Lord Holt Takes a Bride

by Vivienne Lorret

  “I’m not too certain about that,” he said ruefully. “I’ve discovered that you’re a terrible influence on me.”

  Winn smiled as if he were teasing. He only wished he was.

  Chapter 14

  They walked for a time, keeping to the narrow road until it curved around the bend, where they’d last seen Mr. Champion’s wife and her lover.

  “I feel as though I’ve witnessed what my own life might have become,” Winnifred said, unable to shake the despair she’d seen in the farmer’s face.

  Asher frowned but didn’t add his own thoughts. Instead, he led her through a break in the trees toward a meadow of verdant grasses. Reaching out with a guiding hand, he assisted her over a fallen branch—a touch at her elbow, another at the small of her back—and then he withdrew, keeping an unfamiliar distance between them.

  Peculiarly, she’d grown accustomed to his unprecedented boldness, and this sudden, unexplained absence left her feeling unmoored.

  After a few minutes of silence, he asked, “Did you love Mr. Woodbine, then?”

  “Not even a little.” She glimpsed his nod in response out of the corner of her eye. “That was the reason I ran from the church. I needed to be more than numbers in an accounting ledger. After all, if marriage must be a transaction, then the two parties should do so out of an obligation to their hearts, not to their coffers. I should like— No,” she amended, stepping up on a small outcropping of white rock protruding from the earth, “I demand to be desired for all that I am. It may sound terribly naive, but I want to be the love that a man cannot live without.”

  Again, Asher did not reply, his gaze pensive as he set his hands on her waist and lowered her from her rock pulpit.

  They continued walking, yet it was as if they were strangers to each other in a way that they hadn’t been even at the beginning. As if they’d never lain together in the straw at night. As if they’d never kissed in the back of a farmer’s cart.

  She wondered if he thought about it at all. Or was he merely musing over the firm quality of the ground beneath his steps, and the coolness of the morning that had given way to the sudden humid warmth of the afternoon?

  Why had he kissed her? After all, she wasn’t the type of woman who tempted men to act without reason. There was always a reason. And the reason was always money.

  However, Asher didn’t need to kiss her in order for her aunt to pay him. Affection was not required for their arrangement.

  Now it was her turn to frown. Her gaze drifted down to the path and the gradient accumulation of dirt climbing the hem of her drab green dress. A pebble had worked its way into the crack at the bottom of her shoe. A bur pricked through her stocking. And a terrible, discomfiting quiet settled in between the muted plod of their footsteps.

  All at once she couldn’t take the turn of her own thoughts a moment longer.

  “You kissed me.” Her blurted words startled a rabbit from the grass. It hopped off in a zigzagged panic toward a stream up ahead that wended its way through the landscape like a fallen ribbon.

  “I did, indeed.”

  He didn’t elaborate further, leaving her wanting.

  She huffed with impatience, forced to prod him. “You said there wouldn’t be any kissing.”

  “The moment seemed to call for it,” he said on a slow breath as if the topic had already exhausted him. He tilted his head back to the cottony clouds overhead and she caught sight of a rueful smirk curling the corner of his mouth.

  Was he laughing at her?

  His reaction abraded the bruised pulp of her ego in a place that was already too raw.

  “Rather convenient timing, considering we had an audience,” she said. “You don’t seem to suffer the same impulse without one.”

  “And what are you implying?” He turned a dark, warning gaze on her.

  She merely lifted her shoulders in an inconsequential shrug. “Nothing more than the fact that having a witness might have aided you in your quest for a fortune. Doubtless, arriving in the village with Mr. Champion to prove your intimate acquaintance with an heiress would force a marriage between us.”

  “I don’t want your fortune, Winn. I want one of my own,” he said, his voice firm. Adamant. “I want to be unencumbered and free to forge my own life. And if I were despicable enough to force a marriage between us, then I wouldn’t need to kiss you. Audience or not. Our first night together compromised us, which we both knew from the outset.”

  She felt ashamed and chastened for her presumption. And yet, she still couldn’t stop herself from asking again, “Then why did you kiss me?”

