by Trisha Telep
Even so, her heart launched into the wayward dance it always performed at the merest sight of Sebastian.
She’d been married for eleven long years. She disliked her husband more than any other man in the world. But nothing prevented her gaze from clinging helplessly to every line of that narrow, intense face with its high cheekbones, long, arrogant nose and sharply angled jaw.
Damn him to Hades, he was still the most magnificent creature she’d ever beheld.
Such a pity his soul was as black as his glittering eyes.
“After all this time, I’m flattered you still recognize me, My Lord,” she said silkily.
“Lord Kinvarra, this is a surprise,” Harold stammered. “You must wonder what I’m doing here with the lady . . .”
Oh, Harold, act the man, even if the hero is beyond your reach. Kinvarra doesn’t care enough about me to kill you, however threatening he seems now.
Although even the most indifferent husband took it ill when his wife chose a lover. Kinvarra wouldn’t mistake what Alicia was doing out here. She stifled a rogue pang of guilt. Curse Kinvarra, she had absolutely nothing to feel guilty about.
“I’ve recalled your existence every quarter these past ten years, my love,” her husband said equally smoothly, ignoring Harold’s appalled interjection. The faint trace of Scottish brogue in his deep voice indicated his temper. His breath formed white clouds on the frigid air. “I’m perforce reminded when I pay your allowance, only to receive sinfully little return.”
“That warms the cockles of my heart,” she sniped, not backing down.
She refused to cower like a wet hen before his banked anger. He sounded reasonable, calm, controlled, but she had no trouble reading fury in the tension across his broad shoulders or in the way his powerful hands opened and closed at his sides.
“Creatures of ice have no use for a heart. Does this paltry fellow know he risks frostbite in your company?”
She steeled herself against the taunting remark. Kinvarra couldn’t hurt her now. He hadn’t been able to hurt her since she’d left him. Any twinge she experienced was just because she was vulnerable after the accident. That was all. It wasn’t because this man could still needle her emotions.
“My Lord, I protest,” Harold said, shocked, and fortunately sounding less like a frightened sheep than before. “The lady is your wife. Surely she merits your chivalry.”
Harold had never seen her with her husband, and some reluctant and completely misplaced loyalty to Kinvarra meant she’d never explained why she and the earl lived apart. The fiction was that the earl and his countess were polite strangers who, by design, rarely met.
Poor Harold, he was about to discover the truth was that the earl and his countess loathed each other.
“Like hell she does,” Kinvarra muttered, casting her an incendiary glance from under long dark eyelashes.
Alicia was human enough to wish the bright moonlight didn’t reveal quite so much of her husband’s seething rage. But the fate that proved cruel enough to fling them together, tonight of all nights, wasn’t likely to heed her pleas.
“Do you intend to introduce me to your cicisbeo?” Kinvarra’s voice remained quiet. She’d learned that was when he was at his most dangerous.
Dear God, did he intend to shoot Harold after all?
Surely not. Foul as Kinvarra had been to her, he’d never shown her a moment’s violence. Her hands clenched in her skirts as fear tightened her throat. Kinvarra was a crack shot and a famous swordsman. Harold wouldn’t stand a chance.
“My Lord, I protest the description,” Harold bleated, sidling back to evade assault.
Was it too much to wish that her suitor would stand up to the scoundrel she’d married as a stupid chit of seventeen? Alicia drew a deep breath and reminded herself that she favoured Lord Harold Fenton precisely because he wasn’t an overbearing brute like her husband, the earl. Harold was a scholar and a poet, a man of the mind. She should consider it a sign of Harold’s intelligence that he was wary right now.
But somehow her insistence didn’t convince her traitorous heart.
How she wished she really were the impervious creature Kinvarra called her. Then she’d be immune both to his insults and to the insidious attraction he aroused.
“My Lady?” Kinvarra asked, still in that even, frightening voice. “Who is this . . . gentleman?”
