Gemma told herself it was fine if he never came back.She’d gotten all the help from Hal that she needed, between the furniture and the heavy repair jobs around the inn.They were ready; tonight’s surprise test run proved that.
And if it had also proved that this entire plan was going to be harder than Gemma had imagined, well.So be it.
Mama came downstairs tonight, she reminded herself fiercely.And Lucy—her run-in with Thorne confirmed that as matters stood, she would always be at a disadvantage in society.The same disadvantage that had dogged every step of Gemma’s debut, eventually consigning her to her fate as London’s Liveliest Lady.
She didn’t want that for Lucy, and if Gemma could marry well, it would add enough of a luster of respectability to Lucy’s connections to overcome the circumstances of her parents’ union.It would work.It had to.
Life would go on.And if that life no longer made Gemma as happy as she’d once assumed, well, that would just have to be her little secret.
ChapterThirteen
Hal managed to stay away for five whole days.
Five days of breaking his back over getting the grass and hay brought in before the weather shifted and they were hit with spring showers that would turn the fields into muddy swamps and the hay into piles of moldy rubbish.
Five days of scrounging his meals at the Manor, nothing but cold bread and cheese.
Five days of hearing about the trickle of new guests to the inn turning into a steady stream—thus far, mainly a steady stream of ladies hoping to encounter the dashing highwayman who was now being written up in all the papers as The Gentle Rogue after the first highly romanticized chapter of his story had been serialized in theLondon Observatorby an anonymous author.
Five days of falling into bed exhausted but still totally unable to sleep until he’d succumbed to the temptation of reliving those sweet, stolen moments of heated passion with Gemma.
Five days of waking up hard as stone, with nothing but the touch of his own hand for release.
On the fifth day, he woke up hard, yet again.By now, he didn’t even bother to pretend he would be able to go about his day until he took care of the inconvenience between his legs.With a deep sigh, he got down to business, trying to keep it mechanical and impersonal, a physical release and nothing more.
The scrape of his callus-roughened palm was a maddening contrast to the memory of Gemma’s smooth, silky skin.He breathed in deep and pretended he could catch a whiff of her honeyed cinnamon scent.His mouth watered for the taste of her.He fisted his cock and gritted his teeth against the images that flooded his mind, but they were too vivid, too strong, too enticing.
Closing his eyes, Hal let himself drown in the memories of Gemma’s lush, curvy softness and ardent, uninhibited response as his hand tightened at the base of his cock and twisted to pull all the sensation up to the tip.With a muffled curse, Hal flung himself over on the bed so he could drive his hips down into the tight circle of his fist.Pounding hard, it was the memory of the way she moaned his name that sent him over the edge.
For the fifth day in a row, Hal panted and shivered his way through the aftershocks of orgasm and wondered what Gemma was doing at that exact moment before he caught himself.
It didn’t matter what she did.She was no concern of his.
Hal had his duty to his tenants and the small farmers who lived in the county.He had his own plans, and they didn’t involve dashing about the countryside pursuing a London lady who couldn’t wait to shake the dust of this place from her heels.
On that fifth day, Hal resolved yet again to take no notice of Lady Gemma Lively or her antics.Her plans would either come to fruition and she would find a Prince Charming to whisk her away from Little Kissington, or they would come to naught, and she would—here his brain ran down to a stop, like a clock that needed winding.
He didn’t know what would happen if her plans came to naught, and he didn’t care, he told himself firmly, hoisting his sore body from the bed and tossing on his clothes.
One day at a time.He had stayed away from her for five days; he could manage to stay away from her for a sixth.
Except he never made it to day six, because on that fifth day, little Peter Cartwright, who’d been hired on as a potboy at the Five Mile, came bounding up the path to Kissington Manor to tell Hal the news.
“Hal!Hal!Lady Gemma has a man!”
Hal’s heart lurched in his chest.He hitched his leather satchel of tools higher on his shoulder and clapped young Peter on the back.“Slow down, there.Catch your breath before you choke, and then tell me everything.”
Between gasps for air, Peter managed to relate that three days earlier, a splendid carriage had pulled up and disgorged no less than a baronet!
“Thir Gilbert Grathy,” Peter lisped through the gap in his front teeth, his button nose scrunching with the effort of getting the name right.“Went thtraight in and up to his private room, he did, and brought a manthervant with him.I helped with the horthes and his coachman told me Thir Gilbert is thingle and on his way to take the waters for his health, but he’d heard the Five Mile was a worthwhile thtop along the route from London to Bath!”
A chill skated down Hall’s back.This was it.It was exactly Gemma’s plan, and it appeared against all odds to actually be working.
That dandified Duke of Thornecliff and his high-and-mighty friends must have spread the word far and wide, and now here was a plump, juicy baronet swimming right into Gemma’s net.And he’d been there for three days—easily enough time to fall under Gemma’s enchanting spell, as Hal could attest from personal experience.
He had to see this for himself.
He ought to stay away, Hal told himself even as he strode down the hill toward the village, his long legs eating up the distance so that Peter had to break into a little jog to keep up with him.
