Part 2 (2/2)
”Do you intend to introduce me to your cicisbeo?” Kinvarra's voice remained quiet. She'd learned that was when he was at his most dangerous.
Dear G.o.d, did he intend to shoot Harold after all?
Surely not. Foul as Kinvarra had been to her, he'd never shown her a moment's violence. Her hands clenched in her skirts as fear tightened her throat. Kinvarra was a crack shot and a famous swordsman. Harold wouldn't stand a chance.
”My Lord, I protest the description,” Harold bleated, sidling back to evade a.s.sault.
Was it too much to wish that her suitor would stand up to the scoundrel she'd married as a stupid chit of seventeen? Alicia drew a deep breath and reminded herself that she favoured Lord Harold Fenton precisely because he wasn't an overbearing brute like her husband, the earl. Harold was a scholar and a poet, a man of the mind. She should consider it a sign of Harold's intelligence that he was wary right now.
But somehow her insistence didn't convince her traitorous heart.
How she wished she really were the impervious creature Kinvarra called her. Then she'd be immune both to his insults and to the insidious attraction he aroused.
”My Lady?” Kinvarra asked, still in that even, frightening voice. ”Who is this . . . gentleman?”
She stiffened her backbone. She was made of stronger stuff than this. Never would she let her husband guess he still had power over her. Her response was steady. ”Lord Kinvarra, allow me to present Lord Harold Fenton.”
Harold performed a shaky bow. ”My Lord.”
As he rose, a tense silence descended.
”Well, this is awkward,” Kinvarra said flatly, although she saw in his taut, dark face that his anger hadn't abated one whit.
”I don't see why,” Alicia snapped.
It wasn't just her husband who tried her temper. There was her lily-livered lover and the peris.h.i.+ng cold. The temperature must have dropped ten degrees in the last five minutes. She s.h.i.+vered, then silently cursed that Kinvarra noticed and Harold didn't. Harold was too busy staring at her husband the way a mouse stares at an adder.
”Do you imagine I'm so sophisticated, I'll ignore discovering you in the arms of another man? My dear, you do me too much credit.”
She stifled the urge to consign him to Hades. ”If you'll put aside your bruised vanity for the moment, you'll see we merely require you to ride to the nearest habitation and request help. Then you and I can return to acting like complete strangers, My Lord.”
He laughed and she struggled to suppress the s.h.i.+ver of sensual awareness that rippled down her spine at that soft, deep sound. ”Some things haven't changed, I see. You're still dis.h.i.+ng out orders. And I'm still d.a.m.ned if I'll play your obedient lapdog.”
”Can you see another solution?” she asked sweetly.
”Yes,” he said with a snap of his straight white teeth. ”I can leave you to freeze. Not that you'd probably notice.”
Her pride insisted that she send him on his way with a flea in his ear. The weather and what common sense she retained under the anger that always flared in Kinvarra's proximity prompted her to be conciliatory.
It was late. She and Harold hadn't pa.s.sed anyone on this isolated road. The grim truth was that if Kinvarra didn't help, they were stranded until morning. And while she was dressed in good thick wool, she wasn't prepared to endure a snowy night in the open. The chill of the road seeped through her fur-lined boots and she s.h.i.+fted, trying to revive feeling in her frozen feet.
”My Lord . . .” During the year they'd lived together, she'd called him Sebastian. During their few meetings since, she'd clung to formality as a barrier. ”My Lord, there's no point in quarrelling. Basic charity compels your a.s.sistance. I would consider myself in your debt if you fetch aid as quickly as possible.”
He arched one black eyebrow in a superior fas.h.i.+on that made her want to clout him. Not a new sensation. ”Now that's something I'd like to see,” he said.
”What?”
”Grat.i.tude.”
He knew he had her at a disadvantage and he wasn't likely to rise above that fact. She gritted her teeth. ”It's all I can offer.”
The smile that curved his lips was pure devilry. Another s.h.i.+ver ran through her. Like the last one, it was a s.h.i.+ver with no connection to the cold. ”Your imagination fails you, my dear countess.”
Her throat closed with nerves and that reluctant physical awareness she couldn't ignore. He hadn't s.h.i.+fted, yet suddenly she felt physically threatened. Which was ridiculous. During all their years apart, he'd given no indication he wanted anything from her except her absence. One chance meeting wasn't likely to turn him into a medieval robber baron who spirited her away to his lonely tower.
Nonetheless, she had to resist stepping back. She knew from bitter experience that her only chance of handling him was to feign control. ”What do you want?”
This time he did step closer, so his great height overshadowed her. Close enough for her to think that if she stretched out her hand, she'd touch that powerful chest, those wide shoulders. ”I want . . .”
There was a piercing whinny and a sudden pounding of hooves on the snow. Appalled, disbelieving, Alicia turned to see Harold galloping away on one of the carriage horses.
”Harold?”
Her voice faded to nothing in the night. He didn't slow his wild careening departure. She'd been so engrossed in her battle with Kinvarra, she hadn't even noticed that Harold had caught one of the stray horses.
Kinvarra's low laugh was scornful. ”Oh, my dear. Commiserations. Your swain proves a sad disappointment. I wonder if he's fleeing my temper or yours. You really have no luck in love, have you?”
She was too astonished to be upset at Harold's departure. Instead she focused on Kinvarra. Her voice was hard. ”No luck in husbands, at any rate.”
Kinvarra suffered Alicia's hate-filled regard and wondered what the h.e.l.l he was going to do with his troublesome wife in this wilderness. The insolent baggage deserved to be left where she stood, but even he, who owed her repayment for numerous slights over the years, wouldn't do that to her.
It seemed he had no choice but to help.
Not that she'd thank him. He had no illusions that once she'd got what she wanted a warm bed, a roof over her head and a decent meal she'd forget any promises of grat.i.tude.
In spite of the punis.h.i.+ng cold, heat flooded him as he briefly let himself imagine Alicia's grat.i.tude. She'd shed that heavy red cloak. She'd let down that ma.s.s of gold hair until it tumbled around her shoulders. Then she'd kiss him as if she didn't hate him and she'd . . .
From long habit, he stopped himself. Such fantasies had sustained him the first year of their separation, but he'd learned for sanity's sake to control them since. Now they only troubled him after his rare meetings with his wife.
This was the longest time he and Alicia had spent together in years. It should remind him why he avoided her company. Instead, it reminded him that she was the only woman who had ever challenged him, the only woman who had ever matched him in strength, the only woman he'd never been able to forget, desperately as he'd tried.
He smiled into her sulky, beautiful face. ”It seems you're stuck with me.”
How that must smart. The long ride to his Yorks.h.i.+re manor on this cold night suddenly offered a myriad of pleasures, not least of which was a chance to knock a few chips off his wife's pride.
She didn't respond to his comment. Instead, with an unreadable expression, she stared after her absconding lover. ”We're only about five miles from Harold's hunting lodge.”
The wench didn't even try to lie about the a.s.signation, blast her. ”If he manages to stay on that horse, Horace should make it.” Fenton showed no great skill as a bareback rider. Kinvarra recognized the wish as unworthy, but he hoped the blackguard ended up on his rump in a hedgerow.
”Harold,” she said absently, drawing her cloak tight around her slender throat. ”You could take me there.”
This time his laughter was unconstrained. She'd always had nerve, his wife, even when she'd been little more than a girl. ”Be d.a.m.ned if you think I'm carting you off to cuckold me in comfort, madam.”
She sent him a cool look. ”I'm thinking purely in terms of shelter, My Lord.”
<script>