The Lady Most Willing

Chapter 13

Fiona had been looking forward to the next act in the French farce that their kidnapping had become, but rather than Marilla, one of the laird’s men pushed his way through the door, a tray balanced on his shoulder.

“Brought you buttered crumpets,” he said with a grunt. “And mulled cider.” He walked over to the fire and put the tray down on a hassock. Then he set a lidded silver pitcher on the floor close to the hearth. “Leave it here so it’ll stay hot,” he ordered.

“Thank you,” Fiona said. “We will.”

He straightened, caught sight of Byron, and scowled. “Does the laird know that you’re in here?”

“No, and you’ll not tell him.” The words were delivered with a hard tone that seemed to make an impression on the man.

“Wooing!” he said, and turned and spat into the fire. “Time was a man dinna have to do this kind of wooing. Groveling for money, more like.” His gaze moved to Fiona. “Begging from women who has the money. It’s unnatural.” He collected her cold teapot and headed for the door.

Byron strode after him. “You didn’t see me here,” he stated.

The old Scotsman snorted and stomped off.

Oddly enough, that snort made Byron smile. Fiona decided that she didn’t understand him. He was unnerved by Marilla’s advances, but amused by a retainer’s flat rudeness. As she watched, he not only closed the door but turned the key.

“Is that truly necessary?” Fiona inquired.

“If you’re asking whether I’d prefer to avoid the experience of having another strange breast fall into my hand like an overripe plum, the answer is yes.”

Perhaps she should say something to defend her sister. But an overripe plum didn’t sound very nice.

“What if it weren’t a strange breast?” she asked, unable to resist.

“I am not familiar with any woman’s breasts,” Byron replied, walking back to the sofa. “At the moment the world is full of strange breasts. Though I must say, this is a very improper subject.”

“You do need to marry,” Fiona pointed out, struck by his observation. “You should be out there groveling at someone’s feet—Lady Cecily’s for example—in the hopes of gaining an intimate acquaintance with body parts other than her feet.”

“There are better things a man could do with his time than grovel at a woman’s feet,” Byron remarked.

With a start, Fiona realized that he was looking at her as he sat back down. With a lazy smile.

A dangerous smile.

For a moment her heart hiccupped, but she got hold of herself. “Right,” she said briskly. “You may have one of my crumpets, and then I would ask to be left in peace. I don’t have much left to read in this novel, and I’m keen to finish it.”

“If you force me to leave now, I shall starve,” he complained, picking up a linen napkin from the tray.

“Only because you’re afraid to go into the drawing room for tea.”

He reached a powerful hand toward the crumpets. Devil take the man, his limbs were probably as beautifully knit as his fingers. “More cautious than afraid,” he said. “Have you noticed how much worse the storm has grown today?”

She didn’t even glance at the windows. She’d lived in the Highlands all her life, and she knew the howl of the wind. “It will worsen through tomorrow evening, I should guess. You are now in the Highlands proper, Lord Oakley.”

“My name is Byron,” he said, for the third or fourth time, as he handed her the napkin and a crumpet.

The incongruity of this man being named Byron flashed across her mind. Byron was a poet, a man who wrote of love, midnight, and a woman’s smile. The earl, though, was of a different character altogether.

He obviously read her expression. “I have no connection whatsoever to that paltry rhymester Lord Byron. The name has been in my family for generations.”

“You’re not a poet, then?” She smiled at him, acknowledging that the mere notion was ridiculous. In fact, his christening had to be some sort of jest on destiny’s part. This Byron was the least poetic man she’d ever met.

On the other hand, his person could easily be the subject of poetry. From the top of his ice-blond head to the toes of his perfectly shined boots, he was flawless. Even in the width of his shoulders and the clear blue of his eyes.

He had finished his crumpet, so he picked up the pitcher and poured hot cider into her empty teacup.

“Brandied cider,” she said happily. “What a perfect drink for an afternoon such as this.”

“It’s not afternoon; it must be going on six in the evening,” Byron said, pouring himself a mug. “At any rate, I could write poetry if I wished.” Stubbornness echoed in every word.

She eyed him. “Are you this competitive in every aspect of your life?”

“It is not competitive to understand that poetry presents very little challenge. A rhyme here or there is hardly problematical.” He tossed back his cider.

Fiona thought precisely the opposite, but she kept prudently silent. It had just occurred to her that he might have had a rather sad childhood. Still, thinking that an earl—a man immersed in privilege and luxury—could have been neglected was absurd. She was mistaking innate arrogance for something else.

