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He opened his mouth to answer, but the door to the barn banged open.
“Breakfast is on the table!” called Mr. Pritcher.
Jane closed her eyes and let her head fall back on the pallet with a little sound of frustration.
Nicholas smoothed her hair off her forehead, his expression nothing short of regretful. “We could pretend we haven’t heard him,” he said softly.
“No,” she said with a sigh. “If we stay here we’ll never get back on the road again. Who knows how much progress Lady Margaret’s made thanks to my run-in with the Harlewoods.”
“Our run-in,” he reminded her before dropping a sweet kiss to her lips. “Breakfast it is, then.”
The cold chilled Jane as Nicholas threw back the quilt and then reached a hand down to help her out of bed. The air in the barn had cooled overnight, and without the natural, steady heat of Nicholas pressed up against her back, her skin pricked with goose bumps.
Jane donned her chemise and corset in the time it took Nicholas to locate and put on his drawers. She scurried over to what had been her bed to retrieve the rest of her underthings from behind three stacked bales of hay. With all of her ties and eye hooks secured, it was back over to the side of the barn she’d slept on.
She was just shaking any stray pieces of hay out of her dress when she realized Nicholas had stopped moving. Instead, he sat on the pallet watching her, now dressed in his trousers but no shirt.
She held the dress up to her breasts, covering herself in her sudden bout of self-consciousness. She’d never really thought of what it would be like to have a man watch her dress. It’d seemed like too remote a possibility to even fantasize about, but now it seemed almost too intimate. Nicholas’s hands had roamed over her last night and his tongue had tasted parts of her she’d never even dared to imagine someone else would see, and yet this little, unconscious moment of false domesticity was what threw her off her equilibrium.
“What is it?” she forced herself to ask through her own awkwardness.
Instead of answering, he rose and took the dress from her. Carefully, he raised it. Understanding that he wanted to help her, she lifted her arms and let him guide the garment over her head.
Nicholas kissed the base of her spine where the dress gaped open. Her lips parted. He kissed between her shoulder blades. Her breath quickened. He kissed the back of her neck right where her spine ridged.
Her head fell forward as his hands found the little row of buttons that ran down the back of her dress.
“You know, I’ve spent the last few days wondering how any woman manages to get these closed without the help of a lady’s maid,” he said.
She looked over her shoulder as his fingers tried to manipulate the little fabric-covered buttons.
“Every woman has her secrets,” she said.
“Damn, it slipped again,” he muttered. “Will that secret help me at all?”
“I’m afraid not. I have a little buttonhook I use to get the hooks closed.”
“The sort you use on boots?” he asked.
“With a longer handle, but essentially, yes.”
“Ah, there it goes,” he said as he moved on to the next closure. “Well, I’m always happy to lend a helping hand, even if I’m not particularly good at it.”
Except he wouldn’t always be there, would he? Once this madcap dash across the countryside was over, he’d still be a baron with two sisters who must be married and she’d still be a governess—although whether or not she’d still have a position at the end of all this was highly debatable. She didn’t know what was more depressing, the thought of going back to her old life or the idea that it might not be waiting for her when she returned.
This was neither the time nor the place, she reminded herself.
“Why do I feel as though your motives aren’t entirely altruistic in helping me dress?” she asked, forcing a laugh into her voice.
He leaned down so close to her ear she could feel his breath. “Because the sooner we get on the road, the sooner we get to the next inn.”
“And what happens at the next inn?” she asked.
He slipped his arms around her waist and hugged her. “The battlements come down in a room with a proper bed.”
“Well, then,” she said, glancing over her shoulder at him coquettishly, “I should probably find my boots.”
They raced through the rest of their preparations and, if truth be told, breakfast too. Twice Mr. Pritcher chuckled when he spotted Jane stealing glances at Nicholas, but she hardly cared enough to blush. The Pritchers already thought that the pair of them were a married couple. What did it matter if she helped the charade along a little?
