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She reached up to wind her hand in his thick, rough hair, cupping the back of his skull. His tongue pressed inside her open mouth and she felt a corresponding pulse in her belly, a fullness, a hot tug. Ah. This. She remembered it. With George, it had made her gasp and writhe, do things she’d never dreamed. She moved her tongue beneath his, the hot slide of it making her shift her weight, drive her hip bones into the stone. He had the rhythm and taste of waves. The sensation kept breaking over her. His lips were salty with both of their sweat. With a ragged breath, he dragged his mouth from hers. They pressed forehead to forehead, his eyelashes beating against her brows, her eyelids. His hair smelled faintly of peat.

At that horrible inn, she’d imagined curling up against him, being held, nothing demanded. Giving to George had left her empty and craving. Left her with less of herself. Neal made her feel bigger. Larger than life. Intelligent. Legendary.

He laid his fingertips on her cheekbones and bent his head to kiss up her jawline. The wall seemed designed to maximize their torture. Uneven corners of stone bruised her thighs. The thickness meant their torsos couldn’t touch. Space became tantalizing, wind stirring around and between them, the skin around her nipples tightening.

It was a torture she could endure forever.

Kisses were as different from each other as dandelions. His lips grazed hers, their pressure light, and then his breathing changed and he was drawing her lower lip between his teeth, and her hands molded his incorrigible neck, so tanned and muscled, audacious and unfashionable, palms recording the flex of the tendons. Oh, to kiss, and kiss, and kiss. Mouths should always be wet and warm and open and stroked inside and out. His hands found her spine, moved to her waist. Her thighs burned against the stone.

Something groaned. Not her. Not him. Her eyes flew open at the thud. He stepped back, arm bent behind his head as he surveyed the destruction. The wall had slumped at the corner, spilling out onto the grass in a mass of loose stones. His chest rose and fell on quickened breath. Kissing her hadn’t strained him, of course. But he looked . . . stirred. She drank in the cool air, her heart pounding in her ears like surf.

He cleared his throat, flipped a stone with his toe. “Bound to happen sooner or later.” He didn’t sound breathless. He sounded amused. Balancing on the balls of his feet, he clambered over the ruins to join her outside the churchyard.

He grinned down at her. “Don’t blame yourself.”

“Me?” She crossed her arms, indignant, but he tugged them, laughing, and took her elbow, swinging her around so they faced down the path. She gasped as they pivoted, a gasp that converted to laughter. She liked his rough-and-tumble physicality. He seemed careless of his strength, but every gesture evinced control. She leaned her shoulder into his upper arm.

“This will give Cobbe something to do,” he said, as they began to walk arm in arm back toward the village. Oh, contact was delicious. Barring spare moments during those weeks in France, she’d never gotten to walk abroad with George, to hold on to him. In London, their encounters were furtive, liaisons in empty libraries while the band played in the ballroom. In public, he scarcely ever glanced in her direction.

This happiness was too green and bruisable. Caution. Caution was required.

Her lips were wet and felt particularly cool as the wind moved over them. Tingling. The wind—an extension of their kiss.

“Cobbe?” she asked, trying to follow the thread.

“The master mason.” Neal held her so close that his stride seemed to carry both of them, a rambling gait, her hip swinging in rhythm with his thigh. “He falls off walls with frequency and only builds them on the rarest of occasions. He’s angry as a badger that the architect brought his own masons with him from London. They’re the ones that will take down the church tower stone by stone.”

She looked back at the church, the square black tower rising against the graying sky, shockingly primitive and pagan. Her papa would never have approved.

“Why bother to repair the wall?” she asked. “Ruins improve the scene. They’re in fashion, you know. Once the tower is gone, the church will match the wall. More ruined, less ugly.”

“I’d love to hear you share these ideas with Tomas.” He started walking again. “He was the layman lobbying with the vicar for an architect to restore the church. The old tower is coming down, but a new tower is going up. Less ugly, I think, by your lights. The architect designed it. You can meet him if you like. Discuss the latest trends in follies, ruins, and those little houses for hermits that aristocrats like to stick in their gardens.”

Neal was laughing.

The enormity of it hit her. A London architect. Her hands went clammy.

“He’s in Kyncastle?” Her voice strangled in her throat. “The architect?”

“He’s been in Kyncastle for months, doing a survey, making drawings. He stays at the vicarage.”

“Ah.” A croak. She tried again. “His name?”

“Don’t recall it.” His voice was easy. A small, pacific bird perched on a ledge of rock sang out. Neal whistled to it, a passable imitation. His warm hand cupped her elbow.

How many architects in London? How many who knew her?

Nothing to worry about. The odds were so slim.

But her old life suddenly cast its shadow upon the new, and that darkness blended with the coming night as she descended the path.

Chapter Six

“Squally weather,” sighed Loveday as wind rattled the parlor window.

“Not as I know by.” Emmeline’s response sounded sour.

Lavinia made a noncommittal noise and continued writing. She’d been perched for hours in a wretched stick-back armchair, but in her story, the dauntless duchess was enduring worse discomforts, pulling the oars of the pinnace as shots whistled overhead.