“Did your governess teach you the fine art of writing lyrics?” he asked, reaching past her toward the plate of crumpets. “Or were you sent to school?” His lips had taken on a buttery shine. If she had the nerve—and life were completely different—she would kiss him just there, on the bow of his lower lip.

Snow was dashing itself against the windows, and the library felt like a very warm, very snug nest. “We were largely raised by a nanny and a governess,” she told him. “We had different mothers, but unfortunately, neither survived past our early years. My governess was not poetical, to the best of my memory.”

“Mine felt that nursery rhymes were poor substitutes for biblical verses,” the earl said.

“That sounds . . . tedious,” Fiona said honestly.

He nodded. “I think it would have been better had I a sibling. I would have guessed that Marilla was spoiled. ‘Too pretty for her own good,’ my nanny would have said.”

“Did your nanny say that of you?”

“I’m not pretty,” he said, reaching for the last crumpet.

“Please save at least one crumpet for me,” she asked pointedly.

“Oh, I don’t know,” he replied. To her surprise, there was a wicked amusement in his eyes. “I’m sure Marilla would say I should eat them all, the better to protect your waistline.”

“Beast,” she said, but without heat. His gaze made it perfectly clear that he thought her waistline was fine as it was. In fact, that was probably the kind of carnal look that her father thought she’d given Dugald. She hadn’t. Ever.

“I wouldn’t want us to quarrel over crumpets,” Bryon said, a glimmer of a smile at one corner of his mouth. Then he did something that she would never in a million years have expected: he held the crumpet up to her lips.

She looked at him.

“Open your mouth and take a bite,” he ordered.

He watched her lips so intently that she felt a curl of heat in her stomach. He couldn’t truly be attracted to her.

Not that it mattered. At the moment he knew next to nothing about her past, yet all too soon he would. But then . . . his eyes met hers as she took the bite, and the curl of heat grew a little more intense.

It was as though they were having two completely distinct, yet simultaneous conversations. It was most disconcerting.

“Marilla was a beautiful infant,” she told him, unable to think what else to say. He took a bite of her crumpet, still watching her intently. “The adoration her curls inspired wasn’t terribly good for her.”

“I suppose it led her to believe that she was the most endearing child in the Highlands, as opposed to the most willful.” He held out the crumpet again.

“Lord Oakley,” she asked with some curiosity, “do you feel that you might have a fever?”

“Absolutely not.”

“You seem to be acting out of character. Do you think your friends would recognize you if they could see you now?”

“Of course they would.”

She hesitated. “You do know that Marilla and I attended the London season the last two years?”

A slight frown creased his brow. “Will you eat this crumpet, or shall I finish it?”

She accepted what little remained of the crumpet and finished it in two bites. Butter dripped onto the back of her hand, and without thinking she licked it off. Their eyes met again, and the warmth in her stomach spread to her legs.

“I glimpsed you at two balls in the last season,” she said, straightening her back. “You were pointed out to me as one of the most eligible men in London—that was before you asked for Lady Opal’s hand in marriage, of course.”

“But we were not introduced.” He frowned in a rather irresistible way. “I would have remembered you.”

“Of course we were not introduced,” she said, almost laughing at him. “Marilla and I are as far beneath your notice as butterflies are to a . . . a . . .”

“Hawk?” he suggested.

“Elephant?”

The right side of his mouth hitched up in an enchantingly hesitant smile.

“At any rate,” she said hastily, reminding herself that this flirtation had no future, “I rather think your friends might believe you’d lost your mind if they could spy on you.”

“I would like to know what it was like to grow up with a sibling,” he said, ignoring her comment. “Did she steal your toys? I believe that is common behavior.”

“Surely Rocheforte stole your things when you were boys?”

“My father did not consider Robin suitable company for his heir,” the earl said. “A matter of his French blood, you understand. We met only as adults, so I did not share my nursery with anyone.”

Her hunch had been right, then: his had indeed been a lonely childhood. “Marilla did borrow my things occasionally,” Fiona admitted. She took a sip of the cider and broke into a fit of coughing.

He leaned over, slipped a hand behind her, and gave her a gentle clap on her shoulder. “Are you all right?”

Excepting the fact that she could feel the touch of his fingers all the way through ancient velvet, two chemises, and a corset, she was fine. Just fine. “Your uncle’s cider is a trifle stronger than I’m used to.”

