“I certainly wouldn’t want to give you any concern, Miss Adams,” Bishop said solemnly. His eyes flickered downward and then back up to meet hers, and Lila felt her skin flush with sudden heat.
“I’m sure you wouldn’t mean to do so,” she said, aware of an almost imperceptible breathlessness in her voice.
“Tell me what I can do to ease your mind,” he asked.
Lila pretended to consider, allowing her brows to draw together in a delicate frown. She was flirting with him. The very idea should have shocked her into more sober behavior. Behavior more befitting of Lila Adams of River Walk, grieving fiancee of Billy Sinclair. The thought of Billy brought with it a twinge of guilt, followed by a champagne-assisted flare of defiance. She had loved Billy but she hadn’t died with him, despite what everyone else seemed to think. Billy had been known and loved by everyone in Beaton, and for three years she’d been treated with the circumspection usually reserved for widows of great war heroes. Though she would always mourn Billy’s death, lately she’d begun to feel as if she were suffocating beneath the weight of his memory.
But Bishop McKenzie neither knew nor cared that she’d once been engaged to Billy Sinclair. When he looked at her, he saw only her, not her fiancé's ghost.
There was something dangerously appealing about that thought.
“Perhaps, if you asked a lady to dance, I might be reassured that you’re enjoying our hospitality,” she said finally.
One corner of Bishop’s mouth quirked upward but his tone remained solemn. “What if she were to refuse? Think how humiliated I’d be.”
“I doubt a lady would refuse if you asked politely, Mr. McKenzie.” She peeked up at him from under her lashes, feeling like a girl of seventeen again. It had been so long since she’d enjoyed a gentle flirtation with a man. Behind her, she heard the scratchy sound of violins being tuned and knew the orchestra was about to start the next tune. Bishop glanced over her shoulder at the dance floor, his expression considering. Lila knew, as clearly as if he’d spoken out loud, that he was debating whether to ask her to dance. And she suddenly wanted, more than anything in the world, to dance with him.
“Miss Adams, will you do me the honor of granting me this dance?”
“Perhaps this dance is already taken. I’ll have to check my dance card.” She widened her eyes innocently and fluttered her fan a bit.
“If it’s already taken, then why are you trying to get me to ask you to dance?” Bishop asked coolly, one black brow raised in question.
Lila gasped as if someone had just tossed cold water in her face. He wasn’t suggesting that she... Never mind that she’d intended... He couldn’t think...
Before she could decide whether to slap him for his gross impertinence or simply turn and walk away, Lila's eyes met Bishop’s. In his look, she read both humor and a challenge. He was waiting to see how she’d react to his baiting question, daring her to surprise him. She felt excitement flutter in the pit of her stomach. She swallowed a bubble of laughter and formed her mouth into a prim line.
“Really, Mr. McKenzie. It’s most impolite to suggest that a lady would try to manipulate a gentleman into an invitation to dance. Not to mention the implication that she’d need to resort to such measures.”
“My apologies, Miss Adams.” He gave her a shallow bow. “I certainly didn’t mean to imply that a lady as beautiful as yourself would have to browbeat a guest into dancing with you.”
“Browbeat! Really, Mr. McKenzie, you have the most appalling manners.”
“You’re not the first to mention it, Miss Adams,” he admitted without concern. “May I have this dance?”
“How could I refuse such a gracious invitation?” Lila set her gloved hand on his arm as the orchestra struck up another waltz.
Though she’d spoken in jest when she asked if they had dances in the West, she wouldn’t have been at all surprised to find that Bishop’s skill on the dance floor was rudimentary. She’d been willing to have her toes trod upon in order to get a closer look at her brother’s enigmatic friend. But she realized almost immediately that her toes were in no danger. Bishop moved with a grace at odds with both his size and his rough appearance.
He whirled her around the floor, making her feel as light and dainty as thistledown. The hand clasping hers was firm and strong. Where he touched her waist, his fingers seemed to burn through the layers of clothing, making her skin tingle with awareness.
