Kathryn Smith (10 page)

And if so, why did he have to be so dangerously attractive? Why did the setting sun have to turn his skin a delicious rosy gold? Why were his eyes so very dark and attentive? If he was her nemesis, why did his smile make her heart jump as it did? And why couldn’t she stop remembering the feel of his hands on her leg—and stop imagining those long, supple fingers elsewhere on her body?

“How is your leg today, Lady Blythe?” he asked softly once the attention and conversation of the tables had turned elsewhere.

Blythe almost choked. Had he read her mind?

She managed a smile as a blush crept up her cheeks. A gentleman would have used “limb” or perhaps the more suitably ambiguous “injury” rather than being so scandalous as to call a leg a leg. But Devlin wasn’t like most gentlemen, a trait Blythe liked better and better as she came to know him.

“It is still sore, Mr. Ryland, but well on the mend thanks to your doctoring.”

They were, of course, seated at the same table, side by side, nothing between them but a few dishes and a bright white
tablecloth. It seemed that Miles or Varya put them together whenever they could. Their efforts at matchmaking did not escape Blythe’s notice. She hoped they escaped Devlin’s.

Oh Lord, had Miles helped him buy Rosewood thinking it would make him more attractive to her? No. Even Miles wouldn’t be that controlling. Or stupid. Would he?

He would. But it was difficult to be angry at him when Devlin’s leg brushed her uninjured one beneath the table. Would anyone notice if she dropped her hand to his thigh? Would it be as hard and unyielding as his shoulder had been the night they’d danced? Or would the muscle give ever so slightly beneath her fingers? And what would his reaction be to her brazen touch?

Oh dear. Swallowing hard, she shoved such thoughts aside and turned her mind back to the topic of their previous conversation—Rosewood. She was just going to be honest with him. Surely they could come to some sort of agreement.

Such as that he would agree not to buy the house so she could have it.

“Mr. Ryland, I—”

“Will you be looking for a wife now that you have found a home, Mr. Ryland?” It was Lady Chillinghearst, a commanding viscountess with three daughters of marrying age.

“I hadn’t given it much thought,” Devlin replied, slicing into the pear on his plate with slow, deliberate strokes. “Perhaps.”

Perhaps?
Perhaps
? What did that mean? Either he was going to look for a wife or he wasn’t. There was no perhaps about it. Was there?

Unless he already had someone in mind but wasn’t certain if the lady returned his feelings. What woman wouldn’t? Honestly. He might not be classically handsome, nor was he fabulously wealthy, but he was an attractive man with an ample fortune. And he was good. Blythe didn’t pretend to know many things for certain, but one thing she knew without a
doubt was that there were very few men in the world as decent, giving, and good as Devlin Ryland.

A woman could do far worse. She glanced at Carny. He was watching her. Plastering a false smile on her face, Blythe waved.

“Do you still love him?” whispered a voice beside her ear, so low, so soft that at first she thought she’d imagined it—until she felt a warm brush of breath against her neck.

Heartbeat accelerating, Blythe slowly turned to her right. A faint scratch of stubble stopped her from going any further. She should turn back around and ignore it. It was the height of impropriety for him to be this close. Why, she could smell him, feel the warm spiciness of his skin near hers.

She liked it.

This would be one aspect of marriage she would find appealing. Intimacy, sexual or not, was something lacking in her life. And while she might not want a man telling her what to do, she would be lying if she didn’t admit to having an abundance of curiosity about the pleasure a man and woman could share. But was it enough to risk her freedom? Was it enough to take that gamble on ending up happy like either Miles and Varya or Carny and Teresa?

He drew back so that they were eye to eye, but there was still way too little distance between them. His gaze was dark, framed by those insanely lush lashes. He searched her face, then her eyes for an answer to his question. Try as she might, she couldn’t look away. He held her captive just as surely as if his hands had seized her.

“I beg your pardon?” Her voice was hoarse.

His gaze never wavered. Had he no concept of impertinence? “Do you still love him?”

“Who?”

“Carny.”

“That is none of your business.”

His lips curved in a half smile. “That’s not a yes or no.”