Byron poured himself a new cup, and took a healthy swallow. “Brandy with a touch of cider, rather than the reverse,” he said with obvious pleasure. “It isn’t as though we have to do anything requiring coordination.”

Fiona took another sip. The drink burned on the way down to her stomach, reminding her that one crumpet, plus two bites of another, wasn’t much of a meal.

“Let’s return to the subject of your childhood,” Byron said, settling into his corner of the sofa.

“Let’s not,” Fiona said. “We ought to join the others in the drawing room. It must be nearly time for supper.”

There was something wild and boyish about the earl’s face, as if he’d thrown his entire personality—at least, what she’d seen of it in London—out the window. “Not after I went to all that trouble to sneak in here,” he said. “Besides, I’m enjoying this. Very much.”

Fiona felt a blush creep up her neck.

“Lord Oakley,” she said cautiously, “did you take anything to drink before that cider?”

“No,” he said, tipping his head against the back of the sofa. “I did not. But I might drink that whole pitcher; I may never return to the drawing room.” He turned his head and looked into her eyes. “I don’t want to be kissed by your sister again. And that’s even though I gave some thought to marrying her.”

Fiona cleared her throat. “I can understand that.”

He leaned toward her. “But I wouldn’t mind if you kissed me. If you address me as Oakley once again, I shall kiss you. There: I’ve given you fair warning.”

“I shall not kiss you,” Fiona exclaimed, drawing back. “I don’t kiss anyone.”

“And your reason for such abstinence?”

“That’s none of your business.”

He settled back into his corner, nodding. “You would probably share such information only with your intimates. Friends.”

Fiona glanced at him, feeling shy, but she couldn’t bring herself to tell him about Dugald. Not yet. “Marilla and I didn’t fight over toys,” she said, looking back to the fire. “I didn’t mind sharing. But when we were growing up, my sister always wanted a portrait frame that I owned.”

He stretched out an arm along the back of the sofa; it was amazing how a person could not touch you . . . and still touch you. “Did she take it from you?”

She nodded. “I always got it back, though.”

“And that frame held a portrait of your dead mother.” She felt him pick up a lock of her hair.

“How on earth did you guess that?” She turned to face him again, and her hair slid from his fingers. Her toes were a little chilly; she pulled up her legs and wrapped her arms around her knees.

“Power of deduction,” he answered, shrugging. “I suspect that you have always given Marilla what she wants, because I doubt there are many material objects you hold dear. I could think of only one thing that you wouldn’t give up. She would want it all the more because it was important to you.”

She stole another look at him, and realized that there was one other thing that she would never willingly give to Marilla . . . but he wasn’t hers to keep. It was a horrifying thought. It was hard enough to recover from the emotional morass caused by Dugald’s death. She didn’t need to fall in love with an improbably beautiful and thorny lord as well.

“It was a very, very pretty frame,” she said, realizing she had adopted Marilla’s favorite phrase only as she said it. “Silver worked with pearl, and of course my sister was quite young when she first saw it.”

Byron stood and moved to the fire, onto which he carefully placed two more logs. As she watched him, it occurred to Fiona that he probably did everything carefully. He returned to the sofa, but somehow ended up seated not at one end, but in the middle.

His hip touched her slippers, in fact. Once again, he slung his arm along the sofa and picked up a lock of her hair. Unsure how to react to this, Fiona pretended not to notice.

“What happened to the frame?” he asked.

“She began stealing the portrait and hiding it, after which I would tear apart her bedchamber looking for it. Eventually, my father heard of our battles, and he sent off to London to have a precise duplicate made, but with a portrait of Marilla’s mother rather than mine. She was, you understand, very beautiful.”

“Your mother must have been extraordinarily lovely as well. What was your father’s secret?” His eyes held an expression she recognized, though it wasn’t often directed at her. She’d seen it too often in the eyes of men looking at her sister to mistake it. He must be drunk to feel lust for her. Quite drunk.

“In fact, my mother was an ordinary woman,” she said, hugging her knees.

“I doubt that.” He paused, then: “How did she die?”

“She caught pneumonia one particularly cold winter. I was quite young, so I haven’t many memories of her, but she was motherly, if you know what I mean.”

“Dark red hair like yours?”

She nodded.

“Your hair has all the colors of the fire in it, like banked logs that might burst into flame any moment. And it curls around my finger like a molten wire.” Without stopping, he asked: “What happened when the portrait arrived?”