For the first time in her life, Lila was vividly aware of the more erotic aspects of the dance. The rhythmic dip and swirl of the movements; the way her skirt swung out to brush against his legs as they turned. Though she’d danced with dozens of men over the years, she’d never before been so aware of being close to a man. When she inhaled, she could smell the sharp tang of soap on his skin, the smooth bite of bourbon on his breath.
She looked up, ready to say something light and amusing, something to ease the odd tension that seemed to have sprung up between them. But whatever she’d intended to say died unspoken. He was watching her and the look in his eyes stole her breath. Hunger.
She’d always thought of blue eyes as being cool, but Bishop’s eyes were pure heat. With nothing more than a look, he made her vividly aware of her femininity, of an emptiness somewhere inside her that ached to be filled, of a loneliness that went soul deep. In a heartbeat, she was made aware of the differences between man and woman. They moved in rhythm to the waltz, dip and sway and turn, but Lila no longer heard the music.
There was a sudden tightness in her stomach and heat washed under her skin, making her feel flushed and feverish. It was suddenly hard to breathe and her lips parted as if to draw in more air. The movement brought Bishop’s eyes to her mouth, and it was as if he’d touched her. As if he’d kissed her.
She’d never felt such a connection to another person in her life, as if she breathed only in rhythm with him. His hand tightened over hers. He drew her an inch closer, his fingers shifting against the curve of her waist. Lila swayed toward him, their surroundings forgotten, everything forgotten but the need to be closer to him, to find out if what she felt was truth or illusion.
And then the dance was ending. He brought them to a halt, his hand lingering against her waist in a way that had nothing to do with propriety and everything to do with the awareness that still swirled between them. Lila kept her eyes on his face, waiting for something, though she couldn’t have said just what. Something had just happened between them, something too deep, too profound to go unacknowledged. He’d felt it too. She knew he had. It was in his eyes. It was—
“I believe this is my dance.” The vaguely plaintive comment shattered the tension between Bishop and Lila like a hammer striking a pane of glass.
Lila blinked and turned her head to look at the speaker. Though she’d known Eustace Smith all her life, it took her a moment to attach a name to his thin, pockmarked face. It was as if she’d been somewhere very far away and was having a hard time returning to the here and now.
“I’m not—” She started to tell Eustace that he was mistaken in thinking this was his dance, though she knew perfectly well that he was right. But she couldn’t possibly dance with him, not when she and Bishop—
“Thank you for the dance, Miss Adams.” Bishop interrupted her refusal. Lila’s eyes jerked back to his but he didn’t meet her look. With a shallow bow, he turned and walked away, leaving her standing in the middle of the dance floor with Eustace Smith. Lila’s eyes followed his tall figure, her companion forgotten even as he led her into the dance.
For the rest of the evening, Bishop kept his distance. In Lila’s experience, no matter how large the crowd at any gathering, as a rule, you saw the same people over and over again. And she certainly saw Bishop quite often. But only from across the room. Several times she saw him on the edge of the dance floor as she swept by in another man’s arms. And more than once she thought she saw him watching her. But he didn’t approach her and Lila’s pride wouldn’t let her approach him. She�
��d already teetered on the edge of brazenness once tonight; she wouldn’t do it again.
She drank champagne and chatted with her brother’s guests as if she hadn’t a care in the world. But in the back of her mind, she kept remembering those moments on the dance floor. She couldn’t put a name to what had passed between them, but she knew she hadn’t imagined those moments of awareness. That sense of connection was like nothing she’d ever known before.
It made no sense, of course. She told herself as much as she sipped a glass of champagne. It was ridiculous to think that she had some special, mystical connection to Bishop McKenzie. No matter how well he managed to don the veneer of civilization, the man was essentially a ruffian. Certainly he was nothing like her dear, sweet Billy.
The thought of her dead fiancé made Lila’s fingers tighten around the stem of her glass. A familiar tangle of emotions rose up inside her—love and grief; anger that he had died; guilt that she was still alive. And, more recently, a deep resentment that, alive or not, her own life seemed to have ended with his.
