The Mammoth Book of Regency Romance

Upon a Midnight Clear Anna Campbell

North Yorkshire — December 1826

The crash of shattering wood and the terrified screams of horses sliced through the frosty night like a knife.

Sebastian Sinclair, Earl of Kinvarra, swore, brought his restive mount under control, then spurred the nervous animal around the turn in the snowy road. With cold clarity, the full moon shone on the white landscape, and starkly revealed the disaster before him.

A flashy black curricle lay on its side in a ditch, the hood up against the weather. One horse had broken free and wandered along the roadway, its harness dragging. The other plunged in the traces, struggling to escape.

Swiftly Kinvarra dismounted — knowing his mare would await his signal — and dashed to free the distressed horse. As he slid down the icy ditch, a hatless man scrambled out of the smashed curricle.

“Are you hurt?” Kinvarra asked, casting a quick eye over him.

“No, I thank you, sir.” The effete blond fellow turned to the carriage. “Come, darling. Let me assist you.”

A graceful black-gloved hand extended from inside and a cloaked woman emerged with more aplomb than Kinvarra would have thought possible in the circumstances. Indications were that neither traveller was injured, so he concentrated on the trapped horse. When he spoke soothingly to the animal, the terrified beast quieted to panting stillness, exhausted from its thrashing. While Kinvarra checked the horse, murmuring calm assurances throughout, the stranger helped the lady up to the roadside.

With a shrill whinny, the horse shook itself and jumped up to trot along the road towards its partner. Neither beast seemed to suffer worse than fright, a miracle considering that the curricle was beyond repair.

“Madam, are you injured?” Kinvarra asked as he climbed up the ditch. He stuck his riding crop under his arm and brushed his gloved hands together to knock the clinging snow from them. It was a hellishly cold night.

The woman kept her head down. From shock? From shyness? For the sake of propriety? Perhaps he’d stumbled on some elopement or clandestine meeting.

“Madam?” he asked again, more sharply.

“Sweeting?” The yellow-haired fop bent to peer into the shadows cast by the hood. “Are you sure you’re unharmed? Speak, my dove. Your silence strikes a chill to my soul.”

While Kinvarra digested the man’s outlandish phrasing, the woman stiffened and drew away. “For heaven’s sake, Harold, you’re not giving a recitation at a musicale.” With an unmistakably impatient gesture, she flung back the hood and glared straight at Kinvarra.

Even though he’d identified her the moment she spoke, he found himself staring dumbstruck into her face — a piquant, vivid, pointed face under an untidy tumble of luxuriant gold hair.

He wheeled on the pale fellow. “What the devil are you doing with my wife?”

Alicia Sinclair, Countess of Kinvarra, was bruised and angry and uncomfortable and horribly embarrassed. And not long past the choking terror she had felt when the carriage toppled.

Even so, her heart launched into the wayward dance it always performed at the merest sight of Sebastian.

She’d been married for eleven long years. She disliked her husband more than any other man in the world. But nothing prevented her gaze from clinging helplessly to every line of that narrow, intense face with its high cheekbones, long, arrogant nose and sharply angled jaw.

Damn him to Hades, he was still the most magnificent creature she’d ever beheld.

Such a pity his soul was as black as his glittering eyes.

“After all this time, I’m flattered you still recognize me, My Lord,” she said silkily.

“Lord Kinvarra, this is a surprise,” Harold stammered. “You must wonder what I’m doing here with the lady …”

Oh, Harold, act the man, even if the hero is beyond your reach. Kinvarra doesn’t care enough about me to kill you, however threatening he seems now.

Although even the most indifferent husband took it ill when his wife chose a lover. Kinvarra wouldn’t mistake what Alicia was doing out here. She stifled a rogue pang of guilt. Curse Kinvarra, she had absolutely nothing to feel guilty about.

“I’ve recalled your existence every quarter these past ten years, my love,” her husband said equally smoothly, ignoring Harold’s appalled interjection. The faint trace of Scottish brogue in his deep voice indicated his temper. His breath formed white clouds on the frigid air. “I’m perforce reminded when I pay your allowance, only to receive sinfully little return.”

“That warms the cockles of my heart,” she sniped, not backing down.

She refused to cower like a wet hen before his banked anger. He sounded reasonable, calm, controlled, but she had no trouble reading fury in the tension across his broad shoulders or in the way his powerful hands opened and closed at his sides.

“Creatures of ice have no use for a heart. Does this paltry fellow know he risks frostbite in your company?”

She steeled herself against the taunting remark. Kinvarra couldn’t hurt her now. He hadn’t been able to hurt her since she’d left him. Any twinge she experienced was just because she was vulnerable after the accident. That was all. It wasn’t because this man could still needle her emotions.

“My Lord, I protest,” Harold said, shocked, and fortunately sounding less like a frightened sheep than before. “The lady is your wife. Surely she merits your chivalry.”

Harold had never seen her with her husband, and some reluctant and completely misplaced loyalty to Kinvarra meant she’d never explained why she and the earl lived apart. The fiction was that the earl and his countess were polite strangers who, by design, rarely met.

Poor Harold, he was about to discover the truth was that the earl and his countess loathed each other.

“Like hell she does,” Kinvarra muttered, casting her an incendiary glance from under long dark eyelashes.

Alicia was human enough to wish the bright moonlight didn’t reveal quite so much of her husband’s seething rage. But the fate that proved cruel enough to fling them together, tonight of all nights, wasn’t likely to heed her pleas.

“Do you intend to introduce me to your cicisbeo?” Kinvarra’s voice remained quiet. She’d learned that was when he was at his most dangerous.

Dear God, did he intend to shoot Harold after all?

Surely not. Foul as Kinvarra had been to her, he’d never shown her a moment’s violence. Her hands clenched in her skirts as fear tightened her throat. Kinvarra was a crack shot and a famous swordsman. Harold wouldn’t stand a chance.

“My Lord, I protest the description,” Harold bleated, sidling back to evade assault.

Was it too much to wish that her suitor would stand up to the scoundrel she’d married as a stupid chit of seventeen? Alicia drew a deep breath and reminded herself that she favoured Lord Harold Fenton precisely because he wasn’t an overbearing brute like her husband, the earl. Harold was a scholar and a poet, a man of the mind. She should consider it a sign of Harold’s intelligence that he was wary right now.

But somehow her insistence didn’t convince her traitorous heart.

How she wished she really were the impervious creature Kinvarra called her. Then she’d be immune both to his insults and to the insidious attraction he aroused.

“My Lady?” Kinvarra asked, still in that even, frightening voice. “Who is this … gentleman?”

She stiffened her backbone. She was made of stronger stuff than this. Never would she let her husband guess he still had power over her. Her response was steady. “Lord Kinvarra, allow me to present Lord Harold Fenton.”

Harold performed a shaky bow. “My Lord.”

As he rose, a tense silence descended.

“Well, this is awkward,” Kinvarra said flatly, although she saw in his taut, dark face that his anger hadn’t abated one whit.

“I don’t see why,” Alicia snapped.

It wasn’t just her husband who tried her temper. There was her lily-livered lover and the perishing cold. The temperature must have dropped ten degrees in the last five minutes. She shivered, then silently cursed that Kinvarra noticed and Harold didn’t. Harold was too busy staring at her husband the way a mouse stares at an adder.

“Do you imagine I’m so sophisticated, I’ll ignore discovering you in the arms of another man? My dear, you do me too much credit.”

She stifled the urge to consign him to Hades. “If you’ll put aside your bruised vanity for the moment, you’ll see we merely require you to ride to the nearest habitation and request help. Then you and I can return to acting like complete strangers, My Lord.”

He laughed and she struggled to suppress the shiver of sensual awareness that rippled down her spine at that soft, deep sound. “Some things haven’t changed, I see. You’re still dishing out orders. And I’m still damned if I’ll play your obedient lapdog.”

