“Be careful,” Luke found himself calling after her. “Do not wander too far from me, you may not find me again.”
As she wandered into the darkness, Luke shook his head with a smile as though drunk. You may not find me again: did his desperation to be near her have to be quite so blatant? What had got into him? He had met many a pretty woman before, plenty of fiery, spirited women before, but had experienced nothing like this.
But not quite so stunning as her, he admitted to himself. Nor so spirited, nor combining so much of spark and spirit in one woman.
The evening gloom had already swallowed up Miss Adena Garland – or Adena, as he now had permission to consider her. Luke grinned. They were a long way from the drawing rooms of the ton.
The smile faded as the thought struck him that she may find her way back to the mainland on her little excursion, or at the very least, see that there was a way back, despite his information. If she discovered his deception, she was unlikely to look at him with such a pleasing eye.
Luke shook his head, and started off in the opposite direction. In the unlikely event that she did, what was the problem? All he had to do was act as astonished and relieved as she was, and his surprise would completely hide his knowledge from her.
He almost stumbled over some gorse as a little needle of guilt pricked his conscience. What sort of a man was he that could happily lie to a woman – a woman whom he had never met before this evening, and who had put her life, her very reputation in his hands?
Without knowing the exact time, Luke estimated that it was almost thirty minutes later that he deemed his haul of large leaves and additional branches ready to be taken back to the initial shelter that he had started. His fingers were covered in dirt, there were at least two thorn scratches up his arms, and this shirt would never be the same again.
He had never worked so hard with his hands in his life, and he felt it. With an aching back and weary arms, Luke turned once more towards the shelter, and smiled ruefully.
If any of his friends could see him now, they would laugh at him just as much as he would have done, if he had watched another act in the way that he was. Why was he trying so hard to impress this woman?
Was it because the title, a mainstay in his wooing repertoire, seemed to have had absolutely no effect?
Was it because her beauty had completely dazzled him, to the point where he seemed unable to comprehend sense?
Or, said a small voice somewhere deep in his heart that he discovered to his surprise, was it because Adena was unlike any he had ever met, or was likely to meet – a truly unique woman. That sparkling wit that she started to reveal before she went on that walk of hers…
There was nothing else for it: Luke trudged back with his spoils, trying to ignore the aches and complaints of his body, and trying not to imagine Adena slowly removing that damp gown by a fireside.
She is engaged to another, he reminded himself. Engaged to another, and one with a title too, so there is no need to hope that she will be impressed by your own.
There was something strange up ahead that caused him to pause slightly in his return. It looked, to all intents and purposes, like a lamp: but that surely could not be. He could not be so unfortunate, Luke thought bitterly to himself, to find himself ‘trapped’ with Miss Adena Garland just to find that there was another man here out to get her too!
He was immediately overcome with shame. Out to get her?
The lamp light flickered, but as he took a few steps forward, it became clear that it was no lamp, but a fire. There was a figure standing beside it, tall and strong. Luke’s heart sank. So, it was to be another gentleman joining them. Of course it was.
But then the figure moved, and Luke’s breath caught in his throat. If he was not mistaken, that was no gentleman, but a lithe and elegant woman standing wearing his greatcoat by a fire.
Like a siren calling out to sailors to throw themselves towards her, a voice spoke out from the darkness.
“My lord? Luke, is that you?”
Luke tried to speak, but couldn’t. He could refute his own feelings no longer: he was entranced by Miss Adena Garland, utterly taken in by her bodily charms. His own body yearned to rush over to her, abandoning all he had collected for the shelter, and sweep her into his arms, pouring down his passion and lack of restraint in hot kisses.
“Luke?”
“It is I,” he managed in a strangled voice.
So. He had feelings, of a mingled lust and obsession sort, for this woman. ‘Twas merely an infatuation, however, and he needed to guard his tongue and his temperament to ensure that the lady was not put to any trouble or awkwardness on his behalf.
Luke found himself smiling dryly. Turns out that he had plenty of honour left in him, but it had taken a strange encounter with a woman he had never clapped eyes on before this night to discover it.
4
Adena stared out into the darkness. It had certainly looked like a figure, moving about in the darkness, and around about Luke – my lord Luke, she corrected herself silently, pulling his greatcoat closer around her.
But when she had called out, the figure had stopped short, just out of the glare of the fire she had managed to light.
“My lord?” She repeated, eyes straining to attempt to make out just who the figure was. “Luke, I shall be most displeased if that is you, and you are not stepping forward.”
There was a deep laugh, and Luke strode into view, carrying with him what looked like half of the trees of the island.
“Your temper is quick to burn,” he said with a smile. “Much like the fire – how on earth did it get here?”
A small wave of irritation flowed through Adena as she stared at him: shirt covered in leaves, a scratch across his face, and yet utter charm on his features. He really did think that he was something special, she thought. Such a shame that on the outside at least, he was right.
“Get here?” She said, raising an eyebrow. “Really, Luke, do you have any grasp of the elements of physics? Unless a very small and quiet lightning storm decided to hit us here on the – what did you call this?”