“Nothing,” Fiona said, rather sadly. Her sister had tossed the portrait—painted by Sir Thomas Lawrence from an earlier likeness—to the side as if it had cost mere pennies. She could still picture her father’s crushed expression. “Pearls are old fashioned, Papa,” Marilla had snapped. “Don’t you know anything? I swear I don’t belong in this mud hole. I belong in London.”

The earl tugged the lock of her hair that he held, rather as she had tugged Marilla’s that morning. “Lord Oak—”

He tugged harder.

“Byron,” she said, reluctantly. “This conversation isn’t at all proper. Not at all. I don’t wish to call you by your given name.”

“And why is that?”

“Because this is some strange fairy-tale moment, and tomorrow, or possibly the next day, the snow will stop and then the pass will open, and you will return to your life. And I will return to mine.”

“Will you come to London for the season this March?”

“No,” she said swiftly, knowing instantly that she would rather die than sit on the edge of a ballroom and watch the Earl of Oakley waltz with another woman as everyone attempted to decipher his haughty expression. “I didn’t like you very much when I saw you there.”

He nodded, seeming to understand. “You wouldn’t like me this time, either. But couldn’t we pretend that I’m someone different? Likable? After all, we’re buried.” He gestured toward the windows. They were encrusted with snow and ice.

“I’m not very imaginative,” she said apologetically. “All I can see is an earl who is well-known as a most punctilious man, but has apparently lost his head. It would be one thing if I were Marilla. But you’re not struck mad by my nonexistent beauty, so the only way I can explain your flirtation is to believe that you do so in order to avoid my sister. And that doesn’t make me feel very flattered.”

“Why couldn’t I be enthralled by your face? Because, as it happens, I am.” He reached over and poured more cider into both of their cups.

She frowned at him. “How strong is that cider?”

“You are very beautiful, in a quiet way. You’re like a flower that one sees only after wandering away from the coach into a field. And then, behind a rock, one finds a tiny blue flower, like a drop of the ocean in the midst of a brown field.”

“Goodness,” she said, startled by this flight of lyricism. “Perhaps you do have something in common with Lord Byron.”

“Absolutely not,” he said, his lip curling. “The man leads a licentious life and deserves every drop of notoriety he’s earned.”

“Reputation is tremendously important to you by all accounts.”

“An excellent character is a person’s greatest blessing,” he replied. It sounded as if he was repeating a sentence he’d heard many times.

“It’s far more complicated than that. The public nature of one’s character can differ from the nature of one’s intrinsic self,” she answered, feeling her heart ache. Surely she wasn’t falling in love with a man she hardly knew. Clearly, she was feeling too much. More than she’d allowed herself to feel in years, since the wrenching horrible days when she realized that her father didn’t, and never would, believe her about Dugald.

Byron stretched his feet out toward the fire. A log cracked in half and sent a shower of sparks like live bits of gold up the chimney.

“My father believed that nothing mattered except for one’s reputation,” he said, staring into his mug.

“He would have approved, then, of your broken betrothal?”

“Without question. Though I should say that, in point of fact, she broke the engagement after . . . after the incident.”

“Did you love her?” Speaking the words sent a little pulse of savage longing down her neck. Why would his fiancée kiss a dancing master when she could have kissed this complex, beautiful man? It was inconceivable.

“No,” he said morosely. “And obviously, she didn’t love me, either. But I didn’t ask for love.” His expression made it clear that was an important distinction. “I never asked for that.”

“You should have,” Fiona exclaimed, before she could catch herself.

He pushed to his feet and squatted before the fire, using the poker to move a half-burnt log closer to its heart. He moved with a powerful grace that belied his large physique. “I begin to share your opinion.”

She raised an eyebrow, but he didn’t look back at her. “Neither love nor affection is a prerequisite for marriage amongst the nobility,” he continued. “But faithfulness is. That’s what a woman’s reputation means: that she won’t sleep with another man, and leave a cuckoo to inherit one’s estate.”

“I think kindness is important,” Fiona said, thinking of Dugald and his lack thereof.

“Of course. Sanity is also a good attribute in a spouse.” Humor laced his words again, albeit humor with a dark edge.

“You’ve omitted physical attractiveness,” Fiona offered. “From what I’ve seen during the season, gentlemen find beauty tremendously important.”

