“What are you looking at, my lord?”
“A’m looking at ye, lass.” His chest was so close that her breasts prickled as though they were aware of the nearness of solid man.
“Well, you must look from farther away.”
“Ye told me A may nae.”
Her throat felt like a desert, her belly quite as fevered but not in the least bit dry. She was honey inside.
“Clearly you have not taken that to heart.”
His gaze dipped to her mouth. “Yer looking tae, lass.”
“I am not.”
“That’s a wheen o blethers.”
“I haven’t the foggiest idea what you have just said.”
“Thin A’ll be showing ye.” His hand came up and around her cheek, warm and strong. Kitty’s breath petered to a wisp. His fingertips slipped into her hair at the base of her head, his palm shaping to her skin. Slowly, so slowly, the pad of his thumb caressed her lower lip.
She sighed. Nothing could halt it, nor the catch in her throat as he bent his head. She tilted hers back.
“I shall find this quite easy to resist.” Her voice was nearly even despite the careening of her heart and the liquid state of her knees. She had repulsed men in similar circumstances before. Many times.
She knew how to do this, even so far removed from civilization in the wild abandonment of a country snowstorm. The wild abandonment of her scruples proved another sort of challenge.
“Will ye?” He spoke just over her mouth, his breath warm like his touch. She sensed no expensive cologne of a gentleman but snow and fresh pine and leather.
“I daresay.” Her lashes fluttered, every nerve in her body focused on the sweet, slow stroking of his thumb. She fought not to turn her mouth into his palm, to feel his skin fully across her lips. “But I suppose you are not accustomed to that—ladies resisting your rustic charms?”
His mouth curved. “Nae aften.” His rich eyes were alight. “Ye were looking.”
“You—” The word came forth as a rasp. She cleared her throat. “You would like to believe that, wouldn’t you?”
His gaze scanned her face, then her neck and hair. She felt the caress of that perusal and the touch of his hand to the soles of her feet. He looked into her eyes again. His grin faded.
“Aye.” His voice was low. “A woud.”
“Then I beg your pardon for the disappointment.” She must not allow her words to tremble as her insides did. She would not betray her foolishness. She was Lady Katherine Savege, coolheaded spinster and ruiner of titled men. She could not be moved, although quite obviously that was a wheen o blethers. “Now, my lord, your task here is finished and you may go away.”
His hand slipped from her face and he backed off and Kitty found herself draped against a doorframe, loose-jointed and breathless, like a woman aching to be kissed.
He swung the door open. Emily stood in the aperture.
“I have come to borrow that tract on eastern trade, Kitty. Ned told me about the mouse. Have you found it?” She looked between them at the wolfhounds.
Kitty untangled her tongue with some difficulty. “Lord Blackwood’s dog discovered a hole in the floor, which shall be mended shortly.” She smoothed her palms over her skirt. “Thank you for your assistance, my lord.”
“Maleddy.” He nodded and moved into the corridor toward the stair. The two great beasts lumbered after.
“Kitty?” Emily looked after the earl. “What were you and Lord Blackwood doing in here with the door nearly closed?”
“Nothing at all.” And yet not one iota of her pounding blood and quivering insides believed that.
Leam scrubbed a palm over his face, considering the snow and the great good it might do him poured into his breeches. Her skin was soft as silk, her eyes lustrous, her generous mouth a pure fantasy. A man need only catch a glimpse of her pink tongue to imagine a great deal he oughtn’t to be imagining about a woman of her caliber. Imagining what her tongue could do to him and precisely where.
He hefted the shovel, an unhandy tool intended for manure, but it must do.
The moment he had touched her skin, and her eyes shaded with longing, he realized his mistake again.
He had gone to her chamber to touch her. For no other reason than that.
She was not afraid of mice.
Then fear the madman who must ply the shovel through thigh-high snow to drive the sensation of a woman’s skin from his hands.
On the other side of the stable Hermes let out a yowl, echoed by the donkey inside. The snow fell lightly now and Bella’s shadowy shape came into view around the corner of the building. Haunches bunched, head high, she barked.
Setting the shovel aside, Leam moved toward her. The drifts grabbed at his legs but he trudged the distance swiftly. He needed activity and Bella never alerted him lightly. She waited for him, then flanked him around the corner of the building. Her pup, already larger by a stone, leaped about a depression in the snow.
Leam slipped the knife from his sleeve.
The trough was roughly the size of a man’s prone body, half-filled and covered by several inches of new snow, with foot holes moving from it and a hoofmarks as well. He cast a glance at the scrubby trees flanking the Tern, sparse, gray with white sleeves, shifting forlornly in the wind. Nowhere to hide in there, but the tracks were lost in any case.
He slid the knife back into place. Bella nudged his arm. In thanks he ran his hand around her ears, but she bumped her long muzzle against his chin.
“What is it?”
She pawed at the edge of the depression. Leam pushed the snow aside, his breath frosting in damp clouds. Buried beneath was a brown clump of fabric. He shook it out. A man’s muffler made of fine cashmere.
Cashmere did not come cheap. If this was the man who pursued Leam he was not, it seemed, a hired sniper, unless he was exceptionally good at his trade and demanded much for his services. But the fellow had had plenty of opportunities to attack, if not in London, then on the road from Bristol and even this morning.
Beneath the muffler, tucked in the snow, were a handful of coins and a broken chain of thick gold links. The man had dropped them, apparently when he’d fallen, perhaps off his horse, or perhaps simply due to the driving wind and blinding snow. But he hadn’t come to the inn only a few yards away.
He plucked the objects out of the packed ice and pocketed them, then straightened and pushed through the snow to the stable door. Inside all was crisply cool and scented of straw and horse. Hermes went straight to the Welshman lying on his back across a bench, a bottle propped in one hand.
Passing the somnolent carriage horses and squat ass, Leam moved toward his horse’s stall.
“Knitting the ravelled sleeve of care?”
“I’ve no care. However, I do have whiskey.” Yale’s voice was heavy. “Care for a drop?”
“I am being followed.”
Yale squeezed his eyes shut and pinched the bridge of his nose. “How do you know it isn’t I who is followed?”
“If one of your enemies determined to murder you, he would not be hesitating.” Leam dropped the muffler beside the bottle.
“S’truth.” Yale struggled to sit, setting the whiskey on the bench and taking up the garment. “But murder? Perhaps he is merely seeking information, like we were wont to do.” He lifted a black brow over a preternaturally clear eye. “Or p’raps it’s Lady Justice, chased us all the way from Dover Street to ferret out our purpose.”
“In a Shropshire snowstorm?”
