Page 29 of The Rogue and the Viscountess

“As to the kidnapping.” She moved a slice of the warm pie to a plate of her own. “I would like at the least to send a letter to Lydia. She’ll expect to see me in the next day or two, and she’ll worry if I do not turn up.”

Her tone said she somewhat doubted whether Lydia gave the least thought to her at all. Pete remembered the dowager, the hatchet-faced one, with the thin, frowning mouth of a woman who had never known what it was like to be held, adored, loved. He felt a brief pity for such women. They married for status and when their husbands died they had status still, and the freedom to do what they wanted with their lives, but for women like Lydia, they still could not allow themselves pleasure.

Prunella enjoyed her pleasures. She loosened her bonnet and set it beside her on the blanket, letting the wind tease her tresses, sun-gold with a hint of sunrise red. She savored her pie, a woman who enjoyed her food.

And she had been loved in her marriage, or at least, she had been frequently touched. She had not shied at his caresses, and she had known how to touch him.

But she had never known the ultimate pleasure, until he gave it to her, and that meant her husband had been an idiot. But Pete—Pete deserved to have her.

As if this beautiful, self-assured woman, a viscountess, would ever want a rogue and a ruffian like him.

“There is paper in my grandmother’s writing desk in the parlor,” he said. “If you wish to send a letter. I’ll pay the post.” Oh, how generous of him, offering to cover her expenses after he had abducted her to his house.

Prunella made a face. “The pink and green parlor?”

“The smaller one, the family parlor. The gold room.”

“All right.” She munched at her pie and gazed across the pasture, where the sheep were going about their business of grazing, watching the gamboling lambs, or placidly staring off into a distance of their own, entertaining their sheep thoughts.

“Do you wish to return to Lydia? The Dowager Viscountess,” he corrected himself, not sure if she would condone his being familiar.

“To Lydia? No. To London? Not really.” She let her gaze roam over the sweep of the green land rising toward Corsham, the pasture dotted with splurges of autumn foliage, the golden-brown tips of the church and the towers of Corsham Court visible on the horizon.

“What do you wish, then?”

“I haven’t decided.”

He finished his slice of pie and held out his plate for another. The new housekeeper was unsure of herself in some ways, but the cook knew her business.

“You said you do not wish to be married.”

She met his gaze briefly as she scooped up another slice of pie, then dropped her lashes like a veil.

“I had thought to remain a widow, yes.”

“And live where?” It was as if he had forgotten how to talk. He was reduced to the sentences of a child, a babe still in dresses, unable to say what he felt beyond Want, want, want.

“I am still deciding that, too.”

“Would you consider living in Wiltshire?”

He slid his hand above her ankle to a rounded calf. Her stockings were silk with embroidered clocks, fine as he’d ever seen. So was the skin of the woman beneath.

She widened her eyes. “Wilt-shire?”

The hitch of her breath emboldened him. She wasn’t immune to him, not at all.

He could make her want him. He could make her stay.

His body reacted immediately to the thought, clutching at a single demand. Mine, mine, mine. He had to hold himself back from rearing over her and taking her right then, like the ram might cover an ewe. This delectable woman could be won. Could be his.

If he didn’t frighten her off. He moved his hand slowly to the back of a knee. She was silk and softness, and her leg trembled. She turned her thigh, ever so slightly, parting her legs.

Inviting his touch. Inviting him in.

“’Tis not Wales,” he rumbled. “But a lovely country. Rowan Hill is beginning to grow on me. I don’t wonder that my grandmother is so attached.”

She turned to face him, putting down her plate. “I’m to tell you to clean up and present yourself for morning calls. Barbara wants to show you off as well as me.”