  Asher raked an agitated hand through his hair. “Because every ounce of sense I possess abandoned me.”

  She winced. “Lovely sentiment.”

  “It isn’t my intention to wound you,” he said, his voice softening. He tried to take her hand but she snatched it away and held her chin high.

  She walked along the edge of the stream, searching for a place to cross. And the farther away from him the better. Thankfully, up ahead, there was a serpentine path of flat stones, the largest one on the bank nearest her.

  “Winn,” he called from just behind her. “I wasn’t thinking about the farmer being too near. I wasn’t thinking about your dowry.”

  “Splendid. We needn’t speak of it again.”

  “Damn it all! I wasn’t thinking about anything . . . other than a purely carnal need to feel your lips against mine.”

  She stopped at once. All the air fell out of her lungs like an anchor dropping to her feet, pinioning her in place. Had she actually heard him correctly?

  He stepped in front of her, reaching up to brush a dozen wayward locks from her cheek. His fingers skimmed lightly along her jaw, stroking the tender underside of her chin. “You have every right to rail at me.”

  “To rail at . . .” she repeated in breathless bemusement. Then a stunned laugh bubbled out of her, light as the water tripping over the rocks. “If you expect me to be angry, then you executed the kiss incorrectly.”

  A scoundrel’s smirk toyed with the corner of his mouth, sending a thrill through her. “Is that so?”

  Winn nodded. “I think, perhaps . . . you should try it again.”

  His warm gaze drifted from her eyes to her lips, but slowly he shook his head. “I think we should remove that pebble from your shoe, then walk to the village before the next disaster strikes.”

  “But there isn’t going to be—”

  Abruptly, he set his long finger over her lips and flashed a grin. “Don’t even finish the thought, Winn. You’re a veritable weathervane awaiting the next bolt of lightning.”

  She was tempted to argue against the likelihood of a stray thunderstorm on such a fine day, but didn’t want to tempt the Fates. Just in case. After all, he seemed to know about the pebble in her shoe. And she thought her efforts of walking without the barest limp had been successful.

  “I’m sure I can work it free,” she said, scraping the bottom against the dirt. “There isn’t any need to fuss.”

  “Winn, there’s no point in arguing with me. You’ll only wedge it deeper,” he said in the same instant that she hissed from the sharp stab in the tender ball of her foot. “See?”

  Hating that he was right, she hobbled over to the flat marbled stone perched on the bank’s edge.

  He knelt to assist her, and reaching under her skirt, his hand gently enclosed her ankle. At the innocent touch, a flood of warmth swelled upward along the inner seam of her legs. Pulses flicked along the way, shocking a gasp out of her.

  “You’re rather sure of yourself . . .” she said in an airy rush as she shifted on the rock and pressed her knees together to quell the sensation. All this, and he hadn’t even removed her shoe!

  He looked up at her burning cheeks and his eyes suddenly turned to smoldering cinders. Then, like a Professor of the Wayward Pulse, his fingertips lightly grazed the susceptible flesh just above her ankle and seemed to watch the pulse rove the same path up her limb
s. Her breath quickened. And he held her gaze as he slipped the shoe from her foot.

  Winn didn’t know why this seemed even more intimate than waking up in his arms. But perhaps she’d been too bewildered by the fog of sleep to enjoy it properly.

  “Actually,” she said, panting, “it’s the . . . other shoe.”

  He stared at her for a moment, his thick, sooty lashes lowered to half mast. Then he chuckled wryly. “You’ve made me realize that I’d have been a lecher as a cobbler’s apprentice.”

  “Do you fancy my muddy shoes, then?”

  He grinned but did not answer. Instead, he encircled her other ankle and slipped the shoe free, eliciting the same thrill up her leg and stealing her breath. He even took a moment to rub his thumb into the vulnerable arch. Dear sweet heavens, that’s lovely . . .

  She wished she had more feet.

  At least, she did until she glanced down at the filth-striped silk. “Oh drat. I’ve ruined my stockings.”

