by Julia Quinn
“Eh?”
“Just looking around,” she said. “Did you damage the door?”
“Not very much. The deadbolt is broken, though.”
She winced. “Did you hurt your shoulder?”
“It’s fine.” He peeled off his sodden coat and hung it on a peg on the wall. “Take off your…” He motioned to her light pelisse. “…whatever it is you call that.”
Miranda hugged her arms to herself and shook her head.
He gave her an impatient look. “It’s a bit late for missish modesty.”
“Someone could come in at any moment.”
“I doubt it,” he said. “I imagine they’re all safe and warm in Lord Chester’s study, gazing upon all of the heads he’s got mounted on the wall.”
Miranda tried to ignore the lump that had just sprouted in her throat. She’d forgotten what an avid hunter Lord Chester was. She quickly scanned the room. Turner was correct. Not a white envelope in sight. No one was likely to stumble across them anytime soon, and from the looks of it outside, the rain had no intention of letting up.
“Please tell me you’re not one of those ladies who chooses modesty over health.”
“No, of course not.” Miranda shrugged off her pelisse and hung it on the peg next to his. “Do you know how to build a fire?” she asked.
“Provided we’ve dry wood.”
“Oh, but there must be some here. It’s a hunting lodge, after all.” She looked up at Turner with hopeful eyes. “Don’t most men like to be warm while they hunt?”
“Afterthey hunt,” he corrected absently as he looked around for wood. “And most men, Lord Chester included, I imagine, are sufficiently lazy that the short trip back to the main house is far more preferable than putting in the effort to build a fire here.”
“Oh.” Miranda stood still for a moment, watching him as he moved about the room. Then she said, “I’m going to go into the other room to see if there are any dry clothes we can use.”
“Good idea.” Turner watched her back as she disappeared from sight. The rain had plastered her shirt to her body, and he could see the warm, pink tones of her skin through the wet material. His loins, which had been unbelievably cold from the soaking, grew hot and heavy with remarkable speed. He cursed and then stubbed his toe as he lifted the lid off a wooden chest to look for wood.
Dear God, what had he done to deserve this? If he had been handed a pen and paper and ordered to compose the perfect torture, he would never have come up with this. And he had a very active imagination.
“I found some wood in here!”
Turner followed the sound of Miranda’s voice into the next room.
“It’s over there.” She pointed to a pile of logs near a fireplace. “I reckon Lord Chester prefers to use this fireplace when he’s here.”
Turner eyed the large bed with its soft quilts and fluffy pillows. He had a fairly good idea why Lord Chester preferred this room, and it did not involve the somewhat portly Lady Chester. He immediately put a log in the fireplace.
“Don’t you think we ought to use the one in the other room?” Miranda asked. She, too, had seen the large bed.
“This one has obviously seen more use. It is dangerous to use a dirty chimney. It could be clogged.”
Miranda nodded slowly, and he could tell that she was trying very hard not to look uncomfortable. She continued to look for dry clothing while Turner attended to the fire, but all she found were some scratchy-looking old blankets. Turner watched as she draped one over her shoulders.
“Cashmere?” he drawled.
Her eyes widened. She hadn’t, he realized, been aware that he had been looking at her. He smiled, or really, it was more of a baring of his teeth. Maybe she was uncomfortable, but damn it, so was he. Did she think this was easy for him? She’d said she loved him, for God’s sake. Why thedevil had she gone and done that? Did she know nothing about men? Could it be possible that she didn’t understand that that was the one thing guaranteed to terrify him?
He didn’t want to be entrusted with her heart. He didn’t want the responsibility. He’d been married. He’d had his own heart crushed, stomped upon, and tossed in a flaming rubbish heap. The last thing he wanted was custody of someone else’s, especially Miranda’s.
“Use the quilt on the bed,” he said with a shrug. It had to be more comfortable than what she’d found.
But she shook her head. “I don’t want to muss it. I don’t want anyone to know we were here.”
“Mmm, yes,” he said unkindly, “I’d have to marry you then, wouldn’t I?”
She looked so stricken that he muttered an apology. Good Lord, he was turning into someone he didn’t particularly like. He didn’t want to hurt her. He just wanted to—
Hell, he didn’t know what he wanted. He couldn’t even think more than ten minutes into the future, just then, couldn’t focus on anything beyond keeping his hands to himself.
He busied himself with the fire, letting out a satisfied grunt when a tiny orange flame finally curled around a log. “Easy now,” he murmured, carefully setting a smaller stick near the flame. “There we are, there we are…and—yes!”
