A Lady by Midnight (Spindle Cove #3)(42)

Where all the demons lurked.

He had to find some way to fence her out, before she got hurt. He’d said too much about the past already, and he could never let her know more.

It would ruin her life.

As the Gramercys’ ridiculous picnic pagoda came into view, he drew to a halt in the middle of the meadow and stared at the thing. It seemed that wherever these people went, they built a queer little kingdom of their own—and he was always outside its borders.

Badger sat at his heel, waiting on further direction.

Thorne tossed the pup a bit of dried beef from his pocket, rewarding his patience.

He’d been waiting a long time for a hound like this. While noblemen kept purebred greyhounds and such for their fancy fox hunts, the lurcher was a common man’s hunting dog—a coursing hound specially bred for speed, sight, and intelligence. A good lurcher could chase down rabbits, fowl. Even foxes and deer.

A dog like Badger would make a fine companion in the American wilderness. He was perfectly bred to be obedient, swift, and ruthless in pursuit of the kill.

Miss Taylor couldn’t care less about any of that. She wrung her hands at the idea of Badger catching a vole.

Yet she claimed to love the creature. And for what? The too-long nose, or unevenly patched fur? The pup’s propensity to chew her belongings to bits?

The longer he stared at the dog, the less sense it made.

“What the hell does she see in you?”

“Oh, Badger. What do we see in that man?”

As Kate curled up with the puppy that night, she found and plucked a hidden burr from his undercoat.

“You like him, too,” she said to the pup. “Don’t try to deny it. I can tell you do. Your eyes go all melty when he tosses you the smallest scrap of affection, and when he’s near, you have a tendency to pant.”

She sighed, cupping the puppy’s cone-shaped muzzle in her palm. “Do you want to know a secret? I’m afraid I have the same reaction, and it’s every bit as obvious.”

Badger pawed at a bit of loosened leather binding from a copy of Mrs. Worthington’s Wisdom for Young Ladies.

“Go on, destroy it,” she urged. “There are several hundred more where it came from.”

Copies of the insipid, damaging etiquette book littered the village in scores—and very few of them remained anywhere else in England. As the original patroness of Spindle Cove, Susanna Finch—now Lady Rycliff—had made it her personal mission to remove every possible copy of Mrs. Worthington’s Wisdom from circulation.

Badger was welcome to chew his way through them, one by one. Because right now, Kate had no use for proper, ladylike behavior. She flopped back on the mattress and stared up at the ceiling, giving in to the temptation to remember.

Her ni**les peaked beneath her nightrail. With each rise and fall of her breath, the thin linen teased them harder still. She wanted his hands on them. His mouth on them. His body atop hers, heavy and strong.

She wanted that yearning look in his pale blue eyes, and the sweet, sweet taste of his kiss.

Oh, Thorne.

She lifted one hand to the valley between her br**sts and lightly stroked up and down her sternum, dragging the muslin with her touch.

If only he hadn’t suffered that attack of conscience in the churchyard.

Well . . . she had to be honest. Considering the timing of Lark’s appearance, she was rather glad Thorne had stopped when he did.

But if he were here with her right now, he wouldn’t need to stop at all.

Kate slipped loose one button of her nightrail. Then two. She closed her eyes and summoned the green, earthy scent of moss and ferns, blended with a more masculine smell of leather and musk. She recalled the scrape of his whiskers against her palm.

She slipped her hand inside her nightrail, trying to relive the experience through his senses. How did she feel, to him?

Soft, she decided.

So soft. Like warm satin—or the well-worn palms of her oldest, dearest kid gloves. A little springy, like bread dough, in a way that tempted fingers to knead and squeeze. At the areola . . . amusingly wrinkled. A rosette of tightly ruched silk.

She rolled that pursed bud of her nipple beneath her fingertip, trying to recapture the excitement and pleasure of his touch. Imagining his mouth and his wicked, skillful tongue.

It felt good. Very good.

But nowhere near the same. If there was one thing she’d learned over the course of her life, it was that no amount of imagining could make her forget she was alone. If she wanted to recapture that intense, forbidden thrill, Thorne would have to be involved.

She sighed and brought her hand out from the nightrail, flinging her arm above her head.

In the next moment, she was seized by a paroxysm of torment. Badger had found something interesting to nose and lick on the underside of her arm.

“Stop.” Kate convulsed with helpless, ticklish laughter. “Stop, you little imp.”

His cold nose burrowed into the crook of her elbow, rooting and sniffing. She had to clap a hand over her mouth to keep from yelping aloud. It was torture of the sweetest, furriest kind.

Once she’d managed to turn on her side and restore order, the dog leaped down from the bed and began circling and sniffing at the carpet.

Kate sat bolt upright.

Oh, no. Oh, no you don’t.

Kate jumped out of bed and jammed her feet into a pair of slippers. She grabbed her dressing gown and pulled it on over her nightrail, hastily knotting the belt at her waist.