  “Your shoe isn’t faring much better. Seeing this crack in the bottom makes me sorry I’m not a cobbler’s apprentice.” His brows lifted ruefully. “I’m afraid all I can do is tie a handkerchief around it.”

  “That’s very kind,” she said, distracted. “I can’t even see my mother’s silver embroidery, and the shells were so lovely, too.”

  “A bridal gift?”

  “It had more to do with the moment we shared,” she said. “In those few fleeting seconds I’d felt connected to her. And if you knew anything about my mother and me, you would know how rare that is.” A weary sigh escaped her lungs. “It doesn’t matter, I suppose. Perhaps I could sell the silver thread in the village. That should gain us some distance toward my aunt’s.”

  “No,” he said firmly. “You’ve sacrificed enough already. Just let me take care of you the rest of the way, hmm?”

  Without warning, her heart lifted off in a Montgolfier balloon again, beating lighter and warmer than before. This time, she hoped it wouldn’t crash to the ground.

  Dimly, she wondered if Mr. Woodbine had ever said something similar to Lady Stanton, or if Father had ever said as much to Mother.

  She didn’t think so. It took a selfless man to put another person’s needs above his own. And she felt it was an absolute atrocity that she was an heiress and Asher was a man in need of a fortune.

  Was it truly only yesterday that they’d met? It seemed like a lifetime ago.

  Then again, it was. She’d met him when she was still her former self in her former life. Now she was caught somewhere between who she was and who she would become during the upcoming years of living in solitude with her aunt.

  He held out his hand. “Hand over your stockings and I’ll give them a good scrub.”

  She laughed softly, touched. But she shook her head. “I’ll wash them out myself, as well as the morning’s dirt from the hem of my dress so that I don’t look the part of a vagabond when we arrive in the village.”

  “Very well. A short rest will do us both good. And I could use a cool drink before you muddy the water,” he added with a wink. Laying her shoes aside, he stood and walked to the edge of the stream to lift a palmful of water to his lips, wiping away the residue with the back of his hand.

  Winn followed, leaning down to do the same. But being stocking-footed, her feet slid down the wet embankment.

  “Careful, now,” he said, reaching out a hand for her.

  Unfortunately, she tilted sideways, losing her balance. Her fingertips slipped from his grasp. She started to fall backward toward the water, flailing her arms, and fully aware that Asher was witnessing yet another clumsy episode.

  She prayed to hit her head on a rock hard enough to forget all about it.

  But then, he lunged forward and captured her about the waist. Only, this time, he lost his footing. And the next thing she knew, they were both spluttering in icy, waist-high water, and wiping it from their eyes.

  “Don’t even say it,” she warned, her teeth chattering as she tried to stand.

  And he didn’t, but I-told-you-so dripped from his expression. Weathervane, indeed.

  Bending down, he hauled Winnifred to her feet. Then he went further and lifted her into the cradle of his arms, ignoring her startled gasp. “I cannot have you muddying your feet after all that effort.”

  When he lowered her to stand on a thick carpet of cool grass, he immediately stepped aside and started to shrug out of his coat, but the sodden garment adhered to his arms. So she moved behind him, stripping it inside out in a spray of water droplets. Untying his black cravat, he jerked it loose and dropped it to the ground with a soggy splat.

  Looking down at it, he started to laugh. “Will we ever spend an entirely dry day together?”

  As she began to absently unbutton his waistcoat, the ridiculousness of the moment caught hold of her, too. He was soaked through. So was she. A hiccupped laugh slipped out and then something deeper and joyful erupted, until tears gathered in the corners of her eyes.

  She shook her head, parting his waistcoat. “Well, there’s always tomorrow.”

  They laughed at that, too. But the sound faded as their gazes collided.

  His chest rose and fell underneath her splayed hands. Through the wet linen, she could feel his warmth. Feel his heart beating fast. They both knew there wouldn’t be a tomorrow. Not if they made it to Avemore Abbey by nightfall.

  Soon they’d part ways forever.

  Winnifred already missed him. “When does your ship sail?”

  “Wednesday,” he answered, his gaze drifting to her lips.

