Slowly the kiss eased. The embrace of their bodies deepened until passion became comfort, mouths separating but hearts drawing closer. Their pulses felt like small, gentle kisses through their clothes. Cecilia sighed. This, now, was a softness more dangerous than any weapon. When was the last time anyone had held her in such a fashion? Not since the day her mother died. Cecilia hadn’t understood until now how much she’d longed for it.
“I’m sorry for being impolite,” he said.
“So you should be,” she murmured, closing her eyes, wishing she could remain in his arms forever.
“When next we discuss hardness, it will be somewhere more conducive to a demonstration than Lady Armitage’s kitchen.”
Cecilia smiled dreamily—and then began to frown as her wits worked through that sentence. Their eventual comprehension shocked her, and she pushed him away with the fervor she really should have applied several moments ago. He stepped back, grinning rakishly.
But his eyes were heavy, and there was a depth to his grin she did not want to see. The man was a scoundrel, nothing more, and she must resist him! Turning away, she snatched a lantern from the kitchen bench.
“I’m going to search for Morvath’s house,” she said firmly.
“I’m going with you,” Ned replied.
“No. Someone needs to stay and watch over Lady Armitage.” And getting some distance from this man seemed like a wise idea right now.
“She’s not a concern. I put a sleeping draft in her sherry.”
Cecilia frowned. “Where did you get a sleeping draft?”
He crossed the kitchen to tap against a small cupboard set on thewall above the coffee grinder. Its door was marked with the wordPoisons, beneath which was a delicate etching of a flower.
“I see,” Cecilia said. “Well, in that case I suppose you may come.” She glared at him, but in the depths of her mind she felt a fizzing, as if her traitorous wits had opened a bottle of wine.
Ned smiled sardonically. “Thank you, my lady.”
“But you have to behave yourself.”
His smile vanished. In three swift strides he was with her again and had his hand beneath her chin, tipping it up, before she could even catch her breath. She stared at him wide-eyed, pulse racing, as he bent toward her.
“Madam,” he said.
“Yes?” It was more an exhalation than an actual word.
“Of course I will behave.”
“You will?”
He began smiling again, slowly, like a finger slipping down her neck. “I give you my word as a scoundrel.”
“Oh. Er, good.”
He let her go, stepped back, his smile as crooked as his manners. Cecilia recalled Lady Armitage’s advice and squared her jaw, looked away to protect her heart, and envisioned shooting Captain Lightbourne down on her well-swept inner path to tranquility.
Except then she had to return in imagination and minister to him, hiring a doctor to tend his gunshot wounds, making a bed for him in Aunt Darlington’s guest room, feeding him soup spiced with herbal remedies Pleasance swore would not turn him into a vampire (although he might develop a craving for blood pudding), and lighting candles for his sake in church on Sundays. And as he lay sleeping, his long eyelashes casting shadows over his cheekbones, his muscularchest rising and falling gently beneath his damp, transparent nightshirt...
“Damn!” Cecilia swore for the first time in her life, causing Ned to jolt with surprise. He turned away from the door of Lady Armitage’s drawing room and put a finger to his lips.
“She’s asleep,” he whispered. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing,” Cecilia replied. “That is, I stubbed my toe.”
“Inside your boots?”
“Yes. Stop looking at me like that.”
“Like what?”