“Can you see another solution?” she asked sweetly.

“Yes,” he said with a snap of his straight white teeth. “I can leave you to freeze. Not that you’d probably notice.”

Her pride insisted that she send him on his way with a flea in his ear. The weather — and what common sense she retained under the anger that always flared in Kinvarra’s proximity — prompted her to be conciliatory.

It was late. She and Harold hadn’t passed anyone on this isolated road. The grim truth was that if Kinvarra didn’t help, they were stranded until morning. And while she was dressed in good thick wool, she wasn’t prepared to endure a snowy night in the open. The chill of the road seeped through her fur-lined boots and she shifted, trying to revive feeling in her frozen feet.

“My Lord …” During the year they’d lived together, she’d called him Sebastian. During their few meetings since, she’d clung to formality as a barrier. “My Lord, there’s no point in quarrelling. Basic charity compels your assistance. I would consider myself in your debt if you fetch aid as quickly as possible.”

He arched one black eyebrow in a superior fashion that made her want to clout him. Not a new sensation. “Now that’s something I’d like to see,” he said.

“What?”

“Gratitude.”

He knew he had her at a disadvantage and he wasn’t likely to rise above that fact. She gritted her teeth. “It’s all I can offer.”

The smile that curved his lips was pure devilry. Another shiver ran through her. Like the last one, it was a shiver with no connection to the cold. “Your imagination fails you, my dear countess.”

Her throat closed with nerves — and that reluctant physical awareness she couldn’t ignore. He hadn’t shifted, yet suddenly she felt physically threatened. Which was ridiculous. During all their years apart, he’d given no indication he wanted anything from her except her absence. One chance meeting wasn’t likely to turn him into a medieval robber baron who spirited her away to his lonely tower.

Nonetheless, she had to resist stepping back. She knew from bitter experience that her only chance of handling him was to feign control. “What do you want?”

This time he did step closer, so his great height overshadowed her. Close enough for her to think that if she stretched out her hand, she’d touch that powerful chest, those wide shoulders. “I want …”

There was a piercing whinny and a sudden pounding of hooves on the snow. Appalled, disbelieving, Alicia turned to see Harold galloping away on one of the carriage horses.

“Harold?”

Her voice faded to nothing in the night. He didn’t slow his wild careening departure. She’d been so engrossed in her battle with Kinvarra, she hadn’t even noticed that Harold had caught one of the stray horses.

Kinvarra’s low laugh was scornful. “Oh, my dear. Commiserations. Your swain proves a sad disappointment. I wonder if he’s fleeing my temper or yours. You really have no luck in love, have you?”

She was too astonished to be upset at Harold’s departure. Instead she focused on Kinvarra. Her voice was hard. “No luck in husbands, at any rate.”

Kinvarra suffered Alicia’s hate-filled regard and wondered what the hell he was going to do with his troublesome wife in this wilderness. The insolent baggage deserved to be left where she stood, but even he, who owed her repayment for numerous slights over the years, wouldn’t do that to her.

It seemed he had no choice but to help.

Not that she’d thank him. He had no illusions that once she’d got what she wanted — a warm bed, a roof over her head and a decent meal — she’d forget any promises of gratitude.

In spite of the punishing cold, heat flooded him as he briefly let himself imagine Alicia’s gratitude. She’d shed that heavy red cloak. She’d let down that mass of gold hair until it tumbled around her shoulders. Then she’d kiss him as if she didn’t hate him and she’d …

From long habit, he stopped himself. Such fantasies had sustained him the first year of their separation, but he’d learned for sanity’s sake to control them since. Now they only troubled him after his rare meetings with his wife.

This was the longest time he and Alicia had spent together in years. It should remind him why he avoided her company. Instead, it reminded him that she was the only woman who had ever challenged him, the only woman who had ever matched him in strength, the only woman he’d never been able to forget, desperately as he’d tried.

He smiled into her sulky, beautiful face. “It seems you’re stuck with me.”

How that must smart. The long ride to his Yorkshire manor on this cold night suddenly offered a myriad of pleasures, not least of which was a chance to knock a few chips off his wife’s pride.

She didn’t respond to his comment. Instead, with an unreadable expression, she stared after her absconding lover. “We’re only about five miles from Harold’s hunting lodge.”

The wench didn’t even try to lie about the assignation, blast her. “If he manages to stay on that horse, Horace should make it.” Fenton showed no great skill as a bareback rider. Kinvarra recognized the wish as unworthy, but he hoped the blackguard ended up on his rump in a hedgerow.

“Harold,” she said absently, drawing her cloak tight around her slender throat. “You could take me there.”

This time his laughter was unconstrained. She’d always had nerve, his wife, even when she’d been little more than a girl. “Be damned if you think I’m carting you off to cuckold me in comfort, madam.”

She sent him a cool look. “I’m thinking purely in terms of shelter, My Lord.”

“I’m sure,” he said cynically.

In spite of their lack of communication in recent years, he’d always known what she was up to. Since leaving him, she’d been remarkably chaste, which was one of the reasons he’d allowed the ridiculous separation to continue. Clearly living with him for a year had left her with no taste for bed sport.

Recent gossip had mentioned Lord Harold Fenton as a persistent suitor, but Kinvarra thought he knew her well enough to consider the second son of the Marquess of Preston poor competition. He should have listened.

Her taste had deteriorated in the last ten years. The man was a complete nonentity.

Perhaps one day she’d thank her husband for saving her from a disastrous mistake.

And the bleak and stony moor around them might suddenly sprout coconut palms.

“No, my love, your fate is sealed.” He slapped his riding crop against his boot and tilted his hat more securely on his head with an arrogant gesture designed to irritate her. “Horatio travels north. I travel south. Unless you intend to mount the other carriage horse or pursue the clodpole on foot, your direction is mine.”

“Does that mean you will help me?” This time, she didn’t bother correcting his deliberate misremembering of her lover’s name. She was lucky he didn’t call the blackguard Habakkuk and skewer his kidneys with a rapier. Alicia was his. No other damned rapscallion was going to steal her away. Especially a rapscallion who didn’t have the spine to stand up and fight for her.

Kinvarra strode across to his mare and snatched up the reins. “If you ask nicely.”

To his surprise, Alicia laughed. “Devil take you, Kinvarra.”

He swung into the saddle and urged the horse nearer to his wife. “Indubitably, my dear.”

Her cavalier attitude made it easier to deal with her, but it puzzled him. Her lover’s desertion hadn’t cast her down. If she didn’t care for the man, why choose him? Yet again, he realized how far he remained from understanding the complicated creature he’d wed with such high hopes eleven years ago.

He extended one black-gloved hand and noted her hesitation before she accepted his assistance. It was the first time he’d touched her since she’d left him and even through two layers of leather, he felt the shock of contact. She stiffened as though she too felt that sudden surge of attraction.

He’d always wanted her. That was part of the problem, God help them. He’d often asked himself if time would erode the attraction.

Just one touch of her hand and he received his unequivocal answer.

She swung on to the horse behind him and paused before she looped her arms around his waist. He’d always been cursed aware of her reactions and he couldn’t help but note her reluctance to touch him.

Good God, what was wrong with the woman? She’d been ready enough to do more than just touch that milksop Harold. Surely her husband deserved some warmth after offering assistance. With damned little encouragement too, he might add.

The mare curvetted under the double weight, but Kinvarra settled her with a word. He never had trouble with horses. It was his wife he couldn’t control.

“What about my belongings?” she asked, calm as you please. The lady should demonstrate proper shame at being caught with a lover. But, of course, that wasn’t Alicia. She held her head high whatever destiny threw at her.

It was one of the things he loved about her.

He quashed the unwelcome insight. “There’s an inn a few miles ahead. I’ll get them to send someone for any baggage.”

He clicked his tongue to the horse and cantered in the opposite direction to the one Harold had taken. Which was lucky for the weasel. If Kinvarra caught up with Harold now, he’d be inclined to drag out his horsewhip. What right had he to interfere with other men’s wives then scuttle away to leave them stranded?

