Roxburghe set down the bottle. “You are familiar with Hereford enough to make that manner of observation?”
“I know that he came home a hero, too. He was once a captain in the Royal Navy. He has medals for valor. I know that your brother was caught cattle lifting alongwith two of his cousins. I know that no one is without blame.” She awaited some hint of Roxburghe’s reaction. When she saw nothing, she added, “I also know a dead hostage is useless to everyone, and that most people in your position would just surrender to the ransom demands. But then I imagine you are not most people.”
He lifted her thick braid and wrapped it around his fist, ever so gently. “What else do you know about me?”
Rose knew he was dangerous. She’d once heard he’d left Scotland because of a woman when she married another, and that gossip linked him to beautiful women across Britain, France and Italy. He’d left a trail of broken hearts and shattered marital aspirations that kept most noblemen with unmarried daughters and sisters far away from him.
Divided between wariness and curiosity, she slid her braid from his hand and tilted her chin. It was a rare man who forced her to tilt her chin. “I know you are a hunter at heart and you are no longer attempting to disguise your intentions toward me behind casual conversation. But I am not your prey.”
“I am not hunting tonight,” he said in a low voice. “If I were, you would already be mine.”
She held back a gasp, yet she made no effort to escape him. “You ... you overreach yourself, my lord.”
He made no effort to move either. The ever-present smile on his lips remained, but something had changed between them. Something as imperceptible as a hawk’s path through a current of air, yet, there all the same between them. “How so?” he asked. He reached in slow motion to ease the braid from her shoulder, and his featherlike touch suddenly filled her with inexplicable emotion. “Does a virgin stand before me, Rose?”
The man was outrageous. No one had ever asked her anything so utterly private and intimate, or so erotic her entire body reacted.
No proper lady would have stood for such impropriety. But then no one had ever accused her of being proper, and she was no coward to retreat on the first salvo. She was, after all, self-reliant, driven as much by curiosity as she was by her passions. “I am not ignorant of such things. I have read many a conspectus of the medical sciences, my lord. This is farming land with horses and cows and pigs. I know the names of body parts no one speaks of in polite company.”
Amusement shone in his eyes as he pointed out, “That was not my question.”
“You will receive no other answer.” She met his gaze and knew he was gauging her. “You are quite at your leisure to conclude what you will. But I assure you, I am no lady.” She had not meant the statement as it sounded. “What I mean is that ladies are frail creatures ...”
He laughed a clear baritone sound that startled her with its temerity. He was a rogue, and to the devil with you if you didn’t like it.
She understood now what attracted her to him, something even more compelling than his looks. She could admire a man who thumbed his nose at conventional mores, who defied authority with the courage of his convictions. His gaze fastened on her mouth and, from the lazy-lidded heat in his eyes, he must have recognized the same passions deep inside her as lived inside him. And just that fast in the cold, dark cavernous dining hall with the world asleep around them, they were two people quite different from what the world saw.
“You are not coy or pretentious. A commoner ... maybe.But not at all common. What family would give someone like you to a convent?”
“My mother died when I was young. I ... I barely remember my father.”
“I remember mine. I have forgotten what it is like to be so innocent.”
The trod of boots coming from down the corridor suddenly inserted itself into the heated silence. The mood shattered. Panicked that someone would see her alone in the night with a man—this man—in her sleeping clothes, she stepped around the chair just as Roxburghe moved to intercept her. She landed against his chest. His hands went to her waist to steady her.
“What are you doing?” she breathed out in a rush. “Someone will see us.”
But someone had already seen them.
A man stood in the archway backlit by lamplight. Only then, did she realize Roxburghe’s body shielded her face from the visitor’s sight. If she had gone running from the room a moment ago, she would have collided with the hapless fellow. She hid her face near his chest, feeling absurdly safe in his shadow.
“The storm is passing.” The man’s voice carried to the shadows where she stood. “Dawn is on the horizon.”
“I’ll be outside in a moment,” he said, the warm breath from his words rippling her hair.
The man hesitated. “Aye, captain. We will be awaiting your orders.”
Rose listened to his steps fade like the storm that had surrounded the abbey most of the night. But the silence brought another storm to bear on her, one far more perilous. She slowly raised her chin and found Roxburghe’s eyes on her face with unmistakable attention,a look he instantly shuttered as he eased his hands from her waist. The heat where his palms had shaped to the slim curvature of her waist lingered as she watched him walk to the end of the table and drag a jacket from the back of the chair.
She set the lamp on the table. “You are leaving the abbey before daybreak?”
He shoved his arms into the sleeves and turned, his eyes going over her. The stubble shadowing his jaw seemed to darken his gaze. “It is best if no one knows we were here. I will return for my horse when it is safe to do so.”
“You would risk your life coming back here for your horse?”
“If not a horse then what is worth dying for?”
Rose frowned. “That reeks of cynicism. Have you no care for your life?”