Lila swallowed the last of the champagne in her glass. She was aware of a not-unpleasant buzzing sensation in her head. Setting the glass down on a table, she turned to survey the ballroom, her eyes automatically seeking Bishop’s tall figure. The big doors that led into the foyer had been pushed open to allow the party to spill into the rest of the lower floor and Bishop stood in the open doorway. But even as she saw him, he turned and left the ballroom.
He was leaving. Lila knew it as surely as if he’d told her so. He wasn’t just slipping out to smoke a cigarette or joining the card players in the library. He was leaving the party. And tomorrow he was leaving River Walk, going back to wherever he’d come from.
It took Lila a moment to recognize the emotion surging up inside her. Fear. When he left, she’d be alone again. Enclosed in the glass cage that was Billy’s memory, forever barred from life by his death. A small voice inside whispered that she was being ridiculous but it was drowned out by the conviction that Bishop held the only key to that cage.
Driven by that conviction, Lila moved toward the doors through which he’d disappeared. Her progress was slowed by the necessity of exchanging light conversation with half a dozen acquaintances on the way. By the time she was finally able to slip into the foyer, at least thirty minutes had passed since Bishop left the reception, but her sense of urgency had not diminished. She hurried across the foyer, her skirts rustling with the quickness of her pace.
It wasn’t until she’d reached the second floor and was moving down the hallway toward the room
Bishop had been given that it occurred to her that she didn’t have the slightest idea what she was going to say to him. She could hardly expect him to understand something she didn’t understand herself. But that didn’t stop her from knocking on his door.
When there was no immediate response, she wondered if he’d gone outside after all. She sucked in a quick breath when the door opened abruptly and Bishop stood framed in the opening. He’d discarded his jacket and tie and wore only trousers and a white shirt, the top three buttons of which were undone, exposing the strong column of his throat and an intriguing wedge of skin dusted with black hair. He looked even bigger than he had in the ballroom. Bigger, darker, more dangerous. Lila stared at him, her thoughts scattered.
“Miss Adams.” Just a statement of her name, without inflection.
Lila swallowed and tried to summon up a calm smile, not an easy thing to do when a dozen butterflies seemed to be fluttering frantic wings in the pit of her stomach.
“I wanted to assure myself that the servants had seen to your needs,” she said, grabbing the first—-and only—thought that came to her.
There was a moment of dead silence and then Bishop’s brows rose in slow comment. Lila flushed but forced her expression to remain serene. She was his hostess, after all. At least until tomorrow when Susan would be his hostess. Unless, of course, one considered Susan his hostess from the moment she’d exchanged wedding vows with Douglas. Lila frowned a little as she tried to work her way through the social rules governing this particular situation.
“An odd time to be checking up on the servants, isn’t it?” Bishop asked.
Of course it was. “Not at all,” she said calmly. “You’ll be leaving us tomorrow and I just wanted to make sure your stay had been pleasant.”
He looked at her, his blue eyes hooded and unreadable. Lila fought the urge to fidget with her fan and returned his look calmly, as if there were nothing unusual about a young, unmarried woman leaving a party to knock on a gentleman’s door in the middle of the night. Bishop seemed to come to some conclusion because he stepped back from the door and gestured to the room behind him with one hand.
“Everything is in order but you’re welcome to see for yourself.”
Lila hesitated a moment, aware of warning bells going off somewhere inside. Something told her that a step through that door was fraught with hazards she hadn’t considered. Her life might never be the same again. It was that thought that made the decision for her. Because, no matter what else, the one thing she knew was that, if her life remained the same, she wasn’t going to have a life at all.
She stepped into Bishop’s room, hearing the door shut behind her as if closing out the world. She turned toward Bishop. He reached for her, drawing her into his arms, and she went willingly.
CHAPTER 5
Lila came awake with a start, her heart pounding.
So powerful had been the dream, which was not really a dream but a memory, that it took her a moment to separate the past from the present. She’d tried so hard to forget that night, had blamed her incredible behavior on the champagne, on the heat in the ballroom. On Bishop.
