.”
“Nick has friends who have visited,” she persisted. “They scarcely noticed me.”
“That only proves how blind they were, not that you are some sort of faerie snow queen. But why try to prove something to yourself now, Kenna? And why with me?”
“It had to be now. I cannot explain it any better than that. And you? I told you, there is no one else.”
“There was more to your decision than that,” Rhys said implacably. “What was it?”
“Rhys…”
“What was it?”
“I cannot believe you really want to know.”
“I do.”
“It had to be you. If I could respond to you, then…”
He put a finger to her lips. “I know the rest. It was an experiment then, just as you said.” She nodded and he was thoughtful for a moment. “You would not object if I conducted an experiment of my own?”
Kenna did not know if she had even responded to his query when Rhys’s mouth crushed hers. There was a hungry sort of passion in his touch, an element of something primitive that Kenna answered without thinking. Her breasts were still tender from their earlier arousal at Rhys’s hands and when he touched them now, stroking them with less than gentle pressure, they swelled and hardened immediately. The comforter fell away as Rhys dragged her against him. A soft moan escaped her as his hand caressed her abdomen then her naked thigh and her arms stole around his neck. She pressed her body to him, reveling in the texture of his clothes against her skin.
Rhys’s fingers caught a swatch of hair at Kenna’s nape and tugged. Her head snapped backward and the kiss was broken. He looked at her for a long moment, his face expressionless.
“I must revise an earlier opinion, Kenna,” he said, pushing her off his lap and getting to his feet, “Of those countless women I’ve known, you easily have the warmest body, m’lady. And, without question, the coldest heart.” He walked across the room and opened the door. “I bid you good night and dare we hope, pleasant dreams?”
Chapter 4
“But I want to ride this morning!”
Janet’s expression was incredulous as she listened to her mistress demand to leave her room. “I have strict orders that you are to spend another day in here.”
Kenna felt mutinous. It had been two days since Doctor Tipping’s visit and everyone was still treating her as if she had to be wrapped in cotton wool. It was the outside of enough. She felt fine; her headache was gone and she was able to keep food down now that Monsieur Raillier had been apprised of his mistake by Janet. According to her maid, the chef was nearly apopletic when he discovered arsenic in the salt and promptly boxed the ears of the kitchen boy who had been responsible for filling the cellars. The reason Kenna was the only person to have taken ill was because her meals were prepared separately at a small table where both the salt and sugar had been contaminated.
Kenna accepted her maid’s explanation because there was no reoccurrence of her symptoms and because she did not want to believe the poisoning had been anything other than accidental. The alternative did not bear thinking about.
“How dare Rhys give you orders to keep me a prisoner in my own home.” Kenna said. “He has no right.”
“I was not referring to Mr. Canning,” Janet said. “Your brother gave me the instructions.”
“Oh.” She avoided her maid’s speculative glance and wished she had not brought up Rhys’s name. There was no telling what Janet would make of that. Kenna told herself she was glad Rhys had not bothered her with his odious presence. What could they possibly have to say to one another? It was much better that he kept his distance. “Well, Nick hasn’t the right either,” she said, putting a period to her thoughts of Rhys. “I am perfectly capable of knowing when I am well enough to leave my bedchamber.”
Janet shrugged, a mischievous light in her hazel eyes. “I know what I was told, m’lady, but I suppose if you were to send me on an errand I couldn’t be responsible if you weren’t here when I returned.”
An impish smile tugged at Kenna’s mouth. “Then you wouldn’t mind finding Henderson and asking him if there was a letter for me from my sister?”
“I wouldn’t mind at all.” She picked up Kenna’s breakfast tray. “I’ll take this to the kitchen first.”
The door had barely clicked into place behind Janet when Kenna scrambled out of bed. She washed her face, gave her hair a few quick strokes with a brush, plaited it in a braid, and then dressed for riding. Taking the servant’s corridors to avoid meeting her family or Rhys, Kenna made it to the stables a full fifteen minutes before Janet returned to her bedchamber.