She stiffened her backbone. She was made of stronger stuff than this. Never would she let her husband guess he still had power over her. Her response was steady. “Lord Kinvarra, allow me to present Lord Harold Fenton.”
Harold performed a shaky bow. “My Lord.”
As he rose, a tense silence descended.
“Well, this is awkward,” Kinvarra said flatly, although she saw in his taut, dark face that his anger hadn’t abated one whit.
“I don’t see why,” Alicia snapped.
It wasn’t just her husband who tried her temper. There was her lily-livered lover and the perishing cold. The temperature must have dropped ten degrees in the last five minutes. She shivered, then silently cursed that Kinvarra noticed and Harold didn’t. Harold was too busy staring at her husband the way a mouse stares at an adder.
“Do you imagine I’m so sophisticated, I’ll ignore discovering you in the arms of another man? My dear, you do me too much credit.”
She stifled the urge to consign him to Hades. “If you’ll put aside your bruised vanity for the moment, you’ll see we merely require you to ride to the nearest habitation and request help. Then you and I can return to acting like complete strangers, My Lord.”
He laughed and she struggled to suppress the shiver of sensual awareness that rippled down her spine at that soft, deep sound. “Some things haven’t changed, I see. You’re still dishing out orders. And I’m still damned if I’ll play your obedient lapdog.”
“Can you see another solution?” she asked sweetly.
“Yes,” he said with a snap of his straight white teeth. “I can leave you to freeze. Not that you’d probably notice.”
Her pride insisted that she send him on his way with a flea in his ear. The weather – and what common sense she retained under the anger that always flared in Kinvarra’s proximity – prompted her to be conciliatory.
It was late. She and Harold hadn’t passed anyone on this isolated road. The grim truth was that if Kinvarra didn’t help, they were stranded until morning. And while she was dressed in good thick wool, she wasn’t prepared to endure a snowy night in the open. The chill of the road seeped through her fur-lined boots and she shifted, trying to revive feeling in her frozen feet.
“My Lord . . .” During the year they’d lived together, she’d called him Sebastian. During their few meetings since, she’d clung to formality as a barrier. “My Lord, there’s no point in quarrelling. Basic charity compels your assistance. I would consider myself in your debt if you fetch aid as quickly as possible.”
He arched one black eyebrow in a superior fashion that made her want to clout him. Not a new sensation. “Now that’s something I’d like to see,” he said.
“What?”
“Gratitude.”
He knew he had her at a disadvantage and he wasn’t likely to rise above that fact. She gritted her teeth. “It’s all I can offer.”
The smile that curved his lips was pure devilry. Another shiver ran through her. Like the last one, it was a shiver with no connection to the cold. “Your imagination fails you, my dear countess.”
Her throat closed with nerves – and that reluctant physical awareness she couldn’t ignore. He hadn’t shifted, yet suddenly she felt physically threatened. Which was ridiculous. During all their years apart, he’d given no indication he wanted anything from her except her absence. One chance meeting wasn’t likely to turn him into a medieval robber baron who spirited her away to his lonely tower.
Nonetheless, she had to resist stepping back. She knew from bitter experience that her only chance of handling him was to feign control. “
What do you want?”
This time he did step closer, so his great height overshadowed her. Close enough for her to think that if she stretched out her hand, she’d touch that powerful chest, those wide shoulders. “I want . . .”
There was a piercing whinny and a sudden pounding of hooves on the snow. Appalled, disbelieving, Alicia turned to see Harold galloping away on one of the carriage horses.
“Harold?”
Her voice faded to nothing in the night. He didn’t slow his wild careening departure. She’d been so engrossed in her battle with Kinvarra, she hadn’t even noticed that Harold had caught one of the stray horses.
Kinvarra’s low laugh was scornful. “Oh, my dear. Commiserations. Your swain proves a sad disappointment. I wonder if he’s fleeing my temper or yours. You really have no luck in love, have you?”
She was too astonished to be upset at Harold’s departure. Instead she focused on Kinvarra. Her voice was hard. “No luck in husbands, at any rate.”