He was placing another log on the fire, but he half turned in order to see her face. “Why do you single out my sex? Don’t ladies feel the same about their future husband’s appearance?”

She thought about it. Dugald hadn’t been handsome, not in the least. Of course she would have preferred a good-looking man, but when her father had presented her with the marriage, it never occurred to her to say no for that reason. “We generally don’t have the freedom to choose on that basis.”

He looked back at the fire. “The dancing master was going bald. That’s what I remember most: the way his head shone in the back.”

Without conscious volition, Fiona rose and walked a step to his side. But once there, she was at a loss. Obviously, he had cared about his faithless fiancée, no matter how much he protested to the contrary. She put a hand tentatively on his shoulder. Her velvet sleeve was a little too long; its folds fell over the arm of his coat. “I’m sorry,” she said.

He got to his feet. “I didn’t care about her overmuch.” Perhaps he was telling the truth, but she knew instinctively that he would never admit it if Lady Opal had broken his heart.

Byron was a stubborn, stubborn man. That square chin conveyed a level of obstinate, masculine strength that a woman could lean against—and battle—for the whole of her life.

Fiona found herself smiling at him as if he were a true friend, as if genuine affection flowed between them. Somehow, beyond all reason, she felt as if she had just become friends with a pompous, irascible turnip of an English lord.

From the look in his eyes, he had come to the same realization at the same moment.

Then his eyes fell to her lips. She licked them nervously. “Of course,” she said, her voice coming out in a breathy tone that reminded her uncomfortably of Marilla, “of course you didn’t love her!” Somehow she managed to give the sentence a perky tone that was utterly inappropriate.

His eyebrow shot up. He was mocking her, and yet . . . yet there was sensual promise there as well.

“No,” she whispered.

He didn’t answer, at least not directly. Instead, he reached over and pulled one of her hairpins and, before she could stop him, another. Without pins to hold it up, her heavy hair tumbled down over her shoulders.

Byron made a sound in the back of his throat that sounded like a hum.

“What are you doing?” Fiona said, stepping back and frowning. Her spectacles had slid down her nose; she pushed them back up. “I have already informed you that I am not an appropriate person with whom to conduct a flirtation, Lord Oakley.”

“And I have already warned you about using my title,” he said, his voice throaty, and just as she remembered his threat of a kiss, his arms came around her and his mouth descended on hers.

It was not her first kiss. In the heady days before her father matched her with Dugald, she had kissed two boys. For years afterward, she had remembered one of those kisses in particular. She could even remember the sharp smell of the pine needles that crackled under their feet as she and Carrick Farquharson stood in the shade of a garden wall. There had been no second kiss. Carrick had left to fight in His Majesty’s army, and never returned; his body lay in a grave somewhere in France.

Byron’s mouth brushed across hers, and she smelled pine needles, like a ghost of a promise. It was awkward. She didn’t know what to do with her arms, or her spectacles.

The only thing she felt was a deep sense of rightness . . . and an equally powerful sense of wrongness. “We mustn’t do this,” she whispered.

He eased back enough to remove her spectacles. Holding her gaze, he carefully put them on the mantelpiece.

That just meant that Fiona could see his face even more closely. Her brows drew together as she tried to make sense of what was happening. “Why are you kissing me?” she said, keeping her back straight, so that she didn’t relax against him like the veriest trollop. And then, fiercely, “Is it because you know of my reputation?”

“Have you kissed a dancing master as well?” His voice was threaded with a lazy sensuality that made her step back, though his face blurred when she did it.

She shook her head. “No.”

“Then what spurred your lost repute? Not that I would believe such a rumor, because any fool could see that you’re not the one in your family handing out kisses like bonbons.”

“My fiancé’s name was Dugald,” she began. She took a deep breath, but he interrupted.

“A terrible name.”

Words bubbled up in her chest, but she didn’t open her mouth to blurt out the story of ivy, and windows, and a reputation so blackened that she was infamous throughout the Highlands. The truth was that she longed for another kiss, just one, before he learned the truth and turned his back in disgust.

When she didn’t speak, Byron cupped her face with his long fingers, carefully—as carefully as he did anything else. Yet when he put his mouth to hers, there was nothing sensible about his kiss. She opened her mouth to his without thinking, wrapping her arms around his neck and standing on her tiptoes.

It was a wicked kiss, deep and wild and glad. She could taste it in his mouth, that sudden, vivid delight, as clearly as if he had said so aloud.

