This was exactly as she’d been imagining it—God help her.
What was it they said about an Englishman who acted like an Italian? Something about his being a devil. Here was proof. A man who’d taken the fire of Italy into himself. And, at this moment, it burnt for her. He burnt for her.
His hand went to the front of her coat, slipped one button loose. George inhaled sharply, her whole body tight with anticipation. Queasy, shaking with need.
The distant sound of dogs barking intruded and sent her heart racing with panic. Dauntry pulled his head back with a slight jerk, like a horse startled by a rabbit dashing across the road. He blew his breath out in a long huff and rested his forehead against hers, keeping his arms loosely around her. His thumb traced slow circles against the small of her back. Comforting and arousing all at once.
She shivered, desire draining out of her core and flooding through her limbs, making her hands shake, her knees wobble. The magic moment they’d been suspended in popped like a soap bubble hitting the grass.
It was too easy to get lost in such a moment. Too easy to drown in sensation. Too painful to resurface.
She screwed her eyes shut, wanting to cry. To curl up and bawl. She shouldn’t have let this happen. She had rules about flirtation and seduction. Rules she’d never violated. Not once. They were the only thing that kept her life orderly and safe, and kept her balanced just this side of social ruin.
The last sane corner of her mind railed at her to break his hold, but she couldn’t get her body to comply. Her arms were around his neck, one hand locked in the curls of his queue. This was completely out of hand. Someone was bound to come along any minute.
After one more deep breath, he raised his head and took a step back from her. Her eyes opened. Her arms fell, trailing reluctantly across his shoulders, down his chest, then fell away completely as she sank down onto the wall, legs no longer able to support her. She took one shuddering breath, getting herself back under control.
‘Well,’ she ventured.
Dauntry just stared at her, a slight flush making his scar stand out in bold relief. God, he really was beautiful. An impulse—to find out if the body hidden under layers of leather, wool, and linen was as perfect as that face—hammered hard through her, a relentless staccato of lust and curiosity. She could have him. Just the once…but not here. Not now.
George sat up a bit straighter. She could manage this. She could.
She forced herself up from the wall, picked up her gun, and strode off before he could say anything. Before he could touch her again. All she wanted to do was turn and curl into him. Bask in the warmth of his body, of his desire.
He’d kissed her. Not only had she let him, she’d welcomed it.
Welcomed it? She’d wallowed in it. Thrown herself into the moment like it was her last.
Only minutes ago she’d been secure in the knowledge that such a thing would never happen. She would never allow it to happen. That for all of Dauntry’s palpable desire, she was in control.
Her resolve had crumbled as soon as his arms had closed around her.
No. It had been lost the moment he’d taken hold of her hands. Nothing but that small connection, glove to glove, and all her resolutions had melted away, nothing more than frost on an early spring morning.
Weak, wanton, and wilful. Three things a woman should never be.
She’d always had trouble with the last, and occasionally with the second, but never with the first. At this moment she was dying to indulge all three. To lead him, not to the gun room where friends and family awaited, but to the grotto hidden deep in the garden. To the summer house, already shut up in preparation for the coming winter. To her room. To the enormous curtained bed with its enveloping layers of down and linen.
George touched one hand to her face, reliving the slight burr of his cheek against hers. It had been riveting in the moment. Wonderful.
She glanced back over her shoulder, her gaze meeting Dauntry’s. He smiled, lazy and sure like a cat after a kill, but didn’t rush to catch her. Should she find that troubling? Alarming even? She couldn’t make up her mind. It all depended on what he wanted. On why he’d kissed her.
She wasn’t about to ask him, not just now.
For now, it was enough that the she felt alive for the first time in years. Crackling to her toes with awareness and anticipation in a way that only frustrated desire and the promise of its fulfilment could achieve.
In pregnant silence, they crossed the last field before reaching the formal gardens and making their way to the gun room. Inside they found a large number of the guests already cleaning their guns. George sat down and cleaned her own, rinsing the used powder out of the barrel and then disassembling the lock and oiling the whole mechanism. It was good to have something to do with her hands. Something simple. Physical. Real.
Had any of the others noticed her hands were shaking? That her breathing was still the smallest bit uneven? Had they noted that she and Dauntry had come in together? Thankfully Brimstone and St Audley had gone to the village. They were the ones most likely to notice her over-excited state. Her oldest friends. Her champions since childhood. Her biggest obstacles.
When she finished reassembling the lock, she put the beautiful rifle away in its cabinet, lock-step beside its brethren. She leaned back against the
