Part 25 (1/2)

When he drew back, she looked pensive. ”I don't suppose this was your first ... well ... intimate encounter.”

”No. But neither have I had a hundred, like your brothers.”

”A hundred!” She looked horrified. ”So many?”

He shouldn't have said that. ”I'm probably exaggerating.”

She thought a moment, then sighed. ”Probably not. They were awful rogues until they married.” She gazed up at him with an earnest expression. ”Perhaps 'proper' isn't so bad after all.”

”I can think of worse nicknames,” he said, remembering the wide variety of epithets flung at him in his youth.

”At least n.o.body ever called you Elf.”

She looked so delightfully put out that he couldn't help but chuckle. ”How on earth did that come about, anyway?”

”I honestly don't know.” She rested her head on her hand. ”Papa said it was because I had pointy ears, which is nonsense, of course. And Nurse said it was because I was small. But all children are small.”

He gazed down at her pixie nose and the pensive expression on her heart-shaped face. ”I have a theory.”

”Oh?”

”Sometimes, when you're deep in thought, you have an otherworldly look about you that makes one think of creatures from another realm-sprites and dryads and nymphs. I imagine it did make you look a bit like an elf when you were small.”

She eyed him skeptically. ”I don't look like an elf now, do I? Because I should warn you that no one in my family has been allowed to call me Elf in many years, upon pain of death. And I'm not rescinding that for you.”

”Then I'll call you Fairy Queen. That's what you look like to me.”

She cast him a dazzling smile. ”You do give excellent compliments, Jackson. It quite redeems your other sins.”

”And what sins are those?” he drawled.

”Being condescending. Hiding your true feelings.” Eyes sparkling, she pulled his head down to hers. ”Taking months and months in getting around to kissing me.”

”I must have been mad,” he murmured before kissing her again.

This time it led to more kisses, then caresses ... the hot, sweet sort that set his blood aflame. Though he protested that she must be too sore to make love, she ignored him and did her best to rouse him to madness.

So he ensured she was rapt with enjoyment beneath him before he entered her again, plunging so deeply into her warmth that he thought he might perish of the pleasure.

It was only long afterward, as she lay asleep in his arms, that he realized he'd already stopped protecting his heart.

And that wouldn't do. Because if he weren't careful, he could easily find it trampled beneath the boots of the Sharpe family fortune.

Chapter Twenty.

Celia was freezing. She pulled the oddly thick blanket over her bare shoulders just as she heard someone stoking up a fire nearby.

”Gillie,” she muttered. ”Put an extra log on, will you?”

”Not Gillie,” said a man's voice, sounding vaguely irritated. ”No servants here, I'm afraid. You'll have to settle for me.”

She bolted upright, jerking the blanket to her chest as several things. .h.i.t her at once. She wasn't in her own bed. She was naked. And Jackson stood a few feet away, wearing only a pair of drawers, an unb.u.t.toned s.h.i.+rt, and a frown.

Everything from the night before came back to her-the race through the woods, the discovery of the cottage ... the lovemaking.

Heat flooded her cheeks at that last memory.

He seemed to notice, for his expression softened before he picked up his pistol and began to clean it. The last time she'd seen it, it was loaded. When had he emptied it? And how long had he been up, anyway?

”Go back to sleep,” he murmured. ”There's still an hour before dawn. I'll wake you when it's closer to time to leave.”

Was the man daft? Did he really think she could sleep while he walked about the cottage preparing for their escape from unknown a.s.sailants?

Apparently, he did. But since she couldn't oblige him, she s.h.i.+fted to her side to watch him work.

He was swift and efficient, rather like a soldier must be. In minutes, he had the pistol cleaned and s.h.i.+ning before he loaded it with fresh, dry powder and a patch-wrapped ball. Then he packed up his gun kit and tucked it into one saddlebag before pulling out a stiff brush.

In the process, something fell from the bag, which he picked up, opening it to stare at it. From where she lay, it looked like a watch, but he was gazing at it too long for that.

Curiosity got the better of her. ”What is it?”

He started, then carried the object over. She sat up, keeping his surtout tucked up around her b.r.e.a.s.t.s as he handed it to her. It was a rather large locket on a fob. When she opened it, she found three portrait miniatures, one of which was affixed to a metal leaf in the middle so that the first portrait sat alone and the second sat opposite the third.

”Uncle had them done by an artist friend of his after Mother and I went to live with him and Aunt Ada in London twenty-two years ago.” Jackson pointed to the first image, of a pale and fragile young woman with dark hair and a wan smile. ”That's Mother.”

She stared at it, her heart in her throat. ”She was beautiful.”

”She was indeed.” His voice grew choked. ”Although less so in this portrait. She was already ill by the time this was done.”

Hoping to lighten his mood, she looked at the other portrait, as blond as the first was dark, with merry eyes. ”And this is your aunt, I take it?”

A faint smile touched his lips. ”Yes. With my uncle opposite.”

She stared at his uncle, a handsome man in his youth. ”You look like him.”

”That's impossible,” he said dryly. ”He's not my uncle by blood, remember? He married my mother's sister.”

”Oh, right. I forgot.” She gazed closely at the portrait. The man was slighter in build, but ... ”I still say you look like him.”

Jackson's gaze narrowed on the portrait. Then he cast her a cold glance. ”Don't be ridiculous. There's no resemblance at all.”

”I grant you, his hair is arranged differently, but see there, where his nose is thin like yours, and his eyes are deeply set? And he has your jaw.”

A strange look crossed his face, before he took the locket and snapped it shut. ”He doesn't look like me. It's absurd-no one else has ever noticed any such thing.”

As he headed back to the saddlebag with the locket, his back stiff, it dawned on her what he must have thought she was saying. Oh, dear. She hadn't been implying ... She would never hint...