“Squire’s Isle,” he said, throwing down the heavy branches near the makeshift shelter that he had built.
Adena tried not to notice the rise and swell of the muscles through the linen shirt as she continued, “Squire’s Isle, then I think the most reasonable thing to presume is that I lit the fire.”
Luke swung around, and she almost laughed aloud to see the astonishment and confusion on his face.
“You – the fire, you lit the fire?”
A twig in the flames shifted, throwing dancing light across his features, and something instinctual stirred inside Adena’s breast. My, but he was handsome, it would be foolish to deny it. Adena had never seen a man so perfectly formed, and in body as well as face.
She nodded with a smile. “I lit the fire.”
Luke moved slowly towards it, reaching out his hands to gain the full strength of its warmth on his fingers. Trying not to watch him too closely, Adena gently lowered herself onto the sandy soil, and gazed up at him.
“You had a tinder box on you, I suppose.”
She shook her head, and then added as he was not looking at her, “No, not at all.”
His head tilted down to look at her and she was suddenly overwhelmed with the feeling of just how strong he was: how masculine, how tall, how broad, and how utterly alone she was with him, in the deepening evening, on an island away from civilisation.
Anything could happen, she thought, and shivered at the unknowable excitement that flowed through her.
“No tinderbox?”
Adena smiled. “When I was growing up with two brothers, I very swiftly learned that unless I could run as fast as them, climb as high as them, and set fire to as much as they could, I was going to be left behind. No little sister wants that, and so I undoubtedly have a few skills in my gentlewoman’s repertoire that I have never needed to display at Almacks.”
Luk
e roared with laughter. “I can quite imagine you let loose in your father’s garden, sticks in one hand and kindling in another.”
“Oh, far more than that,” a smile creeping over her face at the memory of it. “The garden almost merged with the parkland, and I am almost afraid to say that Kieran, Oliver, and I almost ran wild. There was nothing to stop us exploring for miles each day.”
“No tutor? Governess?”
For a moment, Adena wondered at his interest in her, but ignored it. It was nice to be given attention, though it made her feel ridiculous to admit it, even to herself. It was unusual to just be listened to, without a chaperone at each elbow attempting to prod you into marriage.
“No adults of any kind,” she answered, with relish. “I am sorry to say that I grew up totally wild, though my parents would always deny it.”
There was a minute of silence as Luke’s face turned once again to the flames, and she was given the chance to examine his features closely. Dark hair, longer than most but still fashionable, with a trimmed beard across his face. Dark eyes: darker than any she had ever seen before, almost black, though that could have been the firelight. A strong mouth. A mouth of confidence. Being kissed by that mouth, and here Adena blushed but did not look away, would certainly be something.
“And so you are now a little firestarter,” Luke said finally.
Adena laughed gently. “I suppose you could say that. I have rarely used the talent, and I am almost relieved that I still have the knack when I really needed it.”
“Well, I must say that I am impressed,” he admitted with a wry smile. “I had not thought it possible, I must say – and I am rarely impressed.”
“That much I can believe,” retorted Adena quietly, and she coloured slightly as he roared with laughter. “You were not supposed to hear that, my lord.”
Still laughing, Luke threw himself down beside her and laid out, propping himself up on one elbow. “Oh, my lord this, my lord that – I think, given the circumstances, that we can dispense with that as well.”
Something like a shiver moved through Adena’s body as he spoke. Perhaps it was because he was so close to her. Perhaps it was because he stared so deeply into her eyes, not looking away, refusing to break the connection.
Whatever it was, it was intoxicating, and overwhelming, and she looked away.
“I must admit I am a little jealous of you,” Luke said quietly, and though she had turned her eyes back to the fire, she could sense his gaze still on her.
“Jealous of me?” She managed.
He picked up a twig from the ground, and started to pull it apart with his fingers. “I was never that close with my brothers, of which I have several. No running about in the woodland tearing it up for firewood.”
Adena was intrigued, despite herself. “How many brothers do you have?”
There was a pause, and she could not help but look round at him. “You are struggling to remember?”
She wished that she had taken back those words as soon as she had uttered them, when she saw the pain that swept across his features.
“I apologise,” she said quickly, “I should not have – ”
“There are four of us now,” said Luke heavily, “but my mother had seven sons at one time.”
Adena bit her lip. There she went, careering into a conversation with no thought for the consequences, and now she had evidently opened up old wounds.
“I am…I am so sorry,” she murmured. “I should not have pried into your private – ”
“Oh, do not concern yourself.” Luke pulled himself up and sat, one leg stretched out and the other bent at the knee, next to her. “‘Tis no great secret, half of society know about it, so it just happens that you are in the other half.”
For a moment, Adena thought that the conversation had closed, but then the deep voice beside her continued.
“Simon died when we were very small. He must have been, what….five? George and Harry had not even been born then, he caught some sort of pox. Richard was fourteen when he was thrown from a horse in a hunt – that was terrible, the whole family was there, I do not think my mother truly recovered.”
