He shook his head. “Two days at most to bring it down. We’ll run ropes around the beams above and the joists below. Two teams of draft horses will pull on the ropes in opposite directions, and it will all fall in upon itself.” He looked at the structure around them with a touch of pride, his stance wide and his hands on his hips. Every inch of him proclaimed a lord surveying his keep. “Then we’ll cart away the rubble and rebuild the wing on the same plan as before, but better.” His eyes found hers, and the earnestness in their depths made her breath hitch. “And stay true to the history of the manor house, just as you want.”
Her chest warmed, but she was too proud to admit how much she appreciated his thoughtfulness. “Ropes and four horses?” She shook her head. “Impossible.”
“This wing wasn’t part of the original house. It was added later and not integrally attached to the main. Now it’s separating.” He slapped one of the nearby beams. “We’ll help it down and make certain no one gets hurt when we do.” He pointed at the row of wooden arches in what was once the attic. “Do you see that odd-shaped wooden beam connecting the top of each arch? Functions as a capstone. We take that beam down at the same time we pull out the side timbers on the ground floor, and we’ll bring it all down, folding in upon itself.”
She eyed him warily. She wanted to believe, and yet . . . “You won’t hurt the rest of the house?”
“Not beyond a layer of dust and a bit of a rumble.” He grinned. “But we’ll clear everyone out first, just in case.”
“Just in case,” she repeated dubiously, gazing up at the beams overhead. She tried to see what he did, but all she saw was a jumble of old timbers and boards. “How do you know it will work?”
“The army. I was assigned to protect the engineers responsible for building bridges, roads, tunnels . . . whatever the army needed to march into France. Those same men were also responsible for blowing up and knocking down the enemy’s structures. I learned a few things about loads, stresses, and counter-stresses while watching them.” He looked up thoughtfully at the beams arching overhead. “Of course, I was responsible for keeping the engineers alive, not becoming one of them.”
“It seems you did anyway,” she acknowledged quietly, remembering what he told her that day in Davidson’s office, how he’d planted and set off the explosives that destroyed the French bridge and won the battle. When his gaze flickered proudly, she cleared her throat and retreated onto safer ground with him—anger. “A bit presumptuous of you to make changes without consulting me.”
“Well, I do own half the house.”
“Yes,” she agreed, “the half you’re currently knocking down.”
A grin tugged at his lips. “You can have the west wing, if you want.”
“What I want is the guest list for my wedding.” She narrowed her eyes on him. “I’d planned to work on the arrangements this afternoon.”
Which had become a bothersome headache since her mother had taken it upon herself to move the ceremony from Edinburgh to the village church in Kincardine without asking her first. Mama had sent out a flurry of notes to all the guests to inform them that the wedding would now be held in the same church where the Rowlands had been married for generations, with the breakfast hosted at Highburn. Arabel had been struck too hard by the pride her mother felt over how the new plans would incorporate all the old traditions to overrule her. Now she had to somehow find accommodations in Kincardine for all the guests.
And Garrick wasn’t helping.
“Imagine my surprise to find the list missing.” She crossed her arms over her chest. “Another attempt to drive me away?”
He laughed at that, which only irritated her more. “If knocking down half the house doesn’t drive you way, a missing list certainly won’t.” When she opened her mouth to give him the set-down he deserved, he interjected, “Where was it?”
“On the drawing room tea table. I put them there last night when—”
He held up his hand and stopped her midsentence, then took a pace to the right where several sheets of paper lay across the floor. He sorted through them. With a grin that Arabel thought was more smug than triumphant, he held up the list. “Must have gotten mixed in with the architectural plans this morning when I met in there with the men.”
She snatched the list from his hand. “How convenient,” she muttered.
“An accident, Arabel. Why do you assume more?”
“From the man who swore revenge against my family?” she countered wryly, keeping her voice low so that the workmen couldn’t overhear as they continued to tear down the walls. “I cannot fathom why I wouldn’t trust you.”
The amusement faded from his face. “You can trust me. That hasn’t changed.”
Her breath hitched at the sudden tension flaring between them. “Then leave Highburn,” she whispered, “and let me have it.”
“No,” he replied in a masculine purr that trickled through her and left a blaze of heat in its wake. “I have plans that require me to be right here.”
She arched a suspicious brow. “Only two days, you said.”
“To bring down the wing,” he clarified, his eyes not leaving her. “My most important plans require much longer than that.”
Her belly tightened. Did he mean that he was staying in the highlands?
Oh, he wouldn’t do that! His life was in England now. He had no reason to linger here . . . although a foolish part of her wished he would.
His eyes flickered with an emotion she couldn’t decipher. “Don’t you want to know what those plans are?”
“No.” Because whatever they were, she was certain they would only cause her trouble.
The flicker turned into a sparkling gleam, as if he were debating telling her anyway. Instead, he turned sideways, his shoulder close enough to hers that she could feel the heat of his body, and murmured, “Lady Rowland said you’d moved the wedding to Kincardine.”