Kinvarra suffered Alicia’s hate-filled regard and wondered what the hell he was going to do with his troublesome wife in this wilderness. The insolent baggage deserved to be left where she stood, but even he, who owed her repayment for numerous slights over the years, wouldn’t do that to her.
It seemed he had no choice but to help.
Not that she’d thank him. He had no illusions that once she’d got what she wanted – a warm bed, a roof over her head and a decent meal – she’d forget any promises of gratitude.
In spite of the punishing cold, heat flooded him as he briefly let himself imagine Alicia’s gratitude. She’d shed that heavy red cloak. She’d let down that mass of gold hair until it tumbled around her shoulders. Then she’d kiss him as if she didn’t hate him and she’d . . .
From long habit, he stopped himself. Such fantasies had sustained him the first year of their separation, but he’d learned for sanity’s sake to control them since. Now they only troubled him after his rare meetings with his wife.
This was the longest time he and Alicia had spent together in years. It should remind him why he avoided her company. Instead, it reminded him that she was the only woman who had ever challenged him, the only woman who had ever matched him in strength, the only woman he’d never been able to forget, desperately as he’d tried.
He smiled into her sulky, beautiful face. “It seems you’re stuck with me.”
How that must smart. The long ride to his Yorkshire manor on this cold night suddenly offered a myriad of pleasures, not least of which was a chance to knock a few chips off his wife’s pride.
She didn’t respond to his comment. Instead, with an unreadable expression, she stared after her absconding lover. “We’re only about five miles from Harold’s hunting lodge.”
The wench didn’t even try to lie about the assignation, blast her. “If he manages to stay on that horse, Horace should make it.” Fenton showed no great skill as a bareback rider. Kinvarra recognized the wish as unworthy, but he hoped the blackguard ended up on his rump in a hedgerow.
“Harold,” she said absently, drawing her cloak tight around her slender throat. “You could take me there.”
This time his laughter was unconstrained. She’d always had nerve, his wife, even when she’d been little more than a girl. “Be damned if you think I’m carting you off to cuckold me in comfort, madam.”
She sent him a cool look. “I’m thinking purely in terms of shelter, My Lord.”
“I’m sure,” he said cynically.
In spite of their lack of communication in recent years, he’d always known what she was up to. Since leaving him, she’d been remarkably chaste, which was one of the reasons he’d allowed the ridiculous separation to continue. Clearly living with him for a year had left her with no taste for bed sport.
Recent gossip had mentioned Lord Harold Fenton as a persistent suitor, but Kinvarra thought he knew her well enough to consider the second son of the Marquess of Preston poor competition. He should have listened.
Her taste had deteriorated in the last ten years. The man was a complete nonentity.
Perhaps one day she’d thank her husband for saving her from a disastrous mistake.
And the bleak and stony moor around them might suddenly sprout coconut palms.
“No, my love, your fate is sealed.” He slapped his riding crop against his boot and tilted his hat more securely on his head with an arrogant gesture designed to irritate her. “Horatio travels north. I travel south. Unless you intend to mount the other carriage horse or pursue the clodpole on foot, your direction is mine.”
“Does that mean you will help me?” This time, she didn’t bother correcting his deliberate misremembering of her lover’s name. She was lucky he didn’t call the blackguard Habakkuk and skewer his kidneys with a rapier. Alicia was his. No other damned rapscallion was going to steal her away. Especially a rapscallion who didn’t have the spine to stand up and fight for her.
Kinvarra strode across to his mare and snatched up the reins. “If you ask nicely.”
To his surprise, Alicia laughed. “Devil take you, Kinvarra.”
He swung into the saddle and urged the horse nearer to his wife. “Indubitably, my dear.”
Her cavalier attitude made it easier to deal with her, but it puzzled him. Her lover’s desertion hadn’t cast her down. If she didn’t care for the man, why choose him? Yet again, he realized how far he remained from understanding the complicated creature he’d wed with such high hopes eleven years ago.
