moved in the highest circles, he could not yet fully divest himself of the court jester; his public persona was too well-known. At home there would be fewer encounters with the existence he had led for half a decade. There he could dress and behave as he pleased. He would not go to Edinburgh. He had no reason to see others, and sufficient work on his estate to keep him there. He had neglected it for too long already, and not only the estate.
He slipped a knife into the slit sewn into his sleeve at the wrist. Company had followed on the road the previous day. But each time they stopped to water the horses, the path had been empty and no one caught them up. Someone was following at a discreet distance.
The inn’s ground floor was no more than a rustic ale room, set now for breakfast. Sounds stirred in the kitchen behind a door, the clinking of dishes and the continuous limp scold of the innkeeper’s wife to her lord and master. The aroma of coffee tinted the fire-warmed air.
Lady Emily sat in a chair before the hearth, a book between her hands and a pair of spectacles perched atop the bridge of her nose. She glanced up with an abstracted squint.
“Good morning, my lord.”
“Guid morning, ma’am.”
“Breakfast is to be served shortly. Eggs and little else, I believe.” Brow furrowed, she returned her attention to her page.
Leam went around beneath the stair to the rear foyer. On hooks hung two ladies’ cloaks, his own overcoat, and several others of lesser quality. The exit let onto the yard behind the inn, and Leam had not yet investigated it in the light of day. But danger rarely entered through the front door.
The heavy wooden panel, bloated with damp, stuck. He nudged it with his boot and it jerked open.
Lady Katherine Savege, standing on the tiny covered porch, swung about, slipped, and tumbled forward.
Leam grabbed her up. Her hands clutched his coat sleeves. Her breath hiccupped, sending a cloud of frosty air between them. He scanned her face, a swift perusal of fine features—pert nose, wide mouth, eyes shrouded with thick lashes. She wore neither bonnet nor cap. Her satiny hair, dark like crushed walnut shells and carefully plaited with bejeweled combs, enhanced the perfect cream of her skin.
“Weel, nou, maleddy,” he said slowly. “Mind the ice.”
“I beg your pardon, my lord.” She did not lift her gaze. To his surprise.
Leam did not care for surprises.
Her breaths came rapidly against his chest. Her grip on him slackened and her arms dropped.
“I lost my balance when the door opened. The step is slick, yet I came out only in slippers. I wished to see the depth of the snow.”
“Did ye?”
“I shall be quite careful not be so careless again.” Her voice grew cooler with each utterance. Here was the sort of female with whom Leam had little commerce. Ladies like Katherine Savege held their own counsel and had done him little good in his former labors. But he was no longer an agent of the crown constantly seeking information. He could now do as he pleased, and he held a beautiful woman in his arms.
And despite her unwed state, Lady Katherine was no innocent. Of this he was certain.
“But yer a pretty bundle, lass.”
She stiffened, the effect of which was to flatten her thighs quite nicely to his.
“I am not a bundle. You should have already released me. You do know that, don’t you? Or is what they generally say of you actually true?”
“Aye, yer a bundle, an than some, wi’ that tongue.”
“My tongue is none of your concern. And I am not a lass. I am six-and-twenty. Rather, nearly so, on February twelfth.”
“Nearly? Who woud hae thought it?”
Her lips were a stony line Leam might soften; laughter would sit well upon them. Her remarkably large gray eyes, the color of wistful fall thunderclouds, slowly drew upward beneath a veil of sooty lashes.
“Will I truly be obliged to order you to unhand me, or were you planning on doing so shortly?”
By God, she felt good in his arms, her full breasts pressed against his chest, hips nestled comfortably along his thigh. Remarkably good. Would that the rumors spread about him were true.
Alas, it was largely smoke and mirrors to start the ladies talking. Informing. After that first job in the East Indies, three quarters of the work had been encouraging gossip.
“Eventually,” he said.
“Ah. Finally a word I recognize. Unfortunately, the wrong word.”
Leam couldn’t help chuckling. Her lashes flickered.
“My lord, you are a renowned flirt. But perhaps you are not aware that I am not likewise. Unhand me now.”
He should. He had no desire to. Warm feminine beauty pressing to his body, a cool clever tongue soothing his ear, and a lovely face shaped with intelligence could not be abandoned so abruptly.
“Whit threats will ye level if I dinna, I wonder?”
She tilted up her nose, releasing upon him the full force of her glorious eyes.
“I would not demean myself by leveling threats at a gentleman. But are you one?” Her voice was frosty. But those eyes … they
His chest hollowed.
He released her.
She smoothed her palms over her skirt. Without again looking at him, and without a word, she went into the building.
Leam stood on the porch, boots sunk in snow, heartbeat quick and uneven. His stomach sickened at that sensation in his chest, for so long so alien to him. Clearly, that bit of flirtation had been a mistake.
He would not repeat it.
Kitty willed her racing pulse to slow. She’d never imagined that the removal of facial hair could transform a merely handsome man into…
She pressed cold palms to hot cheeks as she hurried from the rear corridor. He was not following.
She had insulted him. She’d
She had not been so close to a man in years. Three years. She had, in point of fact, largely convinced herself that that state had come about because of this very man.
She hurried into the taproom. Emily perched on a bench at a table, wrestling butter onto a slice of bread.
“The bread is not fresh,” she announced. “Mrs. Milch says the village baker has taken to her bed today due to the snow, and her serving girl will not come to help in the kitchen as she lives in Shrewsbury three miles distant. I told her we might assist in baking if we are to be here long, which it seems we shall. Have you seen the snow? It is extraordinarily deep.”
“Yes. Deep,” Kitty finally managed, dragging herself from reverie. “For how long is Mr.
Worthmore to remain at your parents’ home?”
“At least until Twelfth Night. You do not think it will hold off melting until after then, do you? I might avoid meeting him altogether.” The glimmer in Emily’s eyes suggested she was banking on wishes.
Kitty shook her head. “I haven’t the foggiest idea how to bake bread.”
“Neither do I. But I shall learn.” Emily bared her teeth and bit into the stale slice.
Heavy steps sounded on the floorboards behind Kitty. She was to have no reprieve of even minutes in which to compose herself. But the man must want breakfast too, the man with a jaw carved of stone that a woman could wish to run her fingertips over, then her lips and tongue, as though he were a salt lick and she a deer.
She was very foolish.
He halted behind her and the lapping heat deep inside her resumed with astounding vigor. She pressed it
