The Lady Most Willing

“I didn’t know Opal, either, as is manifestly clear,” he offered, his eyes hot with desire. His hands—

“You shouldn’t touch me there,” Fiona managed.

His hands tightened on her bottom, and then slid upward to her hips. “I love your curves,” he said thickly. “I promise to spend at least forty years getting to know you.”

“I know why you are saying this,” she said, trying to ignore his touch, though she couldn’t make herself move away from him.

“Because you are delectable?”

“Because you have decided that Lady Opal only staged her affection for the dancing master. You could tolerate her betrayal when you thought she was in love with another man, but now you feel bruised.”

“You taste like apples,” he said, ignoring her comment and taking her mouth again.

She allowed the pure pleasure of his kiss to sweep her under. It was bliss, this kissing, the way their tongues played together, the way he held her, as if she were shy and precious and beautiful, when she was none of those things.

This time it was he who pulled back. “I know enough about you, Fiona.”

“You know nothing,” she said shakily.

“You are very intelligent and you love to read.” He dropped a kiss on her left eyebrow. “You are extremely kind, even to your sister, who would strain anyone’s generosity. You love deeply and you’re very loyal. You don’t suffer fools gladly, but you are instinctively polite.”

He kissed her right eyebrow, and his hands tightened on her hips. “You have beautiful curves,” he said, his voice darkening a trifle. “Your hair has red tones that look like the most precious jewel in the world. I want to drape you in rubies. I want to see you lying on my bed, wearing nothing but a ruby necklace.”

Fiona felt as if she were caught in some sort of dream. Byron’s eyes were fervent. He meant every word. And he had no idea, none at all, of what had happened to her.

She squared her shoulders, summoning the courage to crack open the little enchantment that had bewitched them both, when the library door suddenly opened.

They swung about to find Mr. Garvie standing on the threshold. “Supper is in an hour,” he told them in his usual surly tone. “So if you two mean to dress, you’d better get at it.”

“If you’ll excuse me,” Fiona said, and like the coward she was, she fled. She could feel tears coming as she ran up the stairs. It was so—so unfair. Byron was undoubtedly suffering from some sort of temporary madness. But he looked at her in such a way . . . and said those things . . . things she never thought she’d hear from anyone.

It was cruel that she couldn’t marry him. She caught herself thinking a hateful thought about Dugald before she pulled herself together.

Her chest felt hollow, as if there was a physical reason for the ache there. It was absurd. She didn’t even know Byron. He may have decided that he knew her, but all she knew was that he was an absurdly beautiful man, an English earl who’d been thrown over by his fiancee, and for some fairly inexplicable reason had decided on her as a replacement, even though she’d told him at least three times that her reputation was ruined.

“I’d like a bath, if you please,” she told a stray retainer she encountered in the hallway.

He put up a protest, but she fixed him with a tiger’s eye and he backed down. “You’ll miss supper,” he said in a parting shot.

Hopefully, he would be right.

Chapter 14

Taran was not employing the great hall for dining; a storm this fierce sneaked in through windows and took over the larger rooms. The wind howled as it rounded the corners, scouring under the doors, keeping the air frigid and moving.

Instead, supper was to be served in the antechamber where they’d taken all their meals. It was small and cheery; a boy had been assigned to keep a fire burning there all day. Its small mullioned windows were so crusted with snow and ice that the wind couldn’t even make them rattle.

Byron changed into an evening coat and returned downstairs far faster than his usual wont. He walked over to one window and stared at the snowdrift blocking any view of the storm. He had been making an annual winter trek to Finovair for a decade or more, and he could not remember seeing the snow piled quite so high in the courtyard before.

Fiona was so different from Opal. She didn’t look away from him; she laughed straight to his face. She never seemed to be at a loss for words. She just said what she was thinking. He had a tremendous feeling of rightness, even thinking of the way her eyes shone with mischief.

She wouldn’t lie to him. She would mock him, and argue with him, and probably infuriate him, but she would never lie to him.