She did her best to provide the right foil for Charles’s machinations; it didn’t truly matter which of them Nicholas decided to trust. If he ever did; despite Charles’s best efforts-not overtly intimidating but in a vein any scion of Eton or Harrow would instantly recognize and correctly interpret, such as a largely one-sided discussion of the type of secrets that Gimby might have assisted in ferrying across the Channel-Nicholas remained tight-lipped.
Indeed, his resistance seemed to have hardened. The antipathy between the two that Charles had originally remarked seemed to be resurfacing.
When, hours later, she went into the front hall to farewell Charles, much to Nicholas’s transparent relief, she murmured, “He’s more…dogged, don’t you think?”
Charles nodded, the line of his lips tending grim. “We’re going backward with him. He’s come out of his funk and realized we have no evidence whatever. If he just sits tight, he’ll escape any net.”
“I wonder,” she said, walking toward the front door left open to the pleasant night, “if something in those papers he received might account for his change of heart. Perhaps we could look at them later?”
“He’s keeping them in his room, but there’s nothing there other than what he suggested-memos he needs to approve.”
When she turned to stare at him, he smiled. “Norris has missed his calling. He looked, and remembered enough for me to be sure.”
She sighed. “In that case…” Raising her head, she met his eyes and gave him her hand. “I’ll bid you…au revoir.”
His smile deepened. “Indeed.” Lifting her hand, he pressed a kiss to her fingertips, paused, his gaze on hers, then turned her hand and pressed a much more intimate kiss-one she felt to her marrow-to her palm, then gracefully bowed, released her, and went out and down the steps.
Leaning against the doorframe, a smile curving her lips, she listened to the scrunch of his boots as he headed around the house toward the stables. Outside, the night was peaceful, serene but dark; the moon had yet to rise. She drank in the silence, let the aura of home wrap her about. And thought of how long it would take Charles to circle the house and slip upstairs.
Her smile deepening, she straightened and turned inside. As she crossed the front hall, Nicholas came out of the drawing room. He halted; a faint frown shadowed his face.
Drawing near, she raised her brows in easy query.
“How does Lostwithiel come and go? I haven’t heard wheels on the gravel when he leaves.”
She smiled in understanding. “He’s most at home in a saddle. Knowing him, he rides over the fields-he never was one to stick to any straight and narrow.”
“Indeed?”
Faintly disconcerted, as she’d intended, Nicholas nodded a good night and headed for the library. According to Norris, he’d lost all interest in the local area and was now leafing through her father’s books on pillboxes.
Inwardly frowning, she climbed the stairs.
Ellie was waiting. Penny thought about dismissing her, but decided to stick with her usual routine.
Eventually, Ellie left. Rising from her dressing stool, Penny snuffed the candles, then went to the window and opened the curtains. The moon was just rising over the escarpment, sending fingers of silvery light into the room. She remained at the window, looking out as the light strengthened and the familiar landscape was reborn, transfigured by the play of moonlight and shadow.
A minute later, Charles materialized from the shadows behind her. She hadn’t heard him enter, but knew he was there before he stepped near.
Reaching past her, he unlatched the window and pushed it open. In the same movement, he stepped close, one large hand sliding across her waist to ease her back against him.
Smiling, she relaxed and crossed her arms over his hand, holding him to her; leaning back into the haven of his strength, she rubbed her temple against his jaw. “Nicholas asked how you traveled back and forth from the Abbey. He noticed the lack of carriage wheels on the drive.”
“What did you say?”
“I intimated that, unconventional as you were, you probably rode.”
There was a moment’s silence. “Unconventional?”
“Hmm.”
She could almost hear his mind working.
“You don’t like conventional.” Statement, not question.
“Conventional is well enough in its place, but there’s a time and place for everything, including the other.” She turned in his arms, looked into his face. “And the other is certainly more…challenging.”
His smile would have beguiled an angel. “And,” he said, bending his head, “you like to be challenged.”
“I do,” she whispered, and kissed him.
She’d learned long ago the art of dealing with him, treating with him. It was imperative to stop him from grabbing the bit of their interaction and running with it, leaving her forever trying to catch up. Instead, as before, she boldly seized the reins.
Opened her mouth to him, lured him in, sank into his arms, pressed herself to him, drew him deep, then turned the kiss on him. Let her fire rise and pour through her into him; let her desire-the desire he’d shown her she had-freely rise and take her, and claim him.
She dropped all pretense; she knew what she wanted of him-she let it show. Knew that would provoke him as nothing else could.
Winding her arms about his neck, she held him to the kiss. Pressing into him, she swayed, flagrantly caressing his already rigid erection, deliberately taunting its hardness with the giving tautness of her belly, sliding her thighs against his, sinuously shifting her peaked breasts against his chest.
He stilled, then surrendered, yet even as he gave way, as he let her will dominate and ceded control to her, she knew she hadn’t, this time, succeeded in stunning him long enough to seize it; he’d been waiting, ready for her, but had made a deliberate decision to let her lead. To allow her to script their play.
That willing subservience was such an un-Charles-like act, at least of the Charles she’d known; with an effort she broke from the kiss that had progressed to beyond voracious, that had already reduced them both to gasps, to, from a distance of an inch, try to read his eyes, his face.
Her wits were her own, but they weren’t functioning logically, all but overwhelmed by her senses. Her gaze steadied on his dark eyes, then lowered to his lips. Hers throbbed. “Why?”
She was sure he’d understand, was sure he did, yet he didn’t immediately answer.
He hesitated long enough to make her wonder what he was hiding.
She raised her eyes to his.
He held her gaze, thinking for a moment longer, then replied, his voice so low she wasn’t sure she heard so much as felt his words.
“Whatever you wish, however you wish. I’m yours. Take me.”
Love me. Charles bit back the words-not yet, not now. He might be caught, but he wasn’t sure she was. Experience had taught him not to imagine he could read women’s minds; heaven knew they were infinitely more complicated than men’s.
Her eyes searched his, verifying his meaning, then a slow, sultry smile-one he’d only seen in recent days-curved her lips.
“However I wish…” she murmured, and stretched up and kissed him.
CHAPTER 14
INWARDLY SMILING, CHARLES GRIPPED HER WAIST; FOR LONG moments, as her tongue dueled with his, he simply savored the feel of her between his hands, supple, imbued with feminine strength, subtly rather than overtly curvaceous.
Why that last should so attract him he’d never understood; perhaps it was because her body with its svelte charms echoed her elusive and therefore more tantalizing feminine responses.
If she liked challenges, he liked them even more. Especially when they were feminine. Especially when the female was her.
Letting her have her way wasn’t easy; his instinct in this arena was always to control, for his partner’s pleasure as much as his own. But pleasure was not the only currency he-they-were dealing in; if he wanted that other coin in the mix, he had to give ground, yield as she wished, and accept the risk that whatever was revealed wasn’t too frightening. Either for her, or him.