Alicia settled herself more comfortably, pressing her lovely, lush body into his back. She hadn’t been as close to him in years. He was scoundrel enough to enjoy the contact, however reluctantly she granted it.

Maybe after all, he should be grateful to old Harold. He might even send the bastard a case of port and a thank you note.

Well, that might be going too far.

“Is that where we’re going?” She tightened her arms. He wished it was because she wanted to touch him and not just because she sought a firmer seat. He also wished that when she said “we”, his belly didn’t cramp with longing for the word to be true.

Damn Alicia. She’d always held magic for him and she always would. Ten long years without her had taught him that grim lesson.

The reminder of the dance she’d led him made him respond in a clipped tone. “No, we’re headed for Heseltine Hall near Whitby.”

“But you can leave me at the inn, can’t you?”

“It’s a poor place. I couldn’t abandon a woman there without protection.” He tried, he really did, to keep the satisfaction from his voice, but he must have failed. He felt her tense against his back, although she couldn’t pull too far away without risking a fall.

“But who’s going to protect me from you?” she muttered, almost as if to herself.

“I mean you no harm.” In all their difficult interactions, he’d never wished her anything but well. “You didn’t come all the way from London in that spindly carriage, did you?”

“It’s inappropriate to discuss the details of my arrangement with Lord Harold,” she said coldly.

He laughed again. “Humour me.”

She sighed. “We travelled up separately to York.” Her voice softened into sincerity and he tried not to respond to the husky sweetness. “I truly didn’t set out to cause a scandal. You and I parted in rancour, but I have no wish to do you or your pride damage.”

“Whatever your discretion, you still meant to give yourself to that puppy,” Kinvarra said, all amusement suddenly fled.

Alicia didn’t answer.

The weather had worsened by the time they reached the inn. Alicia realized as they came up to the building that it was indeed the rough place Kinvarra had described. But just the promise of shelter and a chance to rest her tired, sore body was welcome. Surely Kinvarra couldn’t intend to ride on to his mysterious manor tonight when snow fell thicker with every minute and their horse was blowing with exhaustion.

The earl dismounted and lifted her from the saddle. The flickering torches that lit the inn yard revealed that he looked tired and strangely, for a man who always seemed so indomitable, unhappy.

As he set her upon the ground, his hands didn’t linger at her waist. She tried not to note that she’d touched Kinvarra more in the last few hours than she had in the entire preceding ten years.

“Let’s get you into the warmth.” He gestured for her to precede him inside as a groom rushed to take their horse.

Alicia had expected him to spend the journey haranguing her on her wantonness — or at the very least her stupidity for setting out for the wilds of Yorkshire so ill prepared for disaster. But he’d remained quiet.

How she wished he had berated her. She’d spent ten years convinced she’d been right to leave him. A moment’s kindness shouldn’t change that.

But when his back offered her a warm anchor and his adept hands unerringly guided their horse to safety, her resentment proved fiendishly difficult to cling to. And when she wasn’t constantly sniping at him, it was harder to ignore his physical presence. He’d been a handsome boy. He was a splendid man, with his clean, male scent — horses, leather, soap, fresh air — and the lean strength of his body. The muscles under her hands were hard, even through his thick clothing.

She’d forgotten how powerfully he affected her. And the pity of it was that it would take her too long to forget again. He made every other man she’d met pale into insignificance.

It was vilely irritating.

The landlord greeted them at the door, clearly overwhelmed to have the quality staying. The tap room was crowded to the rafters with people bundled up for an uncomfortable night on chairs and benches. A few hardy souls hunched near the fire drinking and smoking. Alicia drew her hood around her face before she moved closer to the blaze. The sudden warmth penetrated her frozen extremities with painful force. Even holding tight to the radiating heat of Kinvarra’s big, strong body, the ride had been frozen purgatory.

For all that she remained standing, she’d drifted into a half-doze when she became aware of Kinvarra at her side. He spoke in a low voice to save them from eavesdroppers. “My Lady, there’s a difficulty.”

Blinking, trying to return to alertness, she slowly turned to face him. “I’m happy to accept any accommodation. Surely you don’t intend to go on tonight.”

He shook his head. He’d taken off his hat and light sheened across his thick dark hair. “The weather will get worse before it gets better. And my horse needs the stable. There isn’t another village for miles.”

“Then of course we’ll stay.”

“There’s only one room.”

She drew away in dismay. “Surely … surely you could sleep in the tap room.”

She felt like the world’s most ungrateful creature the moment she made the suggestion. Her husband had rescued her in extremely good spirit, given the compromising circumstances. He was as tired and cold and hungry as she. It wasn’t fair to consign him to a hard floor and the company of a parcel of rustics, not to mention the vermin that flourished on their persons.

His lips twisted in a wry smile. “As you can see, there’s no space in the tap room. Even if there was, I won’t leave you on your own with the place full of God knows what ruffians.”

Aghast, she looked at him fully. She’d suspect him of some design, if she didn’t know he too must recall the wretchedness of their lives together. He must be as eager as she for this unexpected meeting to end so they could both return to their separate lives. “But we can’t share a room.”

His eyes glinted with sardonic amusement. “I don’t see why not. You’re my wife. It’s too late to play Miss Propriety. After all, you were about to hop into bed with Herbert.”

“Harold,” she said automatically, a blush rising in her cheeks.

“I hope to hell he hasn’t sampled your favours already or I’ll think even less of his stalwart behaviour.”

“We hadn’t … we hadn’t …” She stopped and glared at him. “That is none of your concern, My Lord.”

She didn’t imagine the sudden smugness in Kinvarra’s expression. Curse her for admitting that she was still to all intents faithful to him.

The cad didn’t deserve it. He never had.

“Can’t we hire a chaise?” she asked on a note of desperation.

Suddenly the prospect of a night at the inn wasn’t so welcome. Tonight had left her too exposed. Easy to play the indifferent spouse when she met the earl in a crowded ballroom. Much more difficult when she’d just spent an hour cuddled up to him and he sounded like a reasonable man instead of the spoilt young man she recalled from their brief cohabitation.

At least he wouldn’t touch her. She was safe from that.

He shook his head. “There are none. And even if there were, I’m not going to risk my neck — and yours — on a night like this. Face it, madam, you’ve returned to the bonds of holy wedlock for the night. I’m sure you’ll survive the experience.”

She wasn’t so sure. Leaving him ten years ago had nearly destroyed her. All this propinquity now only reopened old wounds. But what choice did she have?

She raised her head and stared into his striking face. “Very well.”

“I’ll tell the landlord we’ll take his last chamber.” He bowed briefly and strode away with a smooth, powerful gait. He’d grown into his power over the last years. As a young man, he’d been almost sinfully beautiful with his black hair and eyes, but the man of thirty-two was formidable and in command of himself in a way his younger self had never been.

She watched him go, wanting to turn away but unable to shift her gaze. What would she make of him if they met for the first time now? Honesty compelled her to admit she would probably like him. She’d certainly notice him — no woman could ignore such a handsome man with his air of authority and competence.

She hated to say it, but she was glad Kinvarra had arrived to rescue her from that ditch. Harold would have left everything to her. They’d probably still be standing by the roadside.

Given the shambles downstairs, the bedchamber was surprisingly clean and wonderfully snug to a woman shivering with cold. A troupe of maids delivered hot water and a substantial supper, then disappeared.

Silently, Alicia removed her gloves, slid her cloak from her shoulders, folded it and placed it on top of a carved wooden chest. It seemed ridiculous to feel shy in the presence of the man she’d married eleven years ago, but she did. She tried not to look at the massive tester bed in the corner. Did he mean to share that bed with her? If he did, what would her response be? She shivered, but whether with nerves or anticipation, she couldn’t have said.

