It was still dark outside, but the nearly full moon was blazing through the window, illuminating everything in shades of blue and grey. She grinned as Dauntry pulled back the covers and she slipped into the warm bed, shedding her shift as she did so. Perhaps she should be embarrassed to be caught parading about in her shift, but what was the point? Dauntry had done far more intimate things to her than simply gaze upon her unclothed form.
She kissed him and snuggled into his side, laughing as he winced and pulled away from her cold feet. This was the kind of moment she missed more than anything, the small exchanges in the night, the closeness of simply sleeping with a man, the comfort of it. This sweet domesticity was far more dangerous to her rules than any mere bedding, no matter how skilful the lover.
‘Gods, woman!’
George burrowed closer, sliding her hand up his thigh. ‘I just thought it would be wiser if no one walked in and found that you hadn’t used your bed, brother dear.’
He chuckled and rubbed his face into her hair, one warm hand pulling her closer. George slid her leg up over his hip possessively.
Ivo tossed George up into the saddle and glumly accepted that she was, in fact, leaving. She’d been remarkably cheerful and friendly all morning, and it made him oddly furious. He could feel a knot of resentment coiled in his belly, made worse by his knowledge that his reaction to her departure was ridiculous and unreasonable. She was expected. Her maid was probably already worried. She had to go.
When the inn’s maid-of-all-work had begun knocking about belowstairs, George had shoved him out of her bed and sent him off to his own room, pressing herself to him for one last, hurried kiss before shutting the door in his face.
Not long after the sun rose, Hatch had arrived with his arm in a sling and a particularly aggrieved expression on his face. At least he’d brought a basin on hot water with him.
When Ivo finally descended the stairs, he’d found that George had already gone down to the parlour and ordered their breakfast. She’d looked clean and fresh. As though she’d had all her baggage and the service of a dozen personal maids.
He, on the other hand, even with the services of his one-armed valet looked pretty much as he felt: slightly crushed and disarranged. He didn’t need the murky mirror in his room to tell him that. He’d nicked himself shaving—something he hadn’t done in years—and not a single cravat had been willing to bend to his will. Perhaps he needed Hatch more than he wanted to admit.
George had eaten her eggs and toast and chatted amiably throughout the meal, steering the conversation masterfully to politics and the latest power struggle between Tories and the Whigs. When she’d finished her tea, she’d risen, slapped her gloves in the palm of one hand, and called for Catton.
Her wizened retainer and Glendower’s two grooms had appeared all too quickly for Ivo’s liking, and Ivo had found himself standing alone in the inn’s yard, watching her ride away before he’d realized that he didn’t even know where she lived.
He hadn’t expected her to depart so soon, without a word in reference to what had passed the night before. They’d made a very specific bargain, and he planned on holding her to it.
When she was out of sight he strode off to check on his carriage. He wasn’t going to spend a moment longer in Oundale then he had to. He had things to do.
Things that required his presence in London immediately.
George smiled wistfully down at her hands and forced herself not to look back. If she looked back, she didn’t know if she’d be able to keep going. She’d kept up a cheerful line of patter all through breakfast. It had irritated Dauntry no end, but it also prevented him from starting any serious conversations.
She wasn’t up to one of those.
Not this morning. This morning she was still trying to cope with the ramifications of what she’d agreed to. The tension of their bargain, the promise of it, was almost overwhelming.
She blew her breath out in a huff and shut her eyes for a moment, putting her trust in her horse. Mameluke rolled beneath her, muscle and bone stretched into a canter. She gave herself over to the sensation, to the experience, listening to the repetitive sound of hooves on dirt.
She opened her eyes.
Whatever Dauntry claimed, this wasn’t about compensation. Or it wasn’t only about that.
She’d awoken to find him watching her, a soft expression on his face. She knew that look.
She also knew the one he’d worn the rest of the morning. He’d had a mulish set to his mouth all through breakfast and she was conversant enough with the male sex to guess the source of this poorly disguised anger.
Especially if he’d convinced himself he was in love with her…
Infatuated? She’d grant him that. But there was a leap from that to a more serious emotion that they certainly hadn’t crossed. But then, men rarely stopped to notice the difference. Or perhaps many of them were simply incapable of telling the difference.
George sighed and adjusted her grip on the reins, sliding the leather through her fingers.
In her experience, men had a way of leaving—or the world had a way of taking them away—and she wasn’t going to open herself up to that again. Not after Lyon. Losing Lyon had been almost more than she could bear. Better to end things quickly. She’d promised Dauntry five more nights, and she’d give them to him. But that was all.
She shook her head and urged Mameluke into a ground-eating gallop, putting both Dauntry and the
