What Happened at Midnight(12)

And a very lovely body it was. He didn’t mean to keep looking at her, but the faint starlight from the window illuminated everything to her waist. And as for the portions below, hidden in shadow—they were inches from his hands. He could explore them, find out everything that was cloaked by darkness. She’d always smelled of sugared lemon, and this time, if he tasted her, she wouldn’t stop him.

Hell, she’d just volunteered for the task. It wouldn’t even be wrong. Well, maybe only a little wrong.

“Bloody temptation.” He pushed himself to his feet and strode back to the bedchamber. “Stupid, bloody cock,” he muttered, giving the offending organ a thump. It made no response. “No morals to speak of.” Still rock-hard. Still desperate. Reprimands, clearly, did no good. He yanked a blanket from his bed and marched back into the front room.

She was sitting up and watching him, her arms crossed over her br**sts.

He dumped the blanket over her shoulders, covering up all that luminous, tempting skin. He could still smell her.

“Christ,” he muttered and grabbed a chair from across the room. This he placed a good two feet away from her, and then he sat.

She didn’t say anything. Silence enveloped him. Her breath was shallow.

“Calm yourself. I’m not going to accept your offer.” Which was a true act of heroism. “I don’t hate you that much.”

She didn’t look at him. She wasn’t even really hearing what he said, he realized. “I know it can’t make up for what you lost,” she was saying. “I’m simply sick, thinking of those thousands of pounds just stuck in my skin with no way to give them back. It wouldn’t be enough, but can’t you just…take it anyway?”

Couldn’t he, though? For a moment, he indulged in a fantasy. He could make it good for her. So good, she’d lose the flat intonation in her voice. She’d smile again, a warm smile that would encompass her eyes. He’d be generous, and she’d be happy, and…

And that was lust talking again, not logic. How exactly would that happen? Because he had a c**k made of magic? Unlikely.

Temptation was a bleeding monster.

He sighed and reached forward, wrapping the blanket more firmly about her shoulders. “It would be like trading oranges for moonlight.” He tucked one corner about her waist like a belt. “Besides, even if the exchange had made sense, it wasn’t my money at risk. It was my nephew’s. He’s seven years old.”

She looked up at that. Their eyes met, and this time, he wasn’t even sure what passed between them.

“How awkward,” she finally said.

Her hand rested on the cushion next to her. Her fingers moved, making unconscious chords. This time, if he listened, he could almost hear the music—a sonata by Mendelssohn he had once heard her play.

“I can’t make this right.” Her voice was low.

“Maybe,” he suggested, “if you tell me everything that happened…”

“I—” She choked on the remaining words. Her shoulders trembled. Her breathing grew even more ragged, and she pulled her arms around her, swaying from side to side. “It was—”

If this was an act, she had incredible control over her body. Tremors passed through her in waves, too swift to be manufactured. She let out another shaky breath, and looked over at him. “Can’t you just…take me,” she asked, “so that I no longer have to fear the worst?”

Whatever his body might have preferred, the word fear killed the remainder of his desire. “I don’t take women to bed who are dreading the experience,” he said bitterly.

She lied to you. She stole. She cheated. She’s hiding something, and she’s using her body to do it.

All quite possibly true. But he hadn’t lied to her earlier when he said that he saw systems. And this one—his understanding of Mary—no longer seemed to hang together. It was a mess of discordant notes, of impossibilities and unlikelihoods. It was a tangle of lust and—as he watched her shoulders heave under the weight of his blanket—unfortunate affection, diluted by a good measure of anger.

He didn’t know anything any longer.

She had never seemed so impossibly far away as she did at that moment—naked, and two feet away from him. He could have had her body, but Mary herself—whoever she was—had vanished. And for the first time, he realized that this wasn’t just about the money. It was about the truth. About the words she’d said that still smarted.

I don’t love you.

“Come,” he said. “It’s late, and we’re both rather worked up. Get dressed, and I’ll see you back to Doyle’s Grange. We’ll talk on the morrow. And, Mary…”

She looked up at him.

He held out his hand. “Stop dreading. This is me we’re talking about. I should think you’d know me better than this.”

Chapter Five

MORNING CAME, AND WITH IT a full slate of duties for John. Yesterday’s digging had brought a new round of chores, none of them interesting. The tile drains that had been installed in the upper fields years ago were laid too shallow. They’d cracked, and were poorly positioned besides. Supervising their replacement would take weeks. He would have resented the time twenty-four hours ago; now, he suspected he would need every extra day to try to entangle the business of Mary.