“Does it have a roof?”
She nodded, shuddering with cold.
“Then it’ll do.” He took her hand and led her toward the path, but her wobbly legs stumbled. He grabbed for her and held her against him until she steadied, and when they moved on, he kept his arm around her waist, drawing her close.
The cottage appeared from the blackness, hidden behind overgrown bushes and trees. Wooden shutters hung open on broken hinges, and the front step sagged nearly to the ground. The whole structure appeared as if it might tumble down on their heads at any moment. But they had no choice. They needed shelter, and already, her toes and fingers were numb.
Finding the front door locked, Edward drove his shoulder against it, pounding relentlessly into it until the rusted lock gave way. He shoved the door open and led her inside.
In the bursts of lightning flashing through the broken shutters, she saw a few pieces of furniture covered with sheets to protect them from dust and disuse. A stairway led up to the loft, and a large fireplace took up most of the far wall. It wasn’t much, but the roof was still in place, still keeping out the rain.
He drew her forward to the fireplace and searched along the mantel for the tinderbox.
She thought she heard the faint chattering of his teeth and realized he must have been as cold as she was, but he hadn’t let her see that before now, fighting back his own shivers so he could appear strong and keep her from panicking. She stared at him. How on earth had she been so wrong about him? How did she ever think he was cruel and heartless?
The small fire flickered as the fingerlike flames worked to latch on to the old wood, casting a faint light into the darkness, but that was all the light necessary for Edward to find wood stacked nearby and toss it onto the fire until the flames leapt high and hot.
Kate stepped forward like a moth drawn to the warmth and light, still shaking violently. He took both her hands and rubbed them briskly between his to bring the blood back into her fingers, but his hands felt just as icy cold as hers.
“I apologize.” He lifted them to his mouth to brush his lips over her knuckles. Her heart skittered. That did more to send heat through them than raising them to the fire.
“It’s not your fault we’re stranded here.” She sniffed softly. “I thought we could make it across the river, too.”
“No,” he corrected gently, “I apologize for what I have to ask you to do.”
She puzzled. “What do you—”
“Take off your clothes, Kate.”
For a beat, she froze, then sputtered a fierce, “No!”
“We’re both soaked,” Edward explained calmly, his hands remaining clamped around hers, forcing her to listen, “and we have to get out of these clothes.”
“But we’ve got the fire now—”
“Your clothes are wet and holding the cold against your skin. As long as you’re in them, you’ll never be warm.”
She yanked her hands away, then grasped at the front of her coat as if he had just attempted to physically rip it from her body. “I am not taking off my clothes!”
“Not all your clothes,” he clarified patiently, his tone growing more calm and soothing as her own voice moved closer to hysteria. “Your shift should dry quickly if you stand in front of the fire.”
“And where will you stand?”
“Right beside you.”
“No.”
He clenched his teeth, his patience snapping. “I have never torn the clothes off an unwilling woman, but if you don’t take them off right now, I will throw you to the floor and strip them off you myself.”
“You wouldn’t dare!”
He silently arched a brow.
Her breath hitched. He was serious—he wanted her to remove her clothes and stand naked in front of the fire. Right next to him. She gaped at him. “You’re mad!”
“Just your outer clothes. You can keep on your shift.”
“I’m not wearing a shift under my dress,” she mumbled as she looked away, not wanting him to see her humiliation.
“Pardon?”
“I’m not wearing a shift!” she repeated in angry embarrassment.
At first incredulous, then darkening in disbelief, his gaze swept over her as intensely as if he were trying to see through her dress to the nonexistent shift below. Heat rose from her body everywhere he looked, swelling up inside her breasts and spilling down to her thighs. She swallowed. Hard. If he kept staring at her like that, she wouldn’t need the fire to warm her.
“Well, then,” he said slowly, carefully measuring each word as if he were afraid she’d slap him, “are you wearing anything beneath your dress?”
“Of course!” Then her face flushed hot as she answered, barely above a whisper, “A stay and…breeches.”
He paused, for a moment too surprised to say anything. Then, he repeated slowly, as if he hadn’t quite heard her correctly, “Breeches?”
She folded her arms over her chest. “I like to wear them when I have to ride a long distance,” she justified irritably, “especially in the cold.”
In his silence, she didn’t have to read minds to know he was probably wondering exactly how country-backward she was. Breeches. Oh, she was humiliated! His London society ladies would never have donned such things.
“So you…birth babies in breeches?” he asked awkwardly, sounding just as embarrassed as she felt.
Mortified, she closed her eyes. “Yes,” she ground out, “they’re sturdy.”
“I see.” He cleared his throat. “Well, no matter. You’ll be wearing something, anyway.” He paused, then prompted gently, “Katherine, take off those wet clothes now.”
She was aghast, even as she fought back the shaking in her limbs from the cold. What he asked of her was wholly improper, and she would be mad to do it. Drenched or not, the last thing she wanted to do was remove any stitch of clothing in front of him. She’d rather spend the night shivering and miserable.
But she had known him long enough now to judge his moods and knew when she could push him and when she shouldn’t dare. And this was not a moment to push. The best she could do was hope her dress dried as quickly as possible.