  Yes. Now would be the perfect time to kiss me, she thought. We don’t have much time.

  But just as quickly, Asher turned away and bent to pick up his fallen clothes. He cleared his throat and said, “With the sun and the breeze, these shouldn’t take too long to dry. Then we’ll be on our way.”

  Surreptitiously, she blinked away the wetness gathering on her lashes.

  “Hand over your stockings,” he said without looking her way. “I’ll take care of them and then come back to wring out your dress. You can cover yourself with the shawl for now.”

  She issued a noncommittal murmur as she bent to lift her dripping hem, untie her garter ribbons and slip out of her stockings. Walking up to him, she laid her hand on his shoulder, waiting for him to look at her. To say something more. But he merely opened his palm for the stockings. And after she gave them to him, he strode back to the stream.

  She fought a shiver and began to work the buttons and hook enclosures. It seemed to take an eternity to remove her dress. Once she was without it, she threw the wet homespun in his direction, then tended to her task.

  Clad only in her underclothes, she was still terribly wet, the pink hue of her flesh displayed beneath the clinging, transparent fabric. Hating the chafing feel of the drawers between her legs, she shimmied out of them. And after twisting out as much water as she could, she laid the lace-trimmed garment on a nearby shrub to dry in the sunlight.

  Not able to remove her petticoat, she decided to flap the fabric to and fro to catch the breeze. Bending over, she fanned the ruffled hem.

  “I managed to remove most of the—”

  Hearing Asher’s voice, Winnifred stood up with a start. He’d returned quicker than she anticipated.

  Feeling the fabric clinging to her bottom and knowing how transparent it was, she turned to face him. Yet, now that she thought about it—and saw the way his gaze darkened as it raked down her form—she realized this wasn’t any better.

  Shyly, she crossed her hands over her sex.

  “You’re supposed to be wearing that shawl,” Asher said, his voice too low to be chiding.

  She looked down to the wool beneath her feet, but saw that she’d inadvertently pushed her breasts together. Two rosy pink crescents rose above the ruffled edge of her bodice and gusseted cups of her corset. She should probably cover those, as well . . .

  Her gaze returned to him for confirmation. It was only then th
at she noticed and truly appreciated his partially dampened shirtsleeves, the cambric even more transparent than her own. His breeches were damp, too. And there, she spied an intriguing outline angled behind his fall front.

  Recalling the statues in the museum, she wondered why there seemed to be so much more of him. And like a novice sculptor, her fingertips tingled with the need to touch him. To learn. To explore.

  “Winn, stop looking at me like that,” he warned, his drawl tunneling directly to her middle on a heavy flutter.

  “Like what?”

  “The same way I’m looking at you.”

  Her gaze darted up to his face, noticing the high color slanting over the crests of his cheeks and the bridge of his nose. His eyes were black, practically feral beneath the shadow of his inky lashes.

  “And how are you looking at me?” she asked, breathless.

  “With imprudent carnal hunger.”

  A jolt of pure, glorious shock raced through her, leaving her giddy. Asher Holt did not see a plump, freckled and flawed heiress. He saw a desirable woman.

  Driven by a wondrous new feeling, she moved toward him.

  He shook his head, but there was little conviction in his heated gaze.

  She dared to slide her hands to his broad shoulders, his muscles taut and poised beneath her palms. “Are you truly looking at me with ‘carnal hunger’?”

  His hands gripped the curve of her hips, pulled her flush. “I’m ravenous.”

  Then he closed his mouth over hers.

  Chapter 15

  Asher was barely hanging on to the last shred of his control when Winn stepped into his arms. But when she slipped her hands into his hair and pressed her lush body against the full length of him, he lost it completely.

  The first touch of her lips was pure decadence. The sumptuous give. The inviting pull. She brought out the hedonist in him. He needed to taste every soft sound that hummed in her throat, touch all the places veiled behind the damp cambric. He couldn’t remember ever wanting a woman so much.

  His hands shook as they slid down her corset lacings to the small of her back and over the firm mounds of her bottom. Damn, but she was a tempting handful, lush and curvaceous. Utterly irresistible.