He said nothing, merely looked up at her while that damnable thumb kept sending shivers up her leg that shocked heat and a familiar wetness from her core.Her body was so attuned to his, now.One look from him, one almost innocent caress, and she wanted more.
“No more pranks,” she persisted, her tone wavering slightly.“No more ‘helping’ or whatever it is you think you’re doing.Stay out of it, Hal.”
“What makes you think this earl, this Stonehaven, is any different from the others?”
She stared down at him, somehow devastated by the simple question.Everything that had passed between them flashed before her eyes, a swift unspooling of the thread of their acquaintance, from first impressions to heated quarrels to even more heated kisses.And more.
Gemma had done things with this man, felt things for this man, that would ruin her life if she thought about it too much.
So she wouldn’t.She would put Hal Deveril from her mind and concentrate only on the future.
Her future, as the Earl of Stonehaven’s countess.
Meeting Hal’s gaze boldly, Gemma tipped her chin to a firm angle and said, “I actually knew Stonehaven slightly back in London; I came out at the same time as one of his sisters, and she was kind to me when most of the girls I met were awful.He’s kind as well.And rich, well connected, with an irreproachable reputation.He is exactly what I’ve been looking for.William Brighton, Earl of Stonehaven, is the man I’m going to marry.And that means everything that has been between you and me—it’s over.This is farewell.It has to be.”
Hal sat back, his hand falling away from her ankle and leaving her free to escape.
Notescape, she told herself as she hurried down the ladder and out of the farmyard.She wasn’t fleeing.She was eager to get back to the earl, that was all.
And if the place where Hal’s hand had rested on her slim ankle felt branded through the silk of her stocking, she would simply put it out of her head.
Her future awaited.And if that thought didn’t fill her with happiness…well, what was one more thing to ignore?
ChapterSixteen
When Hal sauntered through the doors of Five Mile House as though he owned the place that evening, Gemma could not pretend, even to herself, that she was surprised.And though she would not have admitted it, even faced with a firing squad, there was an unruly, ungovernable part of herself that thrilled to see him.
Breaking away from the group of farmers she’d been chatting with after delivering their pints of ale, she stopped Hal at the threshold.
“You cannot be here,” she hissed.“I told you to stay home!”
Hal gave her a hooded smile and nodded at the young man behind the bar.“You told me I didn’t have to work,” he corrected her.“And I’m not.I’m just here to have a quiet drink, nothing more.How is young Barnaby coping?”
“He’s fine, and you’re leaving.”Gemma took Hal by the arm and attempted to steer him back out the door; it was like trying to dance with a boulder.
“One drink,” Hal said.“You wouldn’t be so heartless as to turn away a hard-working man before he’s had his pint of bitter.Ooh, and maybe a fish pie.Mr.Woodhill said he heard Danny Finnerman caught a brace of bream and sold them to Bess.That’s what I’m smelling, isn’t it?”
“I don’t care what you smell,” Gemma said, shoving at him fruitlessly.“You need to get out of here, before?—”
“Before what, before your precious earl notices you playing Blindman’s Buff with me over here?”Hal laughed down at her red-faced efforts to shift him.“Where is this paragon of an earl, anyway?”
The frustration that had been simmering in Gemma’s chest all afternoon, since she left Hal, suddenly bubbled up in a steaming explosion.
“He’s been gone for hours!On some sort of expedition on foot round the countryside to look at rocks, of all things, and I could have figured out a way to invite myself along, except I was wasting my time remonstrating with you on a farmer’s rooftop instead!”
“Rocks.”Hal quirked a brow.“This earl you intend to marry is an enthusiast of…rocks?”
Of everything she’d said, that’s what Hal took away from it?Gemma threw up her hands in despair.“Yes!He is of a scientific bent, if you must know, and a founding member of the Royal Geological Society.”
“How stimulating for you,” Hal murmured, laughter lurking in the corners of his green eyes.“I know how much you like rocks.”
“Rocks are fascinating to me,” Gemma declared stoutly.“I love rocks, I always have.”
“You love gemstones,” Hal countered.“Faceted, shiny, precious rocks that come in all sorts of colors.”
The justice of that popped Gemma’s frustration like a bubble and she came within a hairsbreadth of laughing out loud.That, or sticking her tongue out at Hal, who was surely the most infuriating scoundrel ever to draw breath.
Luckily, the opening of the inn door behind them saved her dignity.Unluckily, the person whose entrance forced Hal and Gemma to move out of the way was…the Earl of Stonehaven himself.