It was as good as he was going to get right now! Why should he care how she felt about Carny? Unless…unless she wasn’t alone in this strange pull she felt toward him. She had felt a strong sense of possessiveness when Lady Chill-inghearst asked about his marriage plans. Did he feel the same when Carny looked at her?

“Do you have a fiancée waiting for you at home?”

Both of his brows lifted. “No. No, I do not.”

“Someone hoping to be your fiancée, perhaps?” She’d be lying if she didn’t confess to at least part of her wanting him to say yes so she could set aside this dangerous infatuation.

Now he frowned. “No one hoping or willing to be my anything anywhere that I know of.”

So then he couldn’t tell that she wanted to touch his cheek where the high ridge of bone stood out in sharp relief beneath his skin. He didn’t know that she was tempted to lean ever so much closer so that the smell of him could invade her senses, and press her lips to his. Her gaze dropped to his mouth. Yes, she wanted to kiss him, taste him, press her body full against his and marvel in the length of his limbs, to know what it was like to be engulfed by a man.

At the moment, it made marriage seem almost appealing, but her happiness did not hang on her body’s urges. She’d work around the demands of her body—or she’d ignore them. One thing was for certain, she wasn’t going to marry just because a man made her itch in places she alone couldn’t scratch.

Not that Devlin Ryland had asked to marry her. For all she knew, the thought hadn’t even crossed his mind.

Her gaze came back up to his. His eyes had darkened and yet somehow seemed brighter, as though lit by an inner flame.

He knew. Somehow he had sensed the direction of her thoughts. And now his thoughts were in the same place.
What did he want to do to her? She shivered just thinking of the possibilities.

“No,” she whispered, unable to tear her gaze away from his. “I do not love him anymore.”

His mouth opened—

“Are you joining us in the drawing room, Blythe?” It was Varya. Dear, sweet, savior Varya.

God only knew what he might have said if not for this timely interruption. God only knew what Blythe might have agreed to in return. It was becoming more and more difficult to think straight when she was around Devlin. Already she felt as though she had known him a lifetime. Somehow she knew—or thought she knew—that he would never hurt her. But she had thought that about Carny as well. Would Devlin prove true, or would her poor judgment steer her wrong yet again?

“Yes,” she replied, pushing back her chair. “I am coming.”

Devlin handed her the cane she’d been using as she stood. Their gazes locked for a second of eternity as she took it from his hand.

“Thank you, Mr. Ryland.” For those short minutes he had given her the knowledge of what it was like to be a woman desired by a man. It shook her right down to her toes.

He smiled, his eyes still dark with emotions better left unexplored. “My pleasure.”

And Blythe knew that he was very much aware of what she was thanking him for. She also knew that he wasn’t done with her yet.

Much later that evening, when the entire house was quiet and most of the guests asleep, Blythe lay awake in her bed, staring at the ceiling, murky blue in the bright darkness. Thoughts of Devlin and Rosewood kept sleep firmly at bay.

She had to tell him about her own feelings for Rosewood. Had to tell him how much the house meant to her, what it meant for her independence and her future. Surely once he knew that he would decide against buying it for himself. Surely she hadn’t misread him that much.

She had to talk to him when there was no one else around to hear. She couldn’t risk Miles finding out and trying to thwart her again—if he had truly done so to begin with. She would have to do it soon, not just because the clock was ticking on her, but because it was driving her mad.

She could go now. It was so late no one would see her, and if someone did, chances were he was doing something he wouldn’t want anyone else to know about either. It would be dreadfully scandalous if she were caught, but she could always lie and say she heard a strange noise and wanted to make certain everything was all right. Once she had wished for someone to come along to make her want to behave in a scandalous manner. She would have to be more careful with her wishes in the future.

If she went to him now, when he was sure to be sleeping, perhaps she could talk him into letting her have Rosewood. She’d seen Varya use the same ploy on Miles from time to time when her brother was being particularly hard-headed about something. Dull-witted with sleep, Miles readily gave in to his wife’s wishes. He hadn’t seemed to mind the deception once he awoke either. Surely if it worked on one man, it could work on another?

With a sigh, she threw back the blankets and swung herself into a sitting position on the edge of the bed. Going to his room was the only thing that would give her any peace this night.