“Fine,” she sighed, surrendering grudgingly. “Turn around.”
* * *
Reluctantly, and calling upon every ounce of gentlemanliness he possessed, Edward turned his back to give her privacy.
But his own clothes were just as soaked as hers, so he shrugged away his greatcoat, then pulled off his boots, grimacing as water spilled out of them. Ruined. The waistcoat came next, followed by his shirt as he tugged it free of his trousers and off over his head, peeling the wet fabric from his damp skin.
Standing by the fire, he let the heat soak into his chilled muscles, bare now except for his trousers, and he contemplated removing even those. Would Kate scream in embarrassment if he did? He grinned to himself. More than likely, the little hellcat would come after him with the fireplace poker.
For a moment, though, he considered it. Seeing her reaction would be worth a stabbing.
From behind him, fabric rustled softly as she removed her clothes, and his mind imagined the dress slipping away from her creamy skin. His cock flexed. Taking a deep breath to steady himself, he regretted that she hadn’t refused one last time, just so he could have peeled her clothes from her himself.
“Do you need help unbuttoning?” he asked over his shoulder.
“No—don’t turn around!”
“I’m just trying to be helpful.”
“Like a wolf stalking a ewe,” she muttered.
“Pardon?”
“I said, I’m almost through!”
He bit back a laugh. He couldn’t remember a woman who both antagonized and amused him as much as she did. It should have infuriated him. Instead, he enjoyed it. Taking pleasure in her consternation was wrong. But it also felt so right.
“Finished,” she finally whispered. “Turn around, if you have to.”
Shaking his head at her mispl
aced modesty, he turned. “This is not—”
He saw her, and the argument died on his lips.
She stood shyly before him, wearing only her undergarments, and his chest tightened as his gaze moved leisurely down her body. A long corset laced up to her breasts, with two small strips of ribbon across her shoulders revealing smooth stretches of bare skin, and beneath that incredibly feminine stay, she wore a pair of boy’s breeches, shortened to above the knees and buttoned snugly at the waist.
Sweet Jesus. The juxtaposition of the stay topping the breeches should have made her look absurd. Instead, she looked…delectable.
She folded her arms awkwardly across her breasts, still not daring to look at him.
He nervously cleared his throat. “Give me your dress, and I’ll lay it by the fire.”
Her eyes focused on the floor, she handed it to him. He pulled the sheet away from a chair beside the hearth and tossed it aside, then hung her dress over the back and his own clothes across the arms.
When he turned around, she had already grabbed the discarded sheet and wrapped it around herself like a toga. He didn’t know whether to laugh at her modesty or cry with disappointment.
Instead, he frowned. She hovered at the side of the room, far from the fireplace. “Kate, come closer and warm yourself.”
“I’m fine over here.”
He arched a brow. “Your lips are blue.”
At that, her eyes finally raised to look at him. He expected her to deny it, to protest vehemently that she wasn’t cold at all. But she didn’t.
Instead, she stared at him silently. Not into his eyes to show how much courage she had to stand against him, not at his mouth the way she did when she wanted him to kiss her—but at his shoulder. At the deep, jagged scar where the bullet pierced him all those years ago.
He froze. When he removed his shirt, he’d forgotten—she’d distracted him, and he’d completely forgotten…
Slowly, she stepped forward, her eyes never leaving his shoulder. “Edward?” His name was a puzzled whisper.
“I was shot,” he admitted quietly, knowing what she was asking.
He heard the soft intake of air as she caught her breath, and her eyes flickered up to his for just a moment before returning to the scar. There was neither shock nor pity in her eyes, the way other women looked at him when they first saw the scar. No, she looked at him not as a woman but as a physician, as someone who had seen such wounds before and knew that the damage went deeper than the physical evidence left behind.
As her trembling hand reached for him, he stood perfectly still, but when her fingertips brushed against his shoulder, the touch burned like fire, as though the wound were still raw. He flinched and inhaled sharply though clenched teeth.
“When you told me about the wars, you never mentioned this.” He could barely hear her above the rain striking the roof. “You must have…”
Been in pain, he finished. You must have been in terrible pain. Or frightened. You must have been so very frightened…That was what every woman said when she saw the scar.
Of course he’d been in pain. Of course he’d been frightened. A bullet had ripped through his shoulder, for Christ’s sake. But they’d had no idea how little they knew about the hell he’d gone through if that’s all they thought upon seeing the wound that had almost claimed his life. So he’d stopped removing his shirt whenever he was with a woman.
Until tonight with Kate. When he’d grown so comfortable with her that he’d forgotten to hide the scar. But it was too late now, so he held his breath and waited for her reaction—
“You must have…felt so alone.”
At her unexpected words, his gut clenched. He stared down at her in open surprise, but her attention was still focused on his shoulder. Tentatively, her fingers traced over the rough length of the ugly wound, her touch gentle and soothing, and with each featherlight brush, the old pain ebbed a little more.
“So alone, so far from home,” she whispered.
Then she leaned forward and brushed her lips against the scar.