Bishop. She closed her eyes as her memory rushed back with unwelcome speed and clarity. The endless journey by train with him sitting silent and uncommunicative across from her, their arrival at the hotel in St. Louis last night and her immediate collapse into bed.
She opened her eyes and stared at a hairline crack in the plaster ceiling. Sunlight poured into the room through the open curtains. From the pale quality of the light, she guessed that it was still quite early. Bishop hadn’t told her how long he planned to stay in St. Louis, which was no surprise, considering he hadn’t told her anything else either. The thought of getting on a train again made Lila shudder. If she was lucky, they’d be stopping over here for a few days. If she was extraordinarily lucky, her new husband would be content to keep his distance, the way he’d been doing.
She sat up—or tried to. Her head had barely come off the pillow before something caught at her hair and tugged her back down. Startled, Lila turned her head to discover the source of the problem and found herself staring into Bishop’s sleepy blue eyes.
Loose, her hair fell almost to her hips. Normally she braided it before she went to bed, but she’d been so tired last night that she hadn’t bothered. Now it spilled across the pillows and sheet in a tumbled wave of deep auburn. Following the path of that wave, she saw it disappear under Bishop’s shoulder. He was lying on her hair. She’d never given a thought to the possibility of such a thing happening. But then, that was understandable, since, aside from that one night she’d tried so hard to forget, she’d never shared a bed with someone. There was something shockingly intimate about the sight of her hair caught under his shoulder—his bare shoulder.
Lila swallowed hard, her eyes widening as she considered the implications of what she was seeing, which was a great deal more than she wanted to see. Bishop was lying on his side, one arm thrown over the top of the covers, which were shoved down almost to his waist. His chest was bare and she gaped at the mat of black, curling hair that covered the solid muscles there. Though she struggled not to, she couldn’t help but remember the crisp feel of that hair beneath her fingers, against her breasts. Breathing just a little too fast, she slammed a door on that memory. If his chest was bare, what about the rest of him?
Lila jerked her eyes
back to his face, too shocked to speak. He looked back at her, as if... as if there were nothing extraordinary about his presence in her bed. As if he had a right to be there. As if he planned to stay there.
“Let me up.” She grabbed a handful of her hair and tried to jerk it out from under him, almost frantic with the need to put some distance between them.
“Hold still,” Bishop ordered sharply. “You’re going to end up bald as an egg if you don’t stop struggling.”
“Let me go!” There was a razor edge of panic in her voice. She had to get away.
“Give me a second,” he snapped.
He sat up. The covers fell around his hips and Lila saw nothing to reassure her about his state of undress. She swung her feet off the edge of the bed and then stopped. When she got up, he’d see her in her nightgown, an intimacy she had no intention of permitting. A quick glance told her that her robe was draped over the arm of the room’s one thinly padded chair, well out of reach.
“Close your eyes,” she snapped, clutching the covers against her chest.
“Close my eyes?” Bishop repeated the question on a note of disbelief. “We’re married and you’re pregnant with my child and you’re asking me to close my eyes?”
“Close your eyes,” she said between gritted teeth. She didn’t need to be reminded of the situation.
“There’s enough cloth in that thing you’re wearing to make a blasted circus tent.”
“Don’t curse. And a gentleman should never refer to a lady’s intimate apparel.”
“Intimate apparel?” Lila looked over her shoulder in time to see Bishop arch one dark brow derisively. “I’ve seen nuns wearing less. And I never claimed to be a gentleman.”
“You certainly couldn’t do so with any truth.” But her sarcasm was perfunctory. She swallowed, fighting down a sudden wave of nausea. Not now. Oh, please, not now. This had been happening sporadically for the last month, this sudden violent illness that hit as soon as she set foot out of bed. Please, not this morning. But beads of sweat were breaking out across her forehead. Her stomach rolled and she swallowed. Bishop must have seen the color drain from her face. “What’s wrong?”
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