The knowledge of his pleasure curled in her stomach, flared into an odd heat that made her shiver against him, and then he was kissing her so fiercely that her head tilted back.

It was dark behind her closed eyelids. She concentrated on the taste of him and the smell of him, and the way one kiss melted into another, kisses that made her ache and breathe as if she were running, but not away—toward him, closer to him.

Her arms curled more tightly around his neck; then his hands slid to her back and he pulled her against his body. As if it mattered to him that she feel all that hardness and strength.

Their tongues tangled and she slid her fingers into his short hair. Part of her was frozen in stark disbelief that an English earl with white-blond hair and a muscled body was kissing her. Making her feel meltingly soft, and impatient. Making her long for more.

That thought was instantly followed by a rush of panic. She—Fiona—didn’t allow herself to long for anything. She never had. That way was madness. She kept herself sane by never wishing for what she could not have, by recognizing that life had sensible boundaries.

Longing would mean acknowledging that she wished that her mother hadn’t died, that her father cared about her more, that she had never met Dugald, that people had believed her . . . It meant the heartbreak and desperation of knowing that she wanted children, that she wanted a husband, that she . . .

Her panic was as chilling and as overwhelming as an ice-cold wave breaking over her head. She pulled back. “I can’t do this,” she said, her voice rising to a squeak when she looked up at Byron and understood that longing wasn’t strong enough to describe what she was feeling. She seemed to have succumbed to a kind of madness, though she hardly knew him.

In an impulse for self-preservation, she reached out, put her hands on his chest, and pushed at him. She felt hard planes of muscle under her fingers as she pushed, which merely increased her alarm. He didn’t even fall back a step.

“I’m not like this,” she said, her breath sounding harsh in her ears. “I don’t do this. I know I have a terrible reputation, but I’m not . . . I’m not a whore.”

“I would never think that!” he said, quick and fast, and some errant part of her saw his chest rising and falling as fast as hers and was triumphant and glad. He wasn’t unmoved by her, by plain Fiona Chisholm.

Even so, she fell back another step. She would not allow herself to want him. He wasn’t hers. He could never be hers.

“No,” she repeated. But there was something uncertain in her voice, and his eyes flared, hot and feverish.

It didn’t matter that he couldn’t be hers; clearly, he was thinking that she could be . . .

“No,” she said with a gasp, and she almost spoke aloud, but it was too foolish to even think that the Earl of Oakley would consider a mere Scottish lass to be his. The possessiveness in his eyes probably meant he was considering making her his mistress. “I am not a strumpet,” she said, stronger now. “I’m not. Even if I am Scottish, and . . . and not beautiful.”

“You are beautiful.”

She stared at him blankly for a second, because she had always trusted herself and her judgment. All her life. She had been a mere six years old when she discovered that her father was weak. All of ten years old when she realized that Marilla was always angry—too angry to be a loving sister. Sixteen when she learned that Dugald was a bully. And what she saw in this man’s face, this almost-stranger’s face, was trust, desire, and longing. For her.

“No,” she whispered. “You mustn’t.”

He reached out for her again. “I already do.” His voice was sure and confident.

Fiona struggled free before his lips could again touch hers and make her fall into that pool of hot, wild desperation. “This is madness,” she said, putting her hands on her hips. “You, sir, should have better control of yourself than to exert your seductive wiles on a—a maiden like myself.” Because she was a maiden, even if no one believed her. “I am not available to slake your lust,” she added.

“Slake?” Laughter shone in his eyes along with that deeply unsettling gleam that spoke of lust.

She waved her hand impatiently. “Whatever you wish to call it. I am not a strumpet whom one can tumble just because the door is locked. You are not the first to try to take advantage of me, you know. And you shall not succeed!”

It was all different from Dugald trying to climb in her window, but it felt good to shout at him.

The startled look on his face was worth it, too.

“I would not have taken advantage of you,” he said, his brow darkening.

“Then why is the door locked?” she challenged.

“To keep your bloody sister out,” he snapped back. “It had nothing to do with the two of us being inside.” He walked over to the door and unlocked it.

But when he turned around, he wasn’t irritated any longer. He looked like a gleeful boy. “Thanks to that lock, I’ve just realized that I have ruined your reputation,” he said, sounding pleased with himself. “We’ve been locked in a room together. We’ll have to marry. It’s what a gentleman would do.” He walked toward her, his eyes intent.

“Oh!” she cried in frustration, stepping backward. “Why have you changed like this? I don’t understand you!”