His voice was low, but it was steady. Adena risked a glance at him, and though there was pain etched in his features, there was a sort of resoluteness in his eyes, as though now he had started to speak of them, there was no ending the conversation until it had run its course.
“But it was Magnus that was the true loss,” Luke said heavily, and she heard the first quaver in his voice. “Our youngest, George, had been reading in the library with him, and his twin Harry had already gone up to bed. When George was leaving, he saw that Magnus had fallen asleep in his armchair – a common occurrence, for Magnus could sleep anywhere.”
Adena saw the bitter smile creep over his face, and then disappear.
“George thought he would leave him the candle,” Luke sighed heavily. “Poor soul, he could never have known what consequences that action would have. By the time that we realised the fire had spread through the library, through the drawing room, and up the stairs, it was impossible to get everyone out.”
Horror filled Adena’s heart and lungs. “Fire?”
He nodded.
“But I have just been boasting to you of my own prowess with the flame,” she said quietly, horrified at her own stupidity.
Luke wafted away her words with his hand. “How could you have known? And it is a skill, no matter what happened that night.”
Adena swallowed. “So…so you lost Magnus that night.”
He nodded gravely, and then a bitter smile appeared on his face, almost throwing his features into greater handsomeness. “Magnus, two maidservants, our butler who attempted to put out the flames…and my mother.”
“Your mother!”
“She would not leave the house without her boys,” said Luke, and it was now a genuine smile that Adena could see on his face. “She was, truly, the most loving mother. I was in town, as the eldest, and George had roused Harry and the others, taken them by a different route. As soon as my mother realised that Magnus was still inside, she broke free of my father and went back in.”
Sympathy was pouring into Adena’s heart almost in rhythm with the soft sweeping of the waves on the shore. “I am so sorry for your losses,” she whispered.
Luke started, as though he had forgotten she was there. “Thank you.”
Adena moved without even thinking, running on pure instinct. His hand was on his knee, and she reached out with her own and clasped it.
Perhaps it was all this talk of fire, but Adena gasped aloud at the heat from his hand that seared hers like a branding iron. At the same time, a flush of heat moved across her face and descended into her stomach, curling into a ball of warmth that felt strange, but not unwanted.
“Oh, Luke,” she said, her breath caught in her throat.
Luke almost had to check that he had not thrust his hand into the fire, the feeling of flame was so real. But no: it was just Adena’s hand.
Just Adena. How could he even think such a thing, feeling the warmth flowing from him as her touch inflamed him. Oh, if he only had the self-control not to feel this passion for her – or the complete lack of self-control to do something about it.
“I think I saw an abandoned fishing net over there,” he said hurriedly, drawing his hand away from hers and jumping upwards, as though putting a few feet between them would dampen down the heat that was rising in his body.
Luke glanced down at her, and was almost gratified to see a corresponding flush in her face. So, she felt it too.
“I will stay here and, and tend the fire,” she managed to say before Luke strode off into the darkness.
This was complete madness, he told himself. Madness! He was the Marquis of Dewsbury, he could not go around hoping to seduce another man’s fiancée!
Every step took him into greater darkness, but the memory of her face in the light, the firelight making her hair look even more fiery than it alread
y was, that look of intensity that she had given him as their hands had touched –
Luke could feel the physical effects on his body, and stretched his shoulders irritably. With every other young woman he met, he had had complete self-control – and now this Adena Garland had removed all ability for him to calm himself!
He did not find the net again, but instead tripped right over it. Cursing into the darkness and hoping beyond hope that Adena had not seen him, he threw the net into the ocean and threw himself down onto the damp sand to wait.
It could have been five minutes, or an hour, he could not tell, but eventually he heard the splashing that indicated a fish had been trapped in the net. Not one, two. Pulling it in, he enwrapped the struggling fish in the net and strode back towards the glint of the fire in the distance.
“Luke?”
He smiled. It felt good to hear her call out his name like that. Now, if only he could have her crying out his name for quite a different reason…
The power of his imagination rocked him, stopping him in his tracks. No, he told himself firmly. No. You have taken this island deception far enough: you will not touch her, for she is at your mercy.
Or I am at hers, he thought wryly as Adena once more came into sight.
“What do you have there?” She had not moved from the spot where he had left her, it seemed, but she looked pleased to see him. “Oh, those poor fish – why have you not put them out of their misery?”
Luke glanced down at them, and saw the two fish still wriggling in the net. “Oh, I – ”
“Come here,” said Adena firmly, holding out her hand so decidedly that he did not question her.
After taking the net with the struggling fish entangled in it, Luke watched as she picked up a heavy stone, carefully aimed, and –
“There,” she said matter-of-factly. “Do you have a penknife, or something, to gut them?”
Luke laughed, and shook his head. “Nay, my lady, for you truly are a lady of complete wonder to me. ‘Tis you that has the penknife, it is in my pocket here.”
Ravishing Regencies: The Complete Series: A Steamy Regency Romance Boxset Page 29