“Yes.” Was he expecting an invitation? The very last person she wanted at her wedding . . . when once he was the only man she’d wanted to marry. The only man, even now, that she ever truly wanted. “Mama decided that the wedding should be here, for tradition’s sake.” When she sensed him tense, knowing full well what he thought of her bowing to her family’s wishes, she added quickly, “Truly, it was the only way to keep both the wedding date and my residency here.”
“And the only way to mollify Murray.”
Her back stiffened. Garrick was sticking his nose where it didn’t belong. “What’s wrong with being considerate of my future husband?”
“Considerate?” A low laugh rumbled from him. “Of all the things I want in a bride, being considerate isn’t one of them.”
She swallowed hard at that innuendo. “Ewan isn’t you.”
“Most definitely not.” He kept his eyes straight ahead, pretending to focus his attention on the workmen. “I would never have left you alone in a house with another man.”
She ignored the pulse of heat low in her belly. “We’re not alone. We’re with Aunt Matilda and all the servants.”
“But I was once your lover,” he provoked in a low voice, this time wickedly sending the throbbing heat lower.
Their conversation was wholly inappropriate. Yet speaking intimately like this, while the men carried on their work only a few feet away, sent her heart racing with a wanton deliciousness she couldn’t make stop.
Garrick pressed, “He doesn’t know that, does he?”
“He knows I’m not innocent,” she dodged. “And he doesn’t care.”
“Then he’s either a liar or a fool, because it would drive me mad to know that some other man had possessed your body, your passion . . . the most secret parts of you,” he confessed quietly, although Arabel heard a hard edge to his voice. Was that jealousy? “Has Murray made love to you yet?”
She caught her breath at the boldness of his question. And at the realization that he truly was jealous. Now her heart raced for an entirely different reason.
Un
able to find her voice, she whispered, “Of course not.” Only you . . . There’s only ever been you.
“Then he’s a fool.”
The insult rankled, because she’d been the one who had refused intimacies. Not Ewan. “Garrick—”
“If you were mine, Arabel, I sure as hell wouldn’t be in Edinburgh.” He didn’t dare to look at her, his gaze fixed on the workmen. “I’d be right here, making love to you as often as you’d permit me. Worshiping your body the way you deserve to be worshipped . . . with soft poetry, those bold caresses you crave, and lingering kisses over every inch of you.” Then he slid a sideways glance at her, catching her stunned gaze and holding it for only a heartbeat before looking away. “Every inch of you.”
Her body flashed hot at that wicked image, and she trembled.
“You’re the most alluring woman I’ve ever known. Your spirit, your laugh, the way your hair shines in the sun like flames, the scent of heather that surrounds you like a cloud . . . A man who didn’t want you would be a fool.” He nonchalantly brushed at a speck of plaster dust on his shirtsleeve. Anyone watching them would never have suspected the scandalous conversation they were having, or how he crossed the line when he murmured, “And I’m no fool.”
With a soft gasp, she parted her lips, stunned and confused. In moments like this, she could almost imagine that the last ten years hadn’t passed, that they had the rest of their lives stretching out before them, together. Hearing his sultry voice purr in her ear like this felt like . . .
Home.
But she wasn’t enough of a goose to believe that he felt the same confusion, that the same lingering desire that gripped her also flamed inside him. Not the man who had decided that he needed to leave the highlands in order to be as far away from her as possible. Not the man who had only returned to seek revenge.
“You don’t mean that,” she accused. She clenched her hands into fists as her chest rose and fell with tumultuous breaths. “You’re only saying that to make me leave.”
“Did you ever stop to think, Arabel, that you leaving is the last thing I want?” He shifted closer, barely perceptible, but enough that his fingers grazed against hers as her hand hung at her side.
“No.” She jerked her hand away as if he’d burned her, and she tangled her fingers in her skirt to make the ache go away. “You want Highburn all for yourself, and you won’t let anything stop you from getting your revenge.”
“Yes.”
She flinched at the single word, spoken with such resolve that it pierced her. “Why?”
“Why do you insist on letting your family control you?” he challenged.
Her head swam at the sudden turn of conversation. “They don’t.”
“You’ve once again become engaged to a man your family chose for you, rather than the man you want for yourself.”
His words slammed through her, setting a riot of emotions churning inside her. “That’s not true.”
“Then prove it.”
“I don’t have to prove—”
“Come to my room tonight.”
Her mouth fell open, and she stared at him wide-eyed. For several painful heartbeats, she couldn’t find the words—“You’re mad!”
“Mad for you, Arabel. Always have been.” He lowered his voice to a sultry drawl that soaked through her like liquid fire. “Come to my room, and you can prove that you’re not under your family’s control. That you are living your life as you want to live it.”
She clutched the list of names to her chest as if it were a shield. While every beat of her heart left her even more flustered and breathless than before, Garrick stood there perfectly calm and collected, as if he’d been suggesting nothing more wanton than having tea. Only the fiery gleam in his eyes gave him away.
He lowered his mouth as close to her ear as he dared. “And I can prove how much I still want you.”
A hot shiver raced through her. The rest of the world fell away around her until she hung suspended in space, and only the gleaming light in his green eyes anchored her in place.
