And for just that instant, he knew precisely what it felt like to be soaring high above the city, made of light, utterly free.
“It’s a magnificent creature, the gyrfalcon,” he said, softly. “Rare, beautiful, and more than a little dangerous.”
“Oh, I’m certain he is.” Lightly said, and only a little ironically.
The wind caught the end of her shawl and she reached up. The moonlight shone through her night rail, and briefly, distinctly, the full arc of her breast was delineated in shadow.
His lungs ceased moving.
She captured her shawl again.
It seemed an unnecessarily brutal thing to know precisely how her breast would fit in his hand.
“I think you do it,” she mused, “the blunt words, that is... so people won’t ask you more questions about it. It’s a bit like a shield.”
She turned to face him directly.
His mind blanked an instant. Bloody hell.
He eyed her warily. For a moment, he felt like he’d been flushed like prey from the underbrush. Exposed. And yet . . . he could not explain it . . . healso felt safer, somehow, than he’d been just a few moments before. As though one more veil twisted about his spirit had been unwound. He could breathe a little more freely.
He thought she deserved an answer. “You’re not wrong.”
She didn’t gloat. “You’re safe up here with me, Mr. Cassidy,” she teased.
Asthiswas patently untrue and a bit of a goad, he answered that only with an ironic little smile.
The bark of a dog carried to them on the wind. And he thought about his old hound, Tuesday. Damn, he missed that dog.
He could feel weariness setting in, even as his body was but buzzing from the nearness of her.
What on earth was he doing here in London, on a roof with a woman who was discovering the power of her own sensuality and treated it like a plaything? He could not rebuild his life in earnest until he was home again. He was chasing a phantom in the form of Woodley’s daughter. And he could not and would not touch the woman in front of him.
Lillias cleared her throat. “Mr. Cassidy... I hope you don’t mind... I could not help but notice... you’ve a few scars.”
“I’ve scars,” he confirmed.
“You were shot?” she asked carefully.
“I’ve been shot,” he said gently. So as not to bludgeon. But there was really no way to pillow that word.
She was quiet. The hair that escaped from her braid danced all about her face and in the lamplight. She cleared her throat again.
“I find . . .” She turned to face him, her expression unguarded but composed. “I find that I don’t like the idea of harm coming to you.”
All of those words lined up in the order she’d delivered them suddenly seemed more dangerous than the words “naked” or “dead.”
He gave a curt nod.
It suddenly seemed imperative that this interlude end.
“Perhaps you should consider coming down. Your mother and father are decent sorts, and I believe they would mind very much that you were up here.”
“Ah, but I’ve you to protect me,” she said, lightly. Somewhat ironically.
He sighed.
“I want you to know... it’s not boredom,” she said suddenly. “The reason I’m up here. And it’s not recklessness. Not really.”
