In the dim light of the stable, breathless with want, mere steps from surrender, fingers knotted in linen and silk, the intimacy surged through her. She framed his face and reclaimed his mouth, rocking against him with unapologetic need, driving the connection deeper until sparks burst behind her closed eyes.
He washers.
She only had to make him realize it.
Her hand was at his hip, then his thigh, when he broke the kiss.
“Fuck,” he rasped, dropping his head back against the wall. “Not here, Isa.” They could be discovered at any moment, though his modest means ensured a thinner staff than most estates.
Pulling away, Isabella resurfaced in gradual increments. The press of their bodies, her breasts flattened against the sleek planes of his chest, his hard shaft, tucked nicely,neatly, between her thighs.
When she shifted to move away, his hands closed around her waist and held her fast.
His eyes held hers, the darkest green she had ever seen them. Desire shadowed his face, but so did strain. “I’m finding it impossible to deny you. My desire for you is, I should say, I care for you and if you mean to do this…”
Because she could, her hand resting on his thigh, Isabella traced her thumb along his length, her breath catching at the unyielding heat and hardness. No illicit French volume had prepared her for this. “I mean to do this.”
Placing her gently beside him in the straw, he raked a hand through his hair, his gaze fixed everywhere but her, though he caught her fingers at the last and threaded them with his. “I nearly lost a tenant today. Someone I’ve known since I was a boy, a farmer who manages the hay fields along the northern edge of the estate. I used to go there when things were terriblehere, which makes him very dear to me. His cottage, like the rest, has been neglected. The chimney, years of soot, cracked brickwork. A stray spark caught the roof timbers and up it went. I didn’t realize quite how badly things had been left by my brother.”
She turned toward him. Exhaustion hollowed his features. “Is he going to be all right?”
“Yes, he’s with the doctor in town. I’ll see he has the best of care, London, if necessary. But if your family hadn’t been here to help me—” He shrugged, the gesture drained of hope. “And then there you were, the last of the light catching in your hair, a golden glow I needed, wanted. Though I think you should return to London before we unearth things best left buried.”
Isabella shook her head, not understanding him.
“This is more than mere kisses, Isabella.”
Her grandmother had once advised that some truths were easier spoken without locked eyes. So she turned to rest beside him, her back to the wall, and kept hold of his hand. “Why not unearth it here? What better place could there be for discovery?”
“You would be that fearless,” he whispered, his voice rough with admiration and unease.
“So are you,” she said, leaning until her shoulder brushed his. She had never wanted to protect anyone before. She’d never imagined Everard Trentham would need her.
Thiswasmore than kisses.
Ever caught up his flask with his free hand, thumbed off the cap, and took a long pull. “I should tell you, I’m not a heavy drinker. But there are flames in my throat—you must have tasted them. I can’t seem to shake them.”
The scent of charred wood lay in his clothing and his hair, but his lips had tasted like ambrosia. “Maybe it’s amemory, not a flavor.”
He turned the flask in his hand, the dented silver catching a flash of dying sunlight spilling through the window. “My profession has taught me to limit my exposure. Part of the training for the job means you’re instructed not to share private bits with those just passing through, even if they’re fighting on the same side as you. You can’t get those honesties back, they weaken you. And sometimes they’re a danger, leaving you stripped bare emotionally. I’m not used to leaving parts of myself with anyone.”
Ah. Isabella allowed seconds to roll past while she debated. He had more walls up than anyone she’d ever known, quite a feat. It wasn’t the best time to conclude, without a doubt, that she’d fallen in love with him—this incredibly brilliant, sensitive, complicated man—but there it was.
So she began the unveiling for him.
She knocked her slipper against his muddy boot. “My mother was lovely, though she died when I was very young, leaving me with this glow in my heart and vague shadows in my mind. A concept of someone, if you will. Almost like a character from a novel. Penny remembers her so well—a fact that sometimes makes me jealous, then sad. My father was never the same after her death, ignoring us, which left my sister as guardian and me with a vacancy I’ve filled with rebellion. There are no positions of employment, or academia even, for females to hide within or behind. There’s only marriage, or scandal, and not much in between. I’ve made a scramble of it, trying to decide which is for me.”
“My mother was lovely as well. Gentle, generous of heart, weak of heart as it turned out,” he surprised her by admitting. Laughing softly, he drew his leg up and curled his arm around his knee. She tried not to record the play of muscle, nor recall his fingers kneading her breast, his moan hot against her throat. “She used to gather wildflowers from a field halfway to the village and place them all over the house in, I don’t know, jarsand cans and the like. Nothing befitting a countess, according to my father. She brought light into any room she entered, much like you do. When he sucked the light, the air,out.”
Ever caught her gaze. His eyes had faded to a cool emerald, still dazzling, his dark lashes longer than hers by a mile. “They married for her dowry, a way to uphold this place, love never a concern. Misery for the both of them. I won’t fall into that trap—not for me, not for her. I’ll strip Langley to the studs, build it back myself, stone by stone, first.”
Isabella shifted in the straw, dry stems whispering beneath her skirts. A tangle of thoughts swirled through her mind. “You want a love match,” she breathed, the buzzing in her ears bright with disbelief.
Ever gave the half-shrug she was coming to understand meant he’d said too much. With a sigh—giving in, perhaps—he laid his cheek on his knee and turned sad eyes to her. The frightened boy in him remained, and it broke her. “Doesn’t everyone, truly?”
She started to argue—it doesn’t work that way—but those were examples she’d vowed, much like Ever, not to live by. Society arrangements, business agreements for the most part. The unions in her family, her sister’s with Weston and the Duke of Mercer with his duchess, Camille, were rooted in a love so complete it left no room for doubt.
He smiled as she vacillated, his cheek dimpling, quite the most attractive man in all of England. “You think men don’t pursue love, they’re ambushed by it,” he said, laughing. “Very judgmental. One expects broader thinking from an anarchist.”