He extended one black-gloved hand and noted her hesitation before she accepted his assistance. It was the first time he’d touched her since she’d left him and even through two layers of leather, he felt the shock of contact. She stiffened as though she too felt that sudden surge of attraction.
He’d always wanted her. That was part of the problem, God help them. He’d often asked himself if time would erode the attraction.
Just one touch of her hand and he received his unequivocal answer.
She swung on to the horse behind him and paused before she looped her arms around his waist. He’d always been cursed aware of her reactions and he couldn’t help but note her reluctance to touch him.
Good God, what was wrong with the woman? She’d been ready enough to do more than just touch that milksop Harold. Surely her husband deserved some warmth after offering assistance. With damned little encouragement too, he might add.
The mare curvetted under the double weight, but Kinvarra settled her with a word. He never had trouble with horses. It was his wife he couldn’t control.
“What about my belongings?” she asked, calm as you please. The lady should demonstrate proper shame at being caught with a lover. But, of course, that wasn’t Alicia. She held her head high whatever destiny threw at her.
It was one of the things he loved about her.
He quashed the unwelcome insight. “There’s an inn a few miles ahead. I’ll get them to send someone for any baggage.”
He clicked his tongue to the horse and cantered in the opposite direction to the one Harold had taken. Which was lucky for the weasel. If Kinvarra caught up with Harold now, he’d be inclined to drag out his horsewhip. What right had he to interfere with other men’s wives then scuttle away to leave them stranded?
Alicia settled herself more comfortably, pressing her lovely, lush body into his back. She hadn’t been as close to him in years. He was scoundrel enough to enjoy the contact, however reluctantly she granted it.
Maybe after all, he should be grateful to old Harold. He might even send the bastard a case of port and a thank you note.
Well, that might be going too far.
“Is that where we’re going?” She tightened her arms. He wished it was because she wanted to touch him and not just because she sought a firmer seat. He also wished that when she said “we”, his belly didn’t cramp with longing for the word to be true.
Damn Alicia. She’d always held magic for him and she always would. Ten long years witho
ut her had taught him that grim lesson.
The reminder of the dance she’d led him made him respond in a clipped tone. “No, we’re headed for Heseltine Hall near Whitby.”
“But you can leave me at the inn, can’t you?”
“It’s a poor place. I couldn’t abandon a woman there without protection.” He tried, he really did, to keep the satisfaction from his voice, but he must have failed. He felt her tense against his back, although she couldn’t pull too far away without risking a fall.
“But who’s going to protect me from you?” she muttered, almost as if to herself.
“I mean you no harm.” In all their difficult interactions, he’d never wished her anything but well. “You didn’t come all the way from London in that spindly carriage, did you?”
“It’s inappropriate to discuss the details of my arrangement with Lord Harold,” she said coldly.
He laughed again. “Humour me.”
She sighed. “We travelled up separately to York.” Her voice softened into sincerity and he tried not to respond to the husky sweetness. “I truly didn’t set out to cause a scandal. You and I parted in rancour, but I have no wish to do you or your pride damage.”
“Whatever your discretion, you still meant to give yourself to that puppy,” Kinvarra said, all amusement suddenly fled.
Alicia didn’t answer.
The weather had worsened by the time they reached the inn. Alicia realized as they came up to the building that it was indeed the rough place Kinvarra had described. But just the promise of shelter and a chance to rest her tired, sore body was welcome. Surely Kinvarra couldn’t intend to ride on to his mysterious manor tonight when snow fell thicker with every minute and their horse was blowing with exhaustion.
The earl dismounted and lifted her from the saddle. The flickering torches that lit the inn yard revealed that he looked tired and strangely, for a man who always seemed so indomitable, unhappy.
As he set her upon the ground, his hands didn’t linger at her waist. She tried not to note that she’d touched Kinvarra more in the last few hours than she had in the entire preceding ten years.