“Turner?”
“Got the fire burning,” he mumbled, feeling a trifle foolish for his excitement. He stood and turned. She was still clutching the threadbare blanket around her shoulders.
“A fine lot of good that’ll do you once it’s soaked from your shirt,” he commented.
“I don’t have much choice, do I?”
“That’s up to you, I suppose. As for me, I’m drying off.” His fingers went to the buttons on his shirt.
“Maybe I should go to the other room,” she whispered.
Turner noted that she didn’t move an inch. He shrugged, and then he shrugged his shirt off entirely.
“I should go,” she whispered again.
“Then go,” he said. But his lips curved.
She opened her mouth as if to say something, then closed it. “I—” She broke off, a look of horror crossing her features.
“You what?”
“I should go.” And this time she did, leaving the room with alacrity.
Turner shook his head as she left. Women. Did anyone understand them? First she said she loved him. Then she said she wanted to seduce him. Then she avoided him for two days. Now she looked terrified.
He shook his head again, this time faster, his hair spraying water across the room. Wrapping one of the blankets around his shoulders, he stood in front of the fire and dried himself off. His legs felt damned uncomfortable, though. He shot a sidelong look at the door. Miranda had shut it behind her when she left, and given her present state of maidenly embarrassment, he doubted she’d enter without knocking.
He peeled off his breeches with great haste. The fire began to warm him almost immediately. He glanced again at the door. Just to be on the safe side, he lowered the blanket and tucked it around his waist. It looked a bit like a kilt, actually.
He thought again about the expression on her face just before she’d run from the room. Maidenly embarrassment and something else. Was it fascination? Desire?
And what had she been about to say? It hadn’t been “I should go,” which was what shedid say.
If he had stepped up to her, taken her face in his hands, and whispered, “Tell me,” what would she have said?
3 JULY1819
I almost told him again. And I think he knew it. I think he knew what I was going to say.
Chapter 11
Turner was so busy thinking about how much he’d like to touch Miranda—anywhere and everywhere—that he completely forgot that she must be freezing her backside off in the other room. It was only when he realized that he was finally toasty warm that it occurred to him that she was not.
Cursing himself up and down and ten times for an idiot, he stood up and strode to the door that she had shut between them. He yanked it open and then uttered another stream of curses when he saw her huddled on the floor, shaking w
ith near violence.
“You little fool,” he said. “Are you trying to kill yourself?”
She looked up, her eyes widening at the sight of him. Turner suddenly remembered he was barely dressed.
“Bugger it,” he muttered to himself, then shook his head in exasperation and hauled her to her feet.
Miranda snapped out of her daze and began to struggle. “What are you doing?”
“Shaking some sense into you.”
“I’m perfectly fine,” she said, though her shivers proved her a liar.
“The devil you are. I’m freezing just talking to you. Come by the fire.”
She looked longingly at the orange flames crackling in the next room. “Only if you stay here.”
“Fine,” he said. Anything to get her warm. With a slightly less than gentle prod, he pointed her in the right direction.
Miranda stopped near the fire and held her hands out. A low moan of contentment escaped her lips, traveling across the room and punching Turner right in the gut.
He stepped forward, mesmerized by the pale, almost translucent skin of the back of her neck.
Miranda sighed again, then turned around to warm her back. She jumped away an inch, startled by the sight of him standing so close. “You said you’d leave,” she accused.
“I lied.” He shrugged. “I haven’t the least bit of faith that you’ll dry yourself off properly.”
“I’m not a child.”
He glanced down at her breasts. Her day dress was white, and plastered to her skin as it was, he could just make out the dark blush of her nipples. “Clearly, you are not.”
Her arms flew to her chest.
“Turn around if you don’t want me looking at you.”
She did, but not before her mouth fell open at his audacity.
Turner stared at her back for a long moment. It was nearly as lovely as the front of her had been. The skin on her neck was somehow beautiful, and a few tendrils of her hair had escaped her coiffure and were curling from the damp. She smelled like wet roses, and it took all his strength not to reach out and slide his hand down the length of her arm.
No, not her arm, her hip. Or maybe her leg. Or maybe—
He took a ragged breath.
“Is something wrong?” She didn’t turn around, but her voice sounded nervous.
“Not at all. Are you warming up?”
“Oh, yes.” But even as she said that, she shivered.
Before Turner could give himself the chance to talk himself out of it, he reached out and unfastened her skirt.
A strangled yelp emerged from her mouth.
“You’ll never get warm with this thing clinging to you like an icicle.” He started to pull the fabric down.