He caught his breath, steeling himself for the torment of her mouth against him, but the flinch he’d expected never came. Instead, there was only sweetness, softness, and comfort, and he remained still beneath her lips as if her kiss could reach back through time and console him from the moment the ball pierced his skin.
The sensation of her warm lips on his bare skin in featherlight kisses pulsed through him, and his desire for her grew hotter with each heartbeat, his breath coming ragged and shallow.
“Angel…” With a groan, he cupped her chin and lifted her head as his mouth came down hungrily against hers, the sheet falling to the floor at their feet.
CHAPTER TEN
Kate moaned as his lips molded against hers, his hands sliding down to encircle her hips and pull her against him. She’d wanted this since the moment he arrived at the Mulderrys’ door, this fierce and need-filled kiss, this feeling of desire and possession that only Edward could give. However delicious his kisses had been before, nothing compared to this one, to the way his mouth plundered hers and to the raw desire she felt surging within his broad shoulders and chest.
His bare chest.
She tried not to think about how he stood half-naked, his body pressed hard against hers, but when she’d turned around from undressing and saw him standing there, shirtless and barefooted, and the damp, sculpted muscles of his shoulders and arms glistening in the firelight from the water droplets still clinging to his skin…Well, that bare chest was all she could think about—that, and how much she wanted to run her fingertips across those muscles, to see if she could make him quiver.
She tore her mouth away to gasp for breath, but his lips went immediately to her neck, delicately placing one kiss at a time down to the hollow at the base of her throat, to flick his tongue against her racing pulse.
“Edward,” she whispered and melted against him, knowing there was no hiding from him how much his kisses aroused her, how he made her blood hum and her body throb.
He rubbed his cheek against her bare shoulder, the midnight stubble scratching enticingly at her skin. “You’re still cold.”
“I-I’m not.” But she shivered, although more from his tongue licking beneath the shoulder ribbon of her stay than from the cold she no longer noticed.
He turned her toward the fireplace, to position her directly before the flames. The fire warmed her front and Edward’s body heated her back, but when he ran his hands lightly down her bare arms, her shivering only increased.
“You’ll warm up soon.” With the way he whispered against the back of her neck, it wasn’t warmth she felt but a burning ache.
“It’s you, not the cold,” she admitted. “You’re what’s making me all shivery.”
He laughed, a deep and rich sound that rumbled along her spine. He slid his arms around her waist and drew her back against him, murmuring, “You make me all shivery, too.”
His dark heat curled slowly through her, all the way down between her thighs. She swallowed, her mouth suddenly dry. “Why?”
He trailed his knuckles along the side of her face. “Because you’re beautiful.”
She stiffened in his arms. He’d told her before that she was beautiful, but she hadn’t believed him then, either. To be that naïve, especially as she stood there in boy’s breeches—no, he was a duke, and back in London, he was surrounded by women far more sophisticated and refined, far more beautiful. And surely, he had his pick of them.
“You don’t believe me, Kate?”
She admitted softly, “I don’t know.”
“Then believe I want you,” he murmured hotly, his voice ragged.
His words stole her breath away, and she felt the response deep inside her, a soft hunger that swelled and pulsed with every heartbeat, until it saturated every inch of her. She felt as if she were waking up, every nerve in her body coming alive and aware of each place his body touched against hers. And God help her, she wanted him to
touch her even more.
As if sensing her desire, his hand slid up her corset, and with a tug, he untied the bow between her breasts. She froze, aware only of the movement of his fingers as excitement and anticipation ran hot through her like a fever.
“I don’t know why.” His thumb plucked at the string zigzagging up the front of her stay and slowly unlaced it. “And I don’t know why you, why now.” One by one, the string freed from the eyelets, and the corset opened. “But when I thought I’d lost you tonight, I was terrified.”
When the lace slipped free of the last eyelet, he stepped back just far enough to peel the stay from her shoulders and down her back, dropping it to the floor. She closed her eyes, not because she was nervous of standing so exposed before him, but because she couldn’t resist giving over to the sumptuous sensation of the soft air tingling over her bare breasts, freed from the confining stay and warmed by the fire. No longer cold as tendrils of liquid heat licked at her body, down her arms and legs, out to the ends of her fingers and toes.
“So beautiful.” His voice crashed hoarse and hot through her as he placed a tender kiss at the back of her neck. Whatever doubts she had of him evaporated, all her hesitations of being alone with him inverted until she ached to be touched, kissed, caressed.
When his hands slid up to capture both breasts against his palms, the heat of his touch was unbearable, and she couldn’t fight back a throaty whimper or the way she shamelessly arched against his touch until her bare back rubbed against his chest.
His thumbs languidly circled her nipples, which hardened like pebbles beneath his ministrations, the sensation tugging straight down through her to the growing ache between her legs. There was no ignoring it now, this need he created inside her that only he could satisfy, and when he splayed his fingers wide across her breasts, squeezing her nipples between his fingers—
“Edward!” she gasped and covered his hands with hers at the sudden panic to grab hold of him to keep from falling away.
He groaned and slid a hand down her front until he reached the waistband of the breeches. “An angel in boy’s clothing,” he murmured as he lowered his head and kissed her bare shoulder.
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