He propped one boot against the landing to prevent her escape. They stood nearly eye to eye, and something hot and dangerous arced between them. “There is a hunting lodge an hour’s ride from here,” he said. She felt the warm assessment of that dark blue gaze. “I have been meaning to visit the place since my return. You are welcome to ride with me. Chaperoned, of course ... if you choose to go back and fetch Jason to accompany us.”
“A chaperone? Because you do not trust me. Or I should not trust you?”
“Both, perhaps.”
This time it was her turn to laugh, but she sobered at the thought. “At least we are honest with one another,” she said.
Honesty in and of itself was a form of trust. She had only truly trusted two people in her life. Friar Tucker and Mrs. Simpson. A hostage houseguest was not supposed to trust her captor. Or feel safe. Or feel this much desire. Yet she did.
And as the silence lengthened between them, he cupped her face with his hands. Her heart pounded against herbreasts as if she had been running uphill, and then he bent his head and kissed her.
She stood on the landing, still holding tightly to the balustrade as if to catch some of her weight. Her mouth opened taking his tongue and giving her his. She wanted to touch him, to know him as she had that night in the glade, except in the light where she could see and feel him, where her mind could not lose him in the darkness. His kiss gentled, a contradiction to the raw desire she sensed in him and which coursed through her.
He pulled back, his hooded eyes surveying her as if to discern her thoughts. Strangely, she was no longer afraid of the future. She had at last found the capacity within herself to confront her future on her own terms. “Will everyone not wonder where we are?” she asked. “Are they not looking for us?”
He swept back a wayward strand of her hair and lent his mouth to the shell of her ear. “I am the only person who went after you today, Rose. If they wonder, they will not speak of it upon our return.”
Chapter 11
The hunting lodge was a two-story, ivy-covered Tudor cottage in the woods with a yard overrun by bramble and bracken. Inside, the dusty floorboards creaked with each step. A forest of horns gleamed back at Rose from amid a variety of weaponry on the walls. They had barely made it to the cottage before the second storm hit them. Rain slashed at the windows and made adrip-dripsound in the fireplace.
Ruark knelt in front of the huge stone hearth, large enough to roast a spitted boar. Yet, somehow, he managed to build a roaring fire. A lightning flash illuminated the room. With the heavy rain, she saw nothing but rivulets sliding down the thick lead glass. Her teeth chattering, she moved nearer to the hearth. To Ruark.
He turned to look up at her from his position closer to the floor. He’d slicked his rain-black hair to his nape and it remained tied back. The silver ring in his ear caught a flash of light.
“It looks as if no one has been here for years,” she said.
Crouched on one knee in front of the hearth, he looked around the room. Much of the furniture remained: a long wooden trestle table and chairs, an oak breakfront stackedwith a plethora of porcelain ware, none of which looked to have been touched in years. “I used to come here when I was a lad.”
Her clothes were soaked through and he dragged two heavy chairs nearer to the hearth for her to lay out her attire to dry.
He pulled blankets out of a cabinet set atop the breakfront. Standing in front of the hearth with one hand outstretched to the warming flames, she continued to watch the fire burn. She was neither coy nor demonstrative about her desire, but the newness of it all caused her to hesitate. She felt shy and nervous and did not know how one behaved in such circumstances.
He’d seen her before undressed by the pond, but stripping out of her clothes now had a different connotation. She knew it. He knew it.
She could see it in his eyes as he stopped beside her to give her a blanket. Thunder grumbled against the eaves of the house. He looked up at the ceiling as a burst of lightning illuminated the room. “I need to see to Loki,” he said. “There is a stable behind this lodge.”
They had left the horse tied near the front of the house. After the fire began to warm the room, he left her to secure Loki in a stall. She remained in the silence, her eyes closed, her senses opened to the pungent woodsy smells and sounds of the night surrounding her.
Then she set aside the blanket and struggled with the hooks and strings on her bodice and skirt. But her hands were freezing and it took her longer to remove her bodice, stays and petticoats. She laid her stockings over the back of the chair nearest to the hearth. Ruark still had not returned from the stable, so she wrapped a blanket around her shoulders and went in search of something to drink.
Ruark did not return until sometime later. Wrapped in the woolen blanket, she had waited for what seemed an eternity. She had found a flint box and lit a candle, then discovered dusty bottles of wine in the other room. Inside the breakfront were serving dishes. She set out two glasses for the wine.
She stood at the end of the table, next to the tall carved oak master’s chair, watching nervously as Ruark stomped the mud from his boots and cursed the rain and the bloody chill. The rain had plastered his shirt against his arms and shoulders. “The storm looks like it might be here a few hours.” His voice partially muffled against his sleeve as he wiped his face with his arm.
When he saw what she had prepared, he paused in his remonstrations. His gaze fell first on the pallet of blankets she had made in front of the hearth, then on the table. But as he dropped his arm to his side and approached, he had eyes only for her.
She clasped the blanket tightly to her bosom. “I found bottles of wine and brandy in the back room.” Her chin lifted and her tongue seemed to move faster. “I do not think I misinterpreted your purpose for bringing me here.”
He stopped near enough to her to touch. “Nay, you have not,” he said quietly, reaching out to tilt the wine bottle into the light as if to check its contents.
She laughed, but he heard the tremble in her voice. “I have not had anything to drink, if that concerns you. I thought ... so that we are both clear on the matter at hand, anything I offered you this day should be done with a sober bearing. I wanted you to know my mind ’tis sound as it ever will be.”
He looked down at the pallet she had made in front of the hearth. “Isyour mind sound?”
“Are you calling me a lunatic then?”
His low laughter sounded from deep within his chest, and he reached out to smooth the hair from her face. “Maybe.”