“I don’t think…I know…This really…”
“Yes?”
“This is a very bad idea.”
“Probably.” The skirt fell to the floor in a sodden heap, leaving her clad in her thin chemise, which clung like a second skin.
“Oh, my God.” She tried to cover herself, but she obviously didn’t know where to start. She crossed her arms, then moved one hand down to cover where her legs met. Then she must have realized that she wasn’t even facing him, so she reached around and put her hands on her backside.
Turner half expected her to squeeze.
“Would you please just go away?” she said in a mortified whisper.
He meant to. Dear God, he knew he ought to obey her request. But his legs steadfastly refused to move, and he couldn’t take his eyes off the sight of her exquisitely rounded backside covered by her slender hands.
Hands that were still shaking from the cold.
He cursed again, remembering just why he had yanked off her skirt to begin with. “Get closer to the fire,” he ordered.
“Any closer and I’ll be in it!” she snapped. “Just go away.”
He took a step back. He liked her better when she was spitting fire.
“Away!”
He walked to the door and shut it. Miranda remained utterly still for a moment, then finally let the blanket around her shoulders fall to the floor as she knelt before the fire.
Turner’s heart thumped loudly in his chest—so loud, in fact, he was surprised it didn’t alert her to his presence.
She sighed and stretched.
He grew even harder—a feat he didn’t think possible.
She lifted her heavy tresses off her neck and rolled her head around languorously.
Turner groaned.
Miranda’s head spun around. “You knave!” she spat out, forgetting to cover herself.
“Knave?” He had to raise a brow at the old-fashioned word.
“Knave, rake, devil, whatever you want to call it.”
“Guilty as charged, I’m afraid.”
“If you were a gentleman, you’d leave.”
“But you love me,” he said, not sure why he was reminding her of it.
“You are horrid to bring that up,” she whispered.
“Why?”
Miranda looked at him sharply, shocked that he’d asked. “Why do I love you? I don’t know. You certainly don’t deserve it.”
“No,” he agreed.
“It doesn’t matter, anyway. I don’t think I love you anymore,” she said quickly. Anything to preserve her battered pride. “You were right. It was a schoolgirl infatuation.”
“No, it wasn’t. And you don’t fall out of love with someone so quickly.”
Miranda’s eyes widened. What was he saying? Did he want her love? “Turner, what do you want?”
“You.” The word was the barest of whispers, as if he could hardly bring himself to say it.
“No, you don’t,” she said, more out of nervousness than anything else. “You said so.”
He took a step forward. He’d go to hell for this, but first he would have heaven. “I want you,” he said. And he did. He wanted her with more power, more heat and intensity than he could even comprehend. It went beyond desire.
It went beyond need.
It wasn’t explainable, and it sure as hell wasn’t rational, but it was there, and it could not be denied.
Slowly, he closed the distance between them. Miranda stood frozen by the fire, her lips parted, her breath growing shallow. “What are you going to do?” she whispered.
“That should be obvious by now.” And in one fluid movement, he leaned down and scooped her up.
Miranda didn’t move, didn’t struggle against him. The warmth of his body was intoxicating. It poured into her, melting her bones, making her feel deliciously wanton. “Oh, Turner,” she sighed.
“Oh, yes.” His lips trailed along the line of her jaw as he laid her gently and reverently on the bed.
In that last moment before he covered her body with his own, Miranda could only stare up at him, thinking that she’d loved him forever, that her every dream, her every waking thought, had been leading to this moment. He hadn’t yet uttered the words that would make her heart soar, but just now that didn’t seem to matter. His blue eyes blazed so brightly, with such intensity that she thought he must love her a little. And that seemed to be enough.
Enough to make this possible.
Enough to make this right.
Enough to make this perfect.
Miranda sank into the mattress as his weight settled atop her. She reached out to touch his thick hair. “It’s so soft,” she murmured. “What a waste.”
Turner raised his head and looked down at her with amusement. “A waste?”
“On a man,” she said with a shy smile. “Like long eyelashes. Women would kill for them.”
“They would, would they?” He grinned down at her. “And how do my eyelashes rate?”
“Very, very highly.”
“And would you kill for long eyelashes?”
“I would kill foryours .”
“Really? Don’t you think they’d be a bit fair with your dark hair?”
She swatted him playfully. “I want them fl
uttering against my face, not attached to my eyelids, silly.”
“Did you just call me silly?”
She grinned at him. “I did.”
“Does this feel silly?” He stroked his hand up her bare leg.