Kinvarra poured himself a glass of claret and took a mouthful, then turned to watch her lower herself gingerly into an oak chair with heavy arms. He strode towards her, frowning with concern. “You told me you weren’t hurt.”

She shook her head, even as she relished the blessed relief of sitting on something that didn’t move. “I’m bruised and stiff from cold and riding so long, but, no, I’m not hurt.”

“You were lucky. The curricle is beyond repair. I know the road was icy but the going wasn’t hazardous, for all that. Was Henry driving too fast?”

“Perhaps.” She paused before she reluctantly admitted, “And we were quarrelling.”

“You? Quarrelling with a man?” Without shifting his gaze from her face, Kinvarra dropped to his knees before her. Clearly he meant to help her remove her boots. “I find that hard to imagine.”

Her lips curved upwards in a smile as she looked down into eyes alight with sardonic amusement. Nobody had ever teased her. Even Kinvarra when they’d lived together had been too intense at first, then too angry. She found she liked his playful humour.

“Shocking, isn’t it?”

He extended his half-full glass and she accepted it. His focus didn’t waver when she raised it to her lips. Warmth seeped into her veins. From the wine or from the unspoken intimacy of drinking from the place his lips had touched? It was almost like sharing a kiss.

Stop it, Alicia. You’re letting the situation go to your head.

“What were you quarrelling about?” Kinvarra asked with an idleness that his grave attention contradicted.

Still smiling, she returned the glass. “I decided I’d been reckless to take up Lord Harold’s invitation to visit his hunting lodge. I was trying to get him to take me back to York.”

She prepared to suffer Kinvarra’s triumphant gloating. He didn’t want her. But she’d always known he didn’t want her sharing her body with anyone else either.

Her husband’s serious, almost searching expression didn’t change. “I’m glad to hear that,” he said quietly.

She tried to sit up and glare at him but the effort was beyond her. Instead she tilted her head back against the chair. She closed her eyes, partly from weariness, partly because she didn’t want to read messages that couldn’t possibly be true in his dark, dark stare.

“He wasn’t worthy of you, you know, Alicia.” Kinvarra’s soft voice echoed in her heart, as did his use of her Christian name. He hadn’t called her Alicia since the early days of their marriage when they’d both still hoped they might make something good from their union. “Why in God’s name choose him of all men?”

Shock held her unmoving as she felt Kinvarra’s bare hand slide over hers where it rested on the arm of the chair. His palm was warm and slightly calloused. Harold’s hand had been softer than a woman’s. She cursed herself for making the comparison.

She opened her eyes and stared into her husband’s saturnine face. Into the black eyes that for once appeared sincere and kind.

And she chanced an honest answer.

“I chose him because he was everything you are not, My Lord.”

Even more shocking than the touch of his hand, she watched him whiten under his tan. She hadn’t realized she had the power to hurt him. It seemed she was mistaken about that too.

He drew back on his heels, removing his hand from hers. She tried not to miss that casual, comforting touch. The distance between them felt like a gaping chasm of ice.

“I … see.” His voice was harder when he went on. “At least I’d never leave a woman alone to face down an angry husband with a snowstorm about to descend upon her.”

Shamed heat stung her cheeks. She’d felt so brave and free and self-righteous when she’d arranged to go away with a lover. After ten barren years of fidelity to a man who hardly cared she was alive.

But in retrospect, her behaviour seemed shabby. Ill-advised. Bravado had kept her to her course until she’d reached York and that journey across the moors with no company but Harold and her screaming conscience. She hadn’t wanted to feel guilty, but she had. And with every mile they’d covered, she’d become more convinced she’d made a horrific mistake in succumbing to Harold’s blandishments.

“You wouldn’t hurt me,” she said with complete certainty.

“No, but Harold didn’t know that.”

She noted that he was upset enough to use Harold’s correct name. She tried to make light of the subject but her voice emerged as brittle and too high. “Anyway, no harm was done. I’m still the impossibly virtuous Countess of Kinvarra who doesn’t even lie with her husband. You can sleep easy in your bed, My Lord, knowing your wife’s reputation remains unblemished.”

An emotion too complex for mere anger crossed his face, but his voice remained steady. “Why now, Alicia? What changed?”

“I was lonely.” Her face still prickled with heat and she knew from his expression that her shrug didn’t convince. “I thought I needed to do something to mark that I was a free woman. It was, in a way, our ten year anniversary.”

A muscle flickered in his cheek. “And you wanted to punish me.”

Did she? Even after all this time, turbulent emotion swirled beneath their interactions. She spoke with difficulty. “It’s been over ten years since I had a man in my bed. I’m twenty-eight years old. I thought … I thought it was time I tested the waters again.”

“With that cream puff?” He released a huff of contemptuous laughter and made a slashing, contemptuous gesture with one hand. “If you’re going to kick over the traces, my girl, at least choose a man with blood in his veins.”

“I’ve had a man with blood in his veins,” she said in a low voice. “I didn’t like it.”

That couldn’t be regret in his face, could it? One thing she remembered about Kinvarra was that he never accepted he was in the wrong. But when he spoke, he confounded her expectations.

“No, that’s not true. You had a selfish, impulsive boy in your bed, Alicia. Never mistake that.”

Astonished, she stared at him kneeling before her. “You blamed me for everything. You said touching me was … was like making love to a log of wood.”

This time it was his turn to flush and glance away. “I’m sorry you remembered that.”

“It was rather memorable.”

“No wonder you hated me.”

She shrugged again, uncomfortable with the turn of the conversation. She hadn’t always hated him. During most of their year together, she’d believed she loved him. And every cruel word he’d spoken had scarred her youthful heart.

His unexpected honesty now forced her to recall how she’d called him a filthy, rutting animal and how she’d barred him from her bedroom when he’d accused her of lacking womanly passion.

He’d had provocation for his cruelty. And he’d been young too. At the time, his four years seniority had seemed a lifetime. Now she realized he’d been a young man of twenty-one coping with a difficult wife, immature even for her seventeen years.

No wonder he’d been glad to see the back of her.

She swallowed the lump in her throat that felt like tears. “There’s no point going over all this history. Really we’re just chance-met strangers.”

He sent her the half-smile that had made her seventeen-year-old heart somersault. Her mature self found the smile just as lethal. “Surely more than that.” He raised his glass. “To my wife, the most beautiful woman I know.”

“Stop it.” She turned away, blinking back tears. This painful weight of emotion in her chest was only weariness. It wasn’t the recognition that she’d sacrificed something precious all those years ago and it was too late to get it back. “We just need to endure tonight, then it will be as though this meeting never happened.”

Even in her own ears, her voice sounded choked with regret. She’d thought when she accepted Harold’s advances that she was over her inconvenient yen for her husband. How tragically wrong she’d been. Tonight proved she was as susceptible as ever.

She straightened her backbone against the chair in silent defiance. Kinvarra studied her with a speculative look in his black eyes and she gave a premonitory shiver. If she wasn’t careful, he’d have all her secrets. And she’d have no pride left. “Are you going to drink all that wine yourself?”

He laughed softly and raised his glass in another silent toast, as if awarding her a point in a contest. “Here. Have this one.”

He passed her the glass and tugged at her boot. She took a sip of the wine, hoping it would bolster her fortitude. It didn’t. She supposed Kinvarra meant to attempt a seduction. Any man would with a woman in his bedchamber for the night. Although God knew why he’d be interested. If he’d wanted her any time in the past ten years, he could have sent for her. His long silence spoke volumes about his indifference.

His hands were brisk and efficient, almost impersonal, as he pulled her boots off. Automatically she stretched her legs out and wriggled her toes. A relieved sigh escaped her.

He looked up with a smile as he sat back. “Better?”

“Better,” she admitted, taking some more wine. The rich flavour filled her mouth and slipped down her throat, somehow washing away a little more of her bitterness.

He laid one hand on her ankle. Even through the stocking, she felt the heat of that touch. “You always had cold feet.”

