Captivated

who had brushed against her!

And then, how dare he comment about her witsor her person! A gentlemandid not mention a lady's feet.

'Very well, Colonel Coally.'

She stalked to the bed, skirting wide the area in front of the broken window.

The mattress sagged beneath her weight. Planting her bare feet firmly together on the cool plank floor, she wondered where the colonel planned to spend the night. Then she wondered what it would be like to sleep with a man. Naked. With his warm flesh curved around hers.

The grate of wood on wood interrupted thoughts that she had no business thinking. The colonel was pushing the cupboard across the floor, steadily, heavily. The gale whistling through the cottage abated to a dull moan.

'There. That should hold it.'

Suddenly a hand weighted down the top of her head, slid down to her ear, her cheek. The fingers were cool, slightly damp from the rain. They rasped against the softness of her skin, against her breast

Fire shot through her body. 'What do you think'

Her hand that reached up to push his away was clasped in a firm grasp.

A hard, calloused grasp.

He forcibly curled her fingers arounddog-eared paper.

'This was lying on top of the cupboard.'

So that was where the wind had whipped the other journal.

She held her spine ramrod straight. 'Thank you, Colonel Coally.'

He released her hand. 'My pleasure, Miss Abigail.'

Heat dispersed the cold of the darknesshis body was mere inches away from her face.

She wondered if he had donned the blanket again. A particularly intriguing scene fromThe Pearl flashed before her eyes.

If she leaned forward, would she kiss wool or

'Are you all right?' he asked abruptly.

'Perfectly, thank you.' She jerked her head back, wondering if she was losing her mind. 'And you?'

The end of the mattress dipped. 'I'm an old warhorsemoving a cupboard is hardly dangerous work.'

Abigail rolled up the damp journal. The colonel was far from decrepitas he must very well know. There was not a single strand of gray in his hair. 'Fishing, Colonel Coally?'

'Merely stating a truth.' She jumped at the shock of a heavy thuda boot dropping onto the floor. Another thud followed. Then the entire bed shook. She sensed rather than saw him scoot across the mattress to sit with his back against the wall. 'I am thirty-five years old. The last twenty-two years have been spent in the Army. What are you doing out here all by yourself?'

Abigail refused to be cheated of her anger. 'What areyou doing here, Colonel Coally?'

There was a brief silence. 'Convalescing.'

She craned her head back in the direction where she knew he was sitting. All she could see was darkness. 'There is another cottage near here?'

'No. Not nearby.'

Straightening, she listened to the tempest outside the cabin for long seconds. 'Twenty-two years ago you would have been thirteen, Colonel Coally. The age of consent for a no combative position is fifteen.'

'You are correct, Miss Abigail.' The voice in the darkness was dismissive. 'I lied.'

Lied? Twenty-two years ago or now?

'What are you convalescing for?'

Again that silence, followed by a reluctant, 'A bullet wound.'

She remembered his limp. And the sight of a well-shaped muscular ankle sprinkled with fine black hair. 'In the left leg.'

'Yes.'

Abigail followed the war movement through the newspapers. 'By a Boer?'

'Yes.'

The seaside cottage was miles away from the nearest thoroughfare. She had deliberately chosen it for its isolation. 'That still does not explain why you arehere, Colonel Coally.'

The silence was longer this time. She concentrated on the cool damp of the journal rolled in her hands and not the throbbing warmth that came from the end of the bed where his legs stretched out.

'My horse threw me. I walked for a while, but there was no shelter to be found. Then I saw your light… and here I am.'

'But why were you out in the storm?'

'Why do you read erotic literature?'

Abigail prepared to defend her choice of reading materialit was educational; it was amusing;it was none of his business. She surprised herself by baldly stating, 'Because it is the only way a woman can learn about sex.'

A current of electricity passed through the darkness, as if lightning had struck nearby.

'I could be mistaken, of course,' the colonel's voice was gravelly, 'but I believe there exists another method that a woman may discharge her curiosity.'

'I never met a man who I was interested in 'discharging' my curiosity with, Colonel Coally,' she said repressively.

Outside the cottage, the force of the storm rose. The wind howled around the cupboard. Waves pounded on the beach below. Thunder roared in the skies above.

It occurred to Abigail that a very real danger existed. The windcould take the thatch roof off. Wavescould swell up out of the ocean and swallow the tiny cottage. Lightningcould

'I wanted a woman.'

The unexpected words jarred Abigail back to reality. 'I beg your pardon?'

'You wanted to know what I was doing out here in the storm. I rode out, hoping to find a village. Or a tavern. And a willing woman.'

The confession was abrupt.

Colonel Coally begrudged the need that had driven him out into the night. As Abigail begrudged the conventions that did not allow a lady the same privilege.

She should have felt shock at the admission no gentleman made to a lady; instead, she felt the lingering remnants of rancor evaporate. It was replaced by a strange sense of camaraderie.

This man had seen her trunk filled with erotica and he had not judged her. It was the height of hypocrisy to judge him now, when he obviously had his own needs.

'I envy you, Colonel Coally. Were I a man, I, too, would have ridden out in search of companionship.'

'It wasn't companionship I rode out for, Miss Abigail.'

'I know very well what you rode out for, Colonel Coally.'

'Do you, Miss Abigail?' The voice in the dark was curiously passionless. 'Do you know what it is like for your body to burn and throb until you want to throw aside everything you have ever believed in for just one moment of oblivion?'

Abigail closed her eyes against a lifetime of wanting things that could never be, gently reared as she was. Things she would never have, spinster that she now was. 'Yes, Colonel Coally. I do.'

The bed shifted. 'Do you have fantasies, Miss Abigail?'

Unbidden images danced behind her eyelids. Forbidden images of a man's naked desire filling a woman's body. Sexual images of things she had never done. Things she had never seen. Things she had never even read about.

Yearnings that in the next three weeks she must somehow put aside.

'Yes.' She opened her eyes and stared into the darkness. 'I have fantasies.'

'Tell me.' The abrupt command was harsh.

'I…' How could she tell this man who was a virtual stranger what she had privately dreamed about for years?