He was lifting his hand to do it again and never mind the respectable ladies sleeping within who had a right to sleep for several hours yet, he had to know if Juno had got here safely. At last he heard movement inside and bolts being drawn back, then a key turning in the lock. About time, he huffed to himself, and glared into the narrow crack of space at the stranger warily peering back at him.
Alaric blinked to make sure he was not seeing wonders conjured up by his weary mind instead of a much plainer truth. No, she was still there, staring back at him as if he was about the worst thing she could imagine opening a door to at any time of day, let alone this one. Ye gods, what ailed him? He had never been the sort of low and lusty fool to ogle and squeeze the maids whenever he managed to catch one alone in a dark corner. He despised masters who preyed on local girls and left a trail of little bastards and ruined lives behind them. Yet even as he was ordering himself to look away and think why he was here and how urgent it was to find Juno his eyes were eating the woman up as if she was the best thing they had ever seen and they could not get enough of her.
A shaft of that curious sunlight darted into the corridor through an open door behind her and added a shine of gold to her honey-coloured hair. She had eyes of a clear, light blue he refused to call forget-me-not because it would be a cliché and there was nothing weary or shopworn about them. Still, he could not think of a better description, so it would have to do for a worn-out fool like him. It was not as if he was going to write poems to a housemaid, so it hardly mattered what colour he called her fascinating blue gaze. Still, his mind would not let go of the delightful picture of this tall and slender female blinking back at him in the early morning light.
She must have slept in her dark-coloured gown and her hair was tumbling down her back and made him want to reach out and find out for himself if it was as softly full of life and as silkily touchable as the brown-and-gold mass looked from here. Her face was a nearly perfect oval and she had finely cut features and a haughty nose, but it was her mouth—generous and still half-asleep and unwary as if it had not yet caught up with the rest of her—that did the most damage. It drew his gaze like a magnet and made him yearn for things he had no right to yearn for. He tried to dismiss the idea of kissing her unguarded lips properly awake as he wondered how such a definite, determined-looking female managed to take orders and skivvy for her so-called betters. And how would it feel to kiss that soft and sleepy mouth until the differences between lord and maidservant faded away and he felt as if he had come home at last to a place he was made for and fitted perfectly.
Stiff and still half-asleep, Marianne Turner was woken by hammering on the door and stumbled to open it before whoever was out there could knock again. On her way here hope won over weariness for a heady moment, then reason told her if this was the lost girl she had a very heavy hand with a door knocker. Marianne sighed with tiredness and disappointment as she drew back the bolts and unlocked the door as quietly as she could. The impatience of whoever was out there had made her fumble, which said a lot about impatience and people who used it as a weapon to get their own way.
‘About time,’ a deep masculine voice grumbled as soon as she had the door open a cautious few inches to eye up the stranger on the doorstep and shake her head in disbelief. He made it sound as if she was incompetent for not coming sooner when he was being rude and demanding at an outrageous hour of the morning.
‘What do you mean by thundering on a lady’s door at cockcrow? You will wake up half the street.’ She blinked at the unshaven, mud-spattered and very male idiot standing on the doorstep as if he had every right to go where he chose and wake up anyone he wanted to and never mind the time. She glared at him and, goodness, there was an awful lot of him to glare at, wasn’t there? ‘You must have heard me trying to get the door open—have you no manners at all?’ she demanded.
‘Not with incompetent bunglers. Now hurry up and let me in, then go and tell Miss Grantham I need to speak to her,’ he demanded as if she should scurry about at his bidding and curtsy as if her life depended on it all the while and she was not doing that either.
‘No,’ Marianne said grumpily and refused to be awed by his height and powerful build.
Luckily, he could have no idea Fliss Grantham was not upstairs fast asleep in her maidenly bed. In fact, Fliss had been marooned up in the Broadley Hills by last night’s storm and at least Miss Donne’s maid had told Marianne’s brother, Darius, about a shepherds’ hut up there where they could take shelter from the deluge. Secretly Marianne had been delighted that the stubborn pair would now have to admit the powerful attraction between them that had been so obvious from the start. They would have to marry after a night alone in the hills so that was one reason