She closed her eyes, refusing to obey the dictates of common sense telling her to pull back now. That she entered dangerous territory. “I still do.”

“I’ll warm them up.”

“Mmm.”

She was so tired and the cosy room sapped her will. When Kinvarra began to rub her feet, gentle warmth stole up her legs. If his touch even hinted at encroaching further, she’d pull away. But all he did was buff her feet until she wanted to purr with pleasure.

“Don’t stop,” she whispered even when her feet glowed with heat and he had to reach forwards to rescue the empty wine glass from her loosening hand.

As he straightened, he laughed softly and she struggled not to hear fondness in the sound.

Kinvarra wasn’t fond of her. He’d never been fond of her. She’d been foisted on him by family arrangement, an English heiress to fill the coffers of his Scottish earldom. Her foul behaviour during their year together had only confirmed his suspicions that he’d married a brat.

“Let’s have our supper before it gets cold. You’re exhausted.”

She let him take her hand and raise her to her feet. It seemed odd that so much touching was involved in sharing this room. She hadn’t expected it. But she was in too much of a daze to protest as he led her to the small table and slid a filled plate before her.

She was so tired that it hardly registered that Kinvarra acted the perfect companion. When she couldn’t eat much of the hearty but simple fare, he summoned the maids to clear the room. He left without her asking to grant her privacy to prepare for bed. She was too tired to do more than a quick cat wash and she had no intention of removing her clothes. When he returned from the corridor, she was already in bed.

What happened now? Trepidation tightened her belly and she clutched the sheets to her chest like a nervous virgin.

He looked across at her, his eyes enigmatic in the candlelight. Inevitably the moment reminded her of her wedding night. He’d been the perfect companion then too. Her gentle knight, the beautiful earl her parents had chosen, the kind, smiling man who made her laugh. And who had taken her body with a painful urgency that had left her hurt and bewildered and crying.

After that, no matter what he did, she turned rigid with fear when he came to her bed. After a couple of weeks, he’d stopped approaching her. After a couple of months, he’d stopped speaking to her, except to quarrel. After a year, she’d suggested they live apart and he’d agreed without demur. Probably relieved to have his troublesome wife off his hands.

She lowered her eyes and pleated the sheets with unsteady fingers. “Are you coming to bed?”

He arched one eyebrow in mocking amusement. “Why, Lady Kinvarra, is that an invitation?”

She felt her colour rise. How ridiculous to be a worldly woman of twenty-eight and still blush like a seventeen-year-old. “It’s a cold night. You’ve had a hard ride. I trust you.” Strangely, so quickly on top of her earlier uncertainty, it was true.

He released a short laugh and turned away. “More fool you.”

Confused she watched him set the big carved chair beside the fire. He undressed down to breeches and a loose white shirt. “It’s only a few hours until dawn. I’ll do quite well here, thank you.”

When he’d insisted they share a room, she’d wondered if he had some darker purpose. Some plan to take the wife who so profligately offered herself to another. To teach her who was her legal owner.

But his actions proved her wrong.

What did she expect? That he’d suddenly want her after all this time? She was a fool. She’d always been a fool where Sebastian Sinclair was concerned.

The constriction returned to her throat, the constriction that felt alarmingly like tears. She lay back and forced herself to speak. “Goodnight, then.”

“Goodnight, Alicia.”

He blew out the candles so only the glow of the fire remained. She listened to him settle. He tugged off his boots and drew his greatcoat over him for warmth. There was an odd intimacy in hearing the creak of the chair and his soft sigh as he extended his legs towards the blaze.

She stretched out. The bed was warm and soft and the sheets smelled fresh. She was weary to the bone but no matter how she wriggled, she couldn’t find that one comfortable spot.

Recollections of the day tormented her. Harold’s desertion, which should have been a considerably sharper blow than it was. If her original plans had eventuated, she’d now be lying in his arms. She should regret his weakness, his absence, but all she felt was vast relief. Her mind dwelled on Kinvarra’s unexpected gallantry. The fleeting moments of affinity. The powerful memories of their life together, memories that tonight stirred poignant sadness instead of furious resentment.

Kinvarra had turned the chair towards the hearth and all she could see of him was a gold-limned black shape. He was so still, he could be asleep. But something told her he was as wide awake as she.

“My Lord?” she whispered.

“Yes, Alicia?” He responded immediately. “Can’t you sleep?”

“No.”

Their voices were hushed, which was absurd as there was nobody to hear. The wind rattled the windowpanes and a log cracked in the fireplace. He had been right, the weather had worsened.

“Are you cold?”

“No.”

“Hungry?”

“No.”

“What is it then, lass?” He sounded tender and his Scottish burr was more marked than usual. She remembered that from their year together. When his emotions were engaged, traces of his Highland childhood softened his speech.

Strangely that hint of vulnerability made her answer honestly. “Come and lie down beside me. You can’t be comfortable in that chair.”

He didn’t shift. “No.”

“Oh.”

She huddled into the bed and drew the blankets about her neck as if hiding from the cruel truth. Hurt seared her. Of course he wouldn’t share the bed. He hated her. How could she forget? He just played the gentleman to a lady in distress. He’d do the same for anyone. Just because Alicia was his wife didn’t make her special.

When they’d first married, she’d tried to establish some rapport between them in the daylight hours, but when she’d rebuffed him in bed, he’d rebuffed her during the day. He hadn’t wanted her childish adoration. He’d wanted a woman who gave him pleasure between the sheets, not a silly little girl who froze into a block of ice the instant her husband touched her.

She blinked back the tears that had hovered close so often tonight. She’d cried enough over the Earl of Kinvarra. She’d cried enough tears to fill the deep, dark waters of Loch Varra that extended down the glen from Balmuir House, his ancestral home.

“Hell, Alicia, I’m sorry. Don’t cry.” She opened her eyes and through the mist of tears saw he’d risen to watch her. The fire lent enough light for her to notice that he looked tormented and unsure. Nothing like the all-powerful earl.

“I’m not crying,” she said in a thick voice. “I’m just tired.”

His mouth lengthened at her unconvincing assertion. He reached out with one hand to clutch the back of the chair. “Go to sleep.”

“I can’t.” She wondered why she didn’t let him be instead of courting further misery like this.

“Damn it, Alicia …” He drew in a shuddering breath and the hand on the chair tightened so the knuckles shone white in the flickering firelight.

“I’m not … I’m not attempting to seduce you,” she said, and suddenly wondered if she was being completely truthful. What in heaven’s name was wrong with her? Surely she couldn’t want to revisit the humiliations of her married life.

Kinvarra was as taut as a violin string. Tension vibrated in the air. “I know. But if I get into that bed, there’s no way I’ll keep my hands to myself. And I don’t want to hurt you again. I couldn’t bear to hurt you again.”

She was shocked to hear the naked pain in his voice. This wasn’t the man she remembered. That man hadn’t cared that his passion had frightened and bewildered his inexperienced bride.

This man sent excitement skittering through her veins and made her ache for his touch. She raised herself against the headboard and drew in a breath to calm her rioting heartbeat. Another breath.

Her voice was soft but steady as she spoke. “Then be gentle, Sebastian.”

Alicia hadn’t used his Christian name since the earliest days of their marriage. The shock of hearing her say “Sebastian” meant he needed a couple of seconds to register what else she’d said.

His grip on the chair became punishing.

He must be mistaken. She couldn’t be offering herself. She’d never offered herself in all these many years. Even in the beginning, he’d always had to take. He’d come to hate it, so that when she’d finally suggested a separation after those miserable months together, he’d almost been relieved.

Of course, he hadn’t realized then that his agreement would lead to ten excruciating years without her.

She sat up in the bed and watched him with a glow in her blue eyes that in any other woman he’d read as blatant sexual interest. She’d taken her beautiful hair down and it flowed around her shoulders, catching the firelight. She became his fantasy Alicia. He had to be dreaming.