Maybe once she had seen to Devlin, she would finally be able to sleep.

Devlin jerked awake with a strangled cry.

Heart thumping wildly against his ribs, he sat in a puddle of moonlight, the sheets tangled around his legs and hips. Perspiration covered his body with cool stickiness.

Slowly, he raised his shaking hands to the light. They were eerily blue—not red—in the silver beams. Not a trace of blood to be seen.

It was all a dream.

This time.

He lay back against the mattress, grimacing at the dampness beneath him. As usual the dream had him sweating like a block of ice in the desert.

It had been different this time. This time it had been his own face staring back at him. He realized it as he drove the knife home, when the pain and realization of death dawned in the eyes of the man before him. He’d watched in horror as his own mouth dropped open, his own eyes widened. He’d let go of the knife then, staggering backward in horror at what he had done. Then he’d just stood there, unable to move, unable to speak. He couldn’t help himself, and he couldn’t run for help. He stood, rooted to the ground by some invisible force, and watched himself crumple to the ground, blood leaking from his gut around the bone handle of the blade.

He hadn’t been able to look away either. Just as he hadn’t been able to look away that day. And just as on that day he could feel the blood soaking through his shirt, mixing with his own from the wound in his side, could feel it drying on his hands as it cooled. It had been so warm, almost silky as it ran out of the other soldier. Then it became sticky and nearly impossible to wipe off.

Some of it had come off on Carny as Devlin carried him to the surgeon—Wellington’s own, of course. Nothing but the best for a peer of the realm. By the time Devlin placed Carny
on the cot, he no longer knew what blood was his, he was covered in so much of it. He stopped long enough to allow the surgeon to clean and stitch his own wound and then went back out to continue fighting.

He didn’t remember much about the rest of the day, only that his gun shoulder ached at the end of it and that England had won. Looking out over that field and seeing the sea of bodies lying there, he hadn’t felt it was much of a victory.

Flinging back the covers, Devlin threw his legs over the side of the bed and stood. Nude, he crossed the carpet to the washstand and lifted the pitcher to his mouth. The water wasn’t cold, wasn’t even cool, but it was wet and that was all that mattered. A part of him longed for something stronger, something that would give him sleep without dreams, but he refused to give in to it. He did not want to end up like his father and Brahm, spending most of his days in a stupor, losing what was left of his dignity.

He didn’t crawl back into bed. There would be no more sleep for him until the sun rose. Daylight always chased the night demons away. Until then he would read or clean the Baker.

He chose the Baker. Sometimes just sitting with it in his hands, polishing the butt, made things seem clearer. He wasn’t certain what kind of person that made him. He wasn’t certain he wanted to know.

After pulling on a pair of trousers, he took the rifle from its case and sat down with it near the window. As he polished the gleaming wood and metal he turned his thoughts to the one person who seemed to occupy them lately—Blythe.

She hadn’t seemed very pleased that he would soon become a neighbor. Or rather, she hadn’t seemed as pleased as he would have liked. Of course it would be unseemly of her to express such feelings in front of all the other guests, but she had never struck him as a stickler for propriety before.

Perhaps this attraction he felt between them was strictly one-sided. Perhaps that look she gave him as he bared her leg hadn’t been one of curious desire. Perhaps he had frightened her with his crude handling of her. Perhaps his hands on her flesh hadn’t sent the same lightning bolt of awareness through her that it had through him. Perhaps she wasn’t the woman who was going to teach him what it was to love and be loved.

And yet…he wanted her to be.

He wanted
her,
every delicious, long, round inch of her.

But what about the desire he had seen in her expression earlier that evening during dessert? Surely he hadn’t imagined that? The widening of her clear eyes, the soft parting of her full lips. That she hadn’t much experience with men was evident in the hesitancy of her movements, the innocent way she unknowingly set him aflame by staring at his mouth, the direction of her thoughts acutely obvious. He wanted to be the man who gave her her first taste of pleasure. He wanted to be the
only
man to know what it was like to feel those long, strong legs wrapped around him. He wanted her strength and her innocence. Wanted to bury himself inside her and let her fill him with her light.