“I decided this afternoon that I wish to make a woman fall in love with me.”

Fiona glared at him. “So I am the subject of an experiment? Are you planning to accost young ladies on a regular basis?”

He shook his head. “No.”

“Then what on earth are you doing?” she cried, exasperated. “I don’t believe for a moment that you plan to ruin my reputation and marry me, if only because it’s already ruined. It’s very unkind of you to make jokes of this sort to a woman like myself, who has no prospect of marriage.”

“I suspect I have gone a little mad.” Byron lunged and scooped her into his arms. “Whenever I touch you,” he whispered against her lips, “I feel as if you are the woman I have been looking for my whole life, though I have denied, even to myself, that I was looking.”

Despite herself, her lips softened and he took her invitation, embroiling her in a kiss that made her feel soft and feminine, all those things that she wasn’t.

More than anything, it was a possessive kiss, the kind of kiss a man gives a woman whom he is determined to make his, to have and to hold . . . Madness or no, her every instinct told her that Byron was telling the truth: he wanted to marry her. And he wanted to bed her. Craving swept her body like a drug, making her sway against him. He groaned deep in his chest, and pulled her still closer.

“We can’t,” she said, the words emerging in a little sob. “I haven’t told you . . .”

“You will be a wonderful countess.” His hands stroked slowly down her back, leaving her feeling as if her skin woke only after he touched it.

“No, no, I will not,” she gasped, unable to believe that they were having this discussion. “We don’t know each other.”

“I didn’t know Opal, either, as is manifestly clear,” he offered, his eyes hot with desire. His hands—

“You shouldn’t touch me there,” Fiona managed.

His hands tightened on her bottom, and then slid upward to her hips. “I love your curves,” he said thickly. “I promise to spend at least forty years getting to know you.”

“I know why you are saying this,” she said, trying to ignore his touch, though she couldn’t make herself move away from him.

“Because you are delectable?”

“Because you have decided that Lady Opal only staged her affection for the dancing master. You could tolerate her betrayal when you thought she was in love with another man, but now you feel bruised.”

“You taste like apples,” he said, ignoring her comment and taking her mouth again.

She allowed the pure pleasure of his kiss to sweep her under. It was bliss, this kissing, the way their tongues played together, the way he held her, as if she were shy and precious and beautiful, when she was none of those things.

This time it was he who pulled back. “I know enough about you, Fiona.”

“You know nothing,” she said shakily.

“You are very intelligent and you love to read.” He dropped a kiss on her left eyebrow. “You are extremely kind, even to your sister, who would strain anyone’s generosity. You love deeply and you’re very loyal. You don’t suffer fools gladly, but you are instinctively polite.”

He kissed her right eyebrow, and his hands tightened on her hips. “You have beautiful curves,” he said, his voice darkening a trifle. “Your hair has red tones that look like the most precious jewel in the world. I want to drape you in rubies. I want to see you lying on my bed, wearing nothing but a ruby necklace.”

Fiona felt as if she were caught in some sort of dream. Byron’s eyes were fervent. He meant every word. And he had no idea, none at all, of what had happened to her.

She squared her shoulders, summoning the courage to crack open the little enchantment that had bewitched them both, when the library door suddenly opened.

They swung about to find Mr. Garvie standing on the threshold. “Supper is in an hour,” he told them in his usual surly tone. “So if you two mean to dress, you’d better get at it.”

“If you’ll excuse me,” Fiona said, and like the coward she was, she fled. She could feel tears coming as she ran up the stairs. It was so—so unfair. Byron was undoubtedly suffering from some sort of temporary madness. But he looked at her in such a way . . . and said those things . . . things she never thought she’d hear from anyone.

It was cruel that she couldn’t marry him. She caught herself thinking a hateful thought about Dugald before she pulled herself together.

Her chest felt hollow, as if there was a physical reason for the ache there. It was absurd. She didn’t even know Byron. He may have decided that he knew her, but all she knew was that he was an absurdly beautiful man, an English earl who’d been thrown over by his fiancée, and for some fairly inexplicable reason had decided on her as a replacement, even though she’d told him at least three times that her reputation was ruined.

“I’d like a bath, if you please,” she told a stray retainer she encountered in the hallway.

He put up a protest, but she fixed him with a tiger’s eye and he backed down. “You’ll miss supper,” he said in a parting shot.

Hopefully, he would be right.