A frown crossed her face, he guessed at his continuing silence. “Sebastian?”

“You don’t know what you’re asking,” he said in a constricted voice, wondering why the hell he tried to talk her out of fulfilling his dearest hopes.

He’d wanted his wife for ten lonely years and now she was near enough to touch. He’d always been blackguard enough to want more from their forced intimacy tonight than mere conversation.

Then he’d remembered those disastrous encounters at Balmuir House. He couldn’t bring himself to inflict himself upon her once again.

She raised her chin, a signal of bravado that had been familiar in the young Alicia. The memory made his gut clench with longing.

“You’ve chased one lover away. Honour compels you to offer recompense.” Then in a less confident voice: “Sebastian, once you wanted me. I know you did.”

He swallowed and forced his response from a tight throat. “I still do.”

She’d taken her thick red cloak off when she entered the room. Now she raised trembling hands to the buttons on her mannish ensemble. An ensemble that looked anything but mannish on her lush figure.

Her travelling garb was cut like a riding habit and the white shirt was suitably modest, high at the throat. Even so, when her fumbling fingers loosened that top button, every drop of moisture dried from his mouth and his heart crashed against his ribs.

The Earl of Kinvarra was accounted a brave man. But he recognized the emotion holding him paralysed as ice-cold fear.

Tonight provided a miraculous second chance to heal the breach in his marriage. But if he hurt Alicia again, he’d never have another opportunity to bring her back to him.

He needed patience, restraint and understanding to seduce his wife into pleasure. Yet he burned like a devil in hell. What was he to do? He wanted her too much. And wanting her too much would destroy the fragile, uncertain intimacy building between them in this quiet room.

When his family had presented him with such a beautiful bride, he’d been sure they’d find joy in each other. Instead every coupling had been furtive and shameful, accomplished in darkness and ending with his wife in tears. No wonder he’d lost his taste for forcing himself upon her, although to his endless torment, his desire had never waned.

The shirt fell open another fraction, revealing a delicate line of collarbone and a shadowy hint of her breasts. She still studied him with an unwavering stare. Her hand dropped to the next button.

“Stop,” he said hoarsely.

Her hand paused. “Stop?” The vulnerability that flooded her face carved a rift in his heart. “You said …”

He shook his head and finally released the chair. He flexed his aching hand to restore the blood flow. “And I meant it. But let’s do this properly.”

Her hand fell away from her shirt to lie loose in her lap. “Shouldn’t I take my clothes off?”

Dear God, she was going to kill him before she was done.

He closed his eyes and prayed for control as images of Alicia’s naked body crammed his mind and turned him as hard as an oak staff. When he opened them, she stared at him as if he were mad. She wasn’t far wrong.

“We’ve got plenty of time.” He stepped towards the bed, his hands opening and closing at his sides as he fought the urge to seize her and tumble her back against the mattress. “Why rush things?”

“Kinvarra …” she said unsteadily.

“You called me Sebastian before.”

“You weren’t looking at me as if you wanted to eat me before.” She clutched at the sheet although she didn’t pull it higher. He was close enough now to notice the wild flutter of her pulse at her throat and the way her breathing made her swelling breasts rise and fall.

“Believe me, I’d love to.” He couldn’t move too quickly. He had to rein himself in or the sweet promise of joy would disintegrate into dust.

Her scent washed over him, floral soap and something warm and enticing that was the essence of Alicia. He drew a deep breath, taking that delicious fragrance deep into his lungs.

Slowly, he reached to hold the hand that clutched the sheet. At the contact, she jerked and released a choked gasp.

“Don’t be afraid, Alicia,” he murmured. “I won’t hurt you.” He hoped to hell he spoke true. His hand tightened on hers even as he told himself he needed to be careful with her.

“I’m … I’m not afraid,” she said on a thread of sound.

He laughed softly and lowered himself to sit on the bed. “Liar.”

She blushed. As a girl, her blushes had charmed him. They still did, he discovered.

“I’m nervous. That’s not the same as afraid.”

He raised her hand to his lips and kissed it. He felt her shiver. Turning her hand over, he kissed her palm. As he heard her breath catch, desire spurred him to take more, satisfy his pounding need. With difficulty he beat the urge back.

Tonight what he wanted didn’t matter. The only thing that mattered was his wife’s pleasure.

She remembered him as a selfish lover. He needed to vanquish those unhappy memories and replace them with bliss. His voice deepened into sincerity. “Alicia, trust me.”

He held her gaze with his. Doubt, fear and something that might have been reluctant hope swirled in her eyes. He felt tension in the hand he held. In desperate suspense, he waited for her to agree. Surely she wasn’t so cruel as to deny him now.

The silence extended. And extended.

Then finally, finally, she nodded. “I trust you, Sebastian.”

Relief flooded him, made him dizzy. Relief and gratitude. He didn’t deserve her consent. Now he had it, he’d make sure she never regretted it.

“Thank you,” he whispered, wondering if she knew how deeply he meant those simple words.

He leaned down to brush his lips across hers. A light kiss. A glancing touch that promised more. A salute to the woman who would be his partner in rapture tonight.

Her lips were impossibly soft. Smooth. Satiny. He lingered a second, savouring the sensation. He hadn’t kissed his wife in nearly eleven years. He’d kissed her before they’d married. He’d kissed her during their first weeks together, but the spiralling misery of their days had soon made kissing seem a travesty.

Kinvarra started to pull away, even as the beast inside him surged against restraint. Then Alicia made a soft sound deep in her throat and her lips parted.

Her warm breath filled his mouth. She tasted familiar. Yet as fresh and new as a fall of snow. Hot darkness exploded inside his head and reaction ripped through him. He longed to ravish her mouth with all the passion locked in his heart. He clenched his hands in the blankets. His control already threatened to shred and he’d hardly started his seduction.

She reached out and cradled his head between her hands, holding him close. He shut his eyes and prayed for fortitude, even as she tilted her head and pressed her mouth to his.

Her kiss was clumsy, as if she hadn’t kissed anyone in a long time. Shock rocketed through him. On an intellectual level, he’d known she’d never been unfaithful. But that passionate, needy, unpractised kiss assured his soul that in all the years they’d been apart, she’d belonged only to him.

Automatically his arms encircled her, curved her against his body. She moulded to him as his mouth opened over hers. Blazing heat threatened to incinerate his good intentions. Even as he kissed her deeply, ravenously, stroking her tongue with his, he struggled to remember that he couldn’t yield to this fire.

His resolution faltered when her tongue moved in unmistakable response. Restraint became even shakier when she sighed into his mouth and rubbed her body against his.

His shaking hands rose to her head to hold her as he plundered her mouth, stoking her passion with every second. His heart slammed hard at her unfettered response. He’d never guessed she had such wildness in her. She was glorious. When he finally raised his head, she whimpered in protest and her eyes were dark and slumberous under heavy, drooping eyelids.

A soft, shaken laugh escaped him as he feverishly stroked his hands through the soft hair at her temples. He couldn’t resist touching her — he couldn’t rely on fate being generous enough to keep his wife in his arms. “I’m struggling to be gentle, my darling, but you make it almost impossible.”

Her breath escaped in uneven gasps from moist, parted lips. Her face was flushed with arousal. “I’m not seventeen any more, Sebastian,” she whispered. “I won’t break.”

Almost reverently, he cupped her jaw. “You deserve tenderness and respect.”

Her smile was tremulous. “Is that what you feel for me?”

“Of course,” he said immediately. Then after a pause: “And desire.”

“Show me the desire.”

He bit back a groan. Leashing his hunger was the most fiendish of tortures. “I promised I wouldn’t hurt you.”

Her gaze was steady. “You won’t.”

Shame bit deep, chastened his craving, although nothing could ease his need apart from having her. And he already suspected that one night, no matter how dazzling, wouldn’t be enough even then. “I did once.”