He waited for her answer, as if he were the devil himself tempting her with all her wildest wishes come true. All she had to do was whisper . . . Yes.
But at what cost to her soul?
“No,” she breathed, barely any sound trickling from her lips.
She spun on her heel and hurried toward the stairs before he could stop her by saying something else darkly wicked and wholly enticing. But the words he’d already spoken swirled inside her like a whirlwind, and all of her pulsed hot and aching with the wanton images he’d given her. Images she knew she should force from her mind, yet longed to make real.
The temptation he dangled in front of her shook her to her core. Ten years couldn’t dull the memories of how wonderful it had been to be in his arms, to experience the tender passion he’d given her and the joy that had filled her.
A night with him would be exquisite, but would the morning after be unbearable?
When she reached the door, she paused to throw him a determined stare. “You cannot torment me into leaving, Townsend,” she called out boldly, purposefully using his title to goad him and not caring if the workmen heard. Resolve flared through her, just as intense as the heat he stirred inside her. “I am not going anywhere!”
His gaze turned predatory, a dark smile pulling at his lips. “Good.”
Day Fifteen
Midnight
Stifling a groan of frustration, Arabel rested her forehead against her bedroom door.
Come to my room . . .
The heated promise of that soft order still beat inside her, stirring the embers of desire that burned in her belly. That burning had simmered there for ten years, occasionally flaring when an unbidden dream brought him back to her . . . only to wake in the morning to find him once more gone and to sob into her pillow until the longing and loneliness eased away.
Now, Garrick was here. No longer a dream but flesh and blood—and more. More confident, more powerful, more hungry . . . for her.
When she’d been in his arms before, that powerful feeling of being loved completely had brought her more joy than she’d imagined possible. She’d given her body, but she’d loved with her heart. In those precious moments, she knew she’d been loved in return.
Then it had stopped, and she’d been devastated.
But she’d thought time had healed her heart. Hadn’t she moved on, found another man who wanted to marry her? Hadn’t she finally come to peace with Garrick’s ghost?
But the last fortnight had proven her wrong. Oh, so very wrong!
Since this afternoon, being in his arms again was all she could think about. He’d spun a web of tantalizing images that had her once again longing to be with him. The memories flooded back with such force that she could actually smell his masculine scent surrounding her everywhere she went, could taste him again on her lips and feel his hard muscles beneath her fingertips as the solid weight of his body pressed so deliciously down onto hers.
She could have that again, if she let herself. For one more night, he could be hers, just as he’d once been.
With a deep breath of determination, she threw open the door—
And froze.
Garrick stood in his doorway, casually leaning a shoulder against the frame as if patiently waiting for her. He wore only a pair of breeches, and she couldn’t help raking her gaze over him. Beneath broad shoulders and bracketed by sculpted biceps, the hard muscles of his chest gave way to a ridged abdomen dusted by a trail of hair that disappeared down beneath his waistband. Further below, muscular thighs outlined breeches so form-fitting that it was almost as if he wore nothing at all. A merciless urge gripped her to press her body against his, to mold her softness against his hardness and place a delicate kiss right there in the center of his chest. To brand him with the heat of her lips and mark him forever as hers.
When her gaze slowly lifted back up his body to meet his, her breath lodged in her tightening throat as his dark eye
s returned her stare, intense and gleaming even in the shadows.
“This . . .” She swallowed. Hard. In the silence of the sleeping house, her whisper sounded like a shout. “This means nothing.”
He didn’t reply. Neither did he move, except to shift his hips against the frame just far enough to cross his arms over his chest.
“I’ve not forgiven you for leaving,” she made clear, although her resolve was undercut by the breathy tremble in her voice. “I don’t think I ever will.”
His expression remained impassive as he stood silently, listening but not answering to either challenge her or accept blame.
“And it certainly doesn’t mean that I’m letting you back into my life.”
The only movement he made was a deliberate lowering of his eyes to trail his gaze over her as she stood there in the slant of moonlight that fell through the tall windows fronting the stairs. Goosebumps blossomed across her skin everywhere he looked, and she shivered, thankful that in the shadows he couldn’t see her nipples as they puckered achingly beneath the cotton night rail.
She forced a haughty sniff. “This doesn’t even mean that I like you.”
At that, he arched a brow. Then held out his hand in silent invitation.
Her belly twisted into knots. She stared at his outstretched hand, hesitating to take it. But this was what she wanted, what she’d always wanted—Garrick returned to her. So she inhaled a deep, shaking breath and slipped her hand into his.
He led her into his room and closed the door behind her with a soft click of the lock.
Her heart leapt into a fierce tattoo, and the deep breath she’d taken just moments before now panted from her. All of her trembled when he lifted her hand to his lips and placed a tender kiss to her palm.
The heat of that soft caress flamed up her arm and down into her breasts. As if he knew the effect he had on her, he slowly trailed his lips down her wrist and along her forearm to her elbow, tracing the path of heat.
“You are beautiful, Arabel,” he rasped in a hoarse voice, lifting his mouth from her arm in order to claim another hungry look at her. “The most beautiful woman I’ve ever known, inside and out.”
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