She touched his cheek with a tenderness that filled him with guilty awareness of how badly he’d once treated her. “We ’ve both grown up since then, Sebastian. I trust you. Please, trust yourself.”

The yearning to prove himself worthy of her confidence flooded him. He couldn’t fail her now. But nor could he continue to treat her as if she were made of spun glass. It would destroy him. As he looked into her beautiful face, he realized she was right. She was no longer the frightened girl he’d first married and he was no longer the greedy, thoughtless young man who hadn’t appreciated the treasure he held in his arms.

Time had changed them and now it offered the opportunity to start again, to move beyond their mistakes and create something new and invincible and shining. He wanted to insist on promises from her, but he was wise enough to know that it was too early to burden the moment with talk of the future.

His hands were gentle as he undid the next button on her shirt. By the time he slid the garment from her shoulders and let it fall to the floor, she was trembling. Her hands had dropped to her sides.

It seemed she left everything to him. Was this a test?

Her scent filled his head and his thirst for her maddened him. Even so, he held back. Carefully he undressed her. Finally she was bare to his sight and he paused in wonder. In ten years, she’d changed. Her body was a woman’s, ripe, voluptuous, alluring.

He drew a shuddering breath and reminded himself of all that was at stake. His blood beat hot and hard but he managed to cling to control.

Just.

Alicia lay before him in shy wantonness. A flush lined her slanted cheekbones and the breath came fast between her lips. Almost hesitantly, Kinvarra reached out to cup one full breast. It curved into his hand as if created for his touch and the raspberry nipple pearled into tightness. When he bent to kiss that impudent peak, Alicia’s surprised gasp of pleasure was his reward. He drew harder on the nipple and ran his hand down the soft plain of her belly to the curls at the juncture of her thighs.

She was already damp. This slow seduction worked its magic on his wife too. He took her other nipple between his lips and nipped gently at the crest. She shifted restlessly under his hand and he caught the scent of her arousal. She buried her fingers in his hair, urging him closer.

He needed no further encouragement. But even as he licked and bit and suckled, let his hands roam her soft skin, some trace of reason lingered. She wasn’t ready yet, however her touch and her sighs of pleasure urged him to further depredations. He kept coming back to her mouth. He had ten years of kisses to make up for. Each kiss was hotter than the last.

“You’re wearing too many clothes,” she said in a broken voice.

“Whereas you’re dressed just right,” he whispered with a low laugh, tasting her breast again.

She’d been lovely as a girl, fresh and dewy and as rich with promise as a furled rose. But the woman in his arms now took his breath away.

With every minute, he felt her confidence increase. When she dragged his shirt up from his breeches, her touch on his naked back shot lightning behind his eyes.

“Sebastian, I want to see you.”

He couldn’t remain immune to her pleading. He rolled off the bed and tore his clothes off, flinging them into the corner in his haste. Then he paused, wondering if he should have been more circumspect. Would the sight of his rampant nakedness terrify his wife? When she was a girl, his unabashed maleness had frightened her. Could that have changed?

She slid up against the headboard, making no pretence at modesty by covering herself with the sheet. Dear Lord, she was a sight to set any man’s passions afire. Her face was flushed, her lips were full and red, her body was a symphony of curves and hollows. Her thick golden hair cascaded around her shoulders, teasingly covering one breast and leaving the other bare. Kinvarra felt himself grow harder, larger, needier.

Her eyes widened as her inspection continued down past his chest and belly. Hell, what would he do if she stopped him now?

Could he stop?

Yes, something inside him insisted.

“You’re magnificent,” she said softly, her eyes glinting blue fire under their heavy lids.

She sent him a smile of such joy that his foolish heart performed another somersault. She’d always been able to confound him with a word. Ten years without her hadn’t changed that. She stretched out one hand in invitation. To his astonishment, she wasn’t shaking. All her earlier uncertainty seemed to have vanished.

“Come to me, my husband.”

Alicia watched the expressions cross Kinvarra’s striking face. Somewhere in the last years, she’d learned to read him. When they’d first married, she hadn’t known how to pierce the shell of physical perfection to reach the man beneath. He’d seemed a godlike creature, too far above mere mortals for her to feel worthy of being his wife.

But the man who stood before her now, superb in his nakedness, was all too human.

For all his strength and beauty, he was vulnerable. How had she never seen that before?

Tonight she’d learned that he blamed himself for their marital difficulties. How odd, when finally she admitted that she’d been at least as much at fault as he in the disaster that had been their early married life. She’d been spoilt, demanding, headstrong, too quick to take umbrage, too slow to offer understanding.

Tonight she surveyed her husband’s powerful body and felt a woman’s desire. And a woman’s ability to forgive. Sensual need raged in her blood, made her heart pump with eagerness to know this man’s possession. Fear lurked too but she refused to acknowledge it.

As she watched his face, she recognized he was still unsure of her, unaware how she’d changed. He didn’t know that, after a long and difficult road, she’d discovered exactly where she ought to be.

In Kinvarra’s arms. For ever.

How had she imagined poor, pathetic, inadequate Harold Fenton could compare with the man she’d married?

“Sebastian, I want you,” she said softly, surprised at how easily the words emerged. “Don’t make me wait.”

Something in her voice or her smile must have convinced him she had grown beyond the skittish girl he’d married. Determination flooded his face, hardened his jaw, set his eyes glinting in a way that, for all her arousal, made her pulse race with trepidation.

And excitement.

How had she never recognized what an exciting man she’d married? She must have been insane ten years ago.

This was no time for regrets. Not when her tall, handsome, overwhelmingly virile husband prowled towards her with such purpose. There was none of his earlier hesitation in the way he drew her into his arms and tugged her under him. There was just hunger and a masculine strength that made her feel both delicate yet stronger than steel.

When he’d kissed her, she thought she’d measured his passion. But now he was insatiable. He touched her everywhere, he kissed her as if he couldn’t get enough of her mouth, he whispered praise and endearments until she was intoxicated with delight.

He touched her between her legs, stroking the sleek folds. She shuddered against him as sensation streaked through her. New, strange, astonishing pleasure. She cried out his name and jerked her hips up to meet him. She wanted him to take her, to fill the lonely reaches of her soul, to appease her hungry senses. Her arms closed hard around him, feeling the coil and release of the muscles in his back.

He rose above her and she caught the turbulent emotion in his face as he stared down at her. The moment spun into eternity then shattered when he joined his body to hers with a sure command that made her heart slam against her chest.

Her body tightened. After the years without him, the invasion felt frightening and unfamiliar. He was a large man and she’d been chaste for so long. She dragged in a shuddering breath, struggling to adjust to his size and power.

Another breath, heavy with the musky, male essence of Kinvarra. She shifted, angled her hips, felt him slide deeper, more surely. Then magically all awkwardness flowed away and, with perfect naturalness, she arched up to join him in a union as much of soul as body.

And recognized with despairing clarity she’d never stopped loving him.

Her hands clenched in the hot, bare skin of his shoulders as the inexorable truth rolled over her like a huge wave. Then she closed her eyes and gave herself up to Sebastian.

Right now he was hers. She refused to let fear of the future destroy this moment of ultimate closeness. She refused to accept fear at all. Fear had already cost her so much.

She felt his tension as he held himself still, then with hard, purposeful strokes that built her arousal to an inferno, he began to move. The dance wasn’t new to her, although the deep, joyous intimacy of this moment was.

She spiralled higher and higher until she touched the sky. This was beyond anything she’d ever felt. Beyond anything she’d even imagined.

At the peak, glittering light blinded her and she cried out. Such rapture. Such glory.

Such love.

Vaguely through the swirling storm of passion, she heard Sebastian’s deep groan. He shuddered and liquid heat spilled inside her. For a long moment, he held himself taut before he slumped, his body heavy with exhaustion.

The air was redolent of their lovemaking. It was as if she breathed the memory of pleasure. She tightened her hold on his back, feeling the sinews flex as he settled himself against her without withdrawing. She’d never felt so close to another person.

The fire burned low, leaving the room in darkness. Alicia stared up at the ceiling, watching the shadows gather. Nothing could dull the glow she felt or dam the satisfaction rippling through her body. She felt made anew. She felt ready to conquer the world. She felt tired and languorous and ready to sleep for a week.

So this was what a man’s possession could be. She’d had no idea. No idea at all what she’d been missing.

With sudden desperation, her fingers dug into his back. Oh, dear heaven, don’t let fate be so cruel as to take Sebastian away from her now that she’d discovered him again. Not now that she was finally woman enough to be his wife in every sense.

He’d undoubtedly wanted her when he’d taken her, not even the most inexperienced woman could have thought otherwise. But had Sebastian meant what just happened as a last goodbye to a bitter, unhappy past? Or was it the first step in a long, joyful journey together?

Kinvarra gasped for breath, his heartbeat drumming in his ears like a wild sea.

An ocean of satisfaction flooded his body. He’d intended to take his time, prepare Alicia, raise her to peak after peak of ecstasy before he found his own pleasure. But when he’d touched his wife’s naked body and read desire in her shining eyes, he couldn’t hold back.

He’d been as hungry as ever the eager young man had been, although at least this time, praise the angels, she hadn’t closed away from him in misery. Instead she’d achieved her own delight in his arms. He’d felt the way she tightened, and he hadn’t mistaken her broken cry as she’d arched to take him.

His big body still pressed her into the mattress. She must feel crushed, suffocated. He was a brute not to move away from her.

But how sweet it was to lie here in the aftermath, to let his hands wander her silky skin, to listen to the soft music of her breathing, to rest surrounded by Alicia.

Heaven couldn’t offer an eternity of bliss purer than this moment.

What had just happened offered a profundity of experience he’d never known. He’d mourn forever if this was all the happiness allotted to him. If he was to possess her only this once.

Tonight they’d moved from hostility to a brittle trust to a conflagration of joy. But was this truce only a pause in their warfare? Or could it form the foundations of a future? He prayed for the latter, but ten years of yearning had taught him not to trust the promise of happiness.

Just like that, reality descended. He and Alicia had found shattering pleasure tonight, but he needed more. He needed her commitment beyond one tumble between the sheets, no matter how earth-shaking that tumble was.

He’d wanted this woman since he’d first seen her. He wanted to build a family with her. He wanted to grow old with her. Nothing in ten years of separation had changed that.

But he was wise enough now to know that wanting wasn’t enough.

He could probably compel her to return to him. After all, the law was on his side. But for all his faults, he’d never been a bully. Could he bear to let her go if she rose from this bed and announced she would return to London alone? He might not be a bully, but the primitive savage inside him howled denial at the prospect of losing her again.

Slowly he raised himself on to his elbows. He smoothed the dishevelled blonde hair away from her face. She looked beautiful, replete, weary. In spite of his good intentions, he’d used her ruthlessly. He’d wanted to cherish her, but passion had swept them up into a whirlwind where all that mattered was the endless drive to blazing fulfilment.

Piercing tenderness overwhelmed him and he bent his head to kiss her gently on the lips. Not the hard, demanding kisses of earlier, although the ghost of desire lingered in the soft touch. “Are you all right?”

She smiled up at him and he struggled against believing that the radiant light in her eyes was love. “Better than all right.” Her slender throat worked as she swallowed. “That was … that was astonishing.”

“Yes.” He fought against saying more. She was tired and defenceless. It wasn’t the right time to harangue her about the future. Instead he kissed her again then rolled to the side. “It’s nearly morning.”

“Mmm.”

When he drew her against his side, she was slack with exhaustion, a delicious bundle of warm, sated womanhood. He paused to savour the moment, praying it promised a beginning and not an ending. He’d sell his soul for the chance to hold her like this for the rest of their lives.

He held her until she slept, but for all his weariness and the throb of sexual satisfaction through his body, he couldn’t settle. Eventually he rose and padded over to the window.

Very quietly so as not to wake Alicia, he parted the curtains. Immediately white light flooded the room. It was later than he’d realized. The storm had blown itself out overnight and now the pale sun rose over the horizon, painting the fresh snow with gold and making it sparkle like diamonds.

The idyll of a winter’s night had given way to a new day. This morning he and his wife had hard decisions to make.

Would his glimpse of paradise prove cruelly brief? Could all the lovely harmony of these last hours crash on the rocks of past wrongs and his insatiable demands?

He didn’t know how to be anything but demanding. He wanted her with him. He wanted her in his bed. He couldn’t stop himself.

“How beautiful.”

He’d been so lost in his troubled thoughts he hadn’t heard her rise from the bed. His heart slammed to a stop as she slid her arms around his waist and pressed her warm nakedness to his back.

“I thought you were asleep,” he said softly.

“I missed you.”

His aching heart crashed once more as she brushed a kiss across his bare shoulder. “I’ve missed you for ten years,” he said before he could stop himself.

“I thought you were glad to be rid of me.” Her voice was muffled against his skin. “I was such a silly girl.”

“You were enchanting. You still are.”

Silence fell, a silence heavy with the weight of remembered pain and everything still unspoken. Because he couldn’t resist touching her, he rested his hands lightly on hers. The urge stirred to seize, to grab, to compel, but he crushed it. Last night, she’d given herself to him freely. He refused to compromise that memory.

She sighed softly, her breath a warm, sensual tickle against his skin. “The snow is so clean. Even after the storm, it’s perfect. It’s waiting for us to make the first footprints.”

He tightened his hold on her hands. So much hinged on the next moments. He struggled to find the right words, wondering if the right words even existed.

“Our future could be like that, Alicia. A new path. A new life.” He paused, swallowed, and his voice was husky when he spoke what was in his heart. “Come back to me.”

He felt her stiffen although she didn’t move away. His gut cramped in anguish as he wondered if he’d ruined his chances. Permanently this time.

“For how long?” Her voice was quiet.

He stared at the glittering scene outside without seeing it. Instead, all his mind, all his soul focused on his wife. Again, he risked honesty, even if honesty cost him all chance of achieving his dream of a life with her.

“For ever.”

This time she did draw away, and he read the inches between them as absence. “Why?”

He turned to study her. She looked unhappy and uncertain and remarkably young. Almost as young as the girl he’d married. “Because I love you.”

“No …” She shook her head as if she didn’t believe him.

Kinvarra smiled at her, even while she broke his heart. Again. “Yes.”

Alicia raised her chin and stared at him as if what he said made no sense. “I was so awful to you. How can you forgive me?”

“How can you forgive me? Let’s rise above the past, my darling. I want you with me. I’ve never wanted anything else. Don’t let old mistakes destroy our hope of happiness.” He paused and swallowed. “If you love me, come back to me.”

For an unendurable moment, her expression didn’t change. Sebastian heard his every heartbeat as a knell of doom. Then the tension drained from her face and her eyes turned as blue as a clear sky. Suddenly, in the depths of winter, he basked in the reviving warmth of summer sun.

She stepped towards him although she didn’t touch him. “Sebastian, I love you too. We’ve wasted so much time. Let’s not waste any more.”

Shaking, he reached out to curl his hands around her upper arms and drag her against him. He could hardly believe what was happening. Yesterday he’d been lost in an endless mire of despair. Today the world offered love and hope and a future with the woman he adored. The swiftness of the change was dizzying.

“My wife,” he murmured and kissed her with all the reverence he felt in saying those two words.

The vivid, passionate woman in his arms kissed him back with a fervour that sent his blood rushing through his veins in a hot torrent. A bright, unfamiliar joy flooded him as he realized that Alicia at last was his.

Then because it was cold and he wanted her and he loved her — and they’d been apart for longer than mortal man could bear — he swung her up in his arms and strode across to the rumpled bed.