Chapter 6
Chapter Six
Later
Only after night had descended fully, settling onto the countryside like a black cloak, the stars faraway twinkling pinpricks of light, did Delilah step foot from her caravan.
She was the last of the company to venture out, the distant sounds of revelry told her, even as she felt it in the stillness of camp.
Reputation cast her as the boldest and wildest of the Windermere brood—and her reputation had it half right.
She was bold.
She was wild.
But only recently.
That was what no one truly understood about her. What she hadn’t truly understood about herself until a few days ago…
And again this morning.
And it was Ravensworth—of all people—who was bringing out her true audacity.
She didn’t like it.
That wasn’t precisely true.
She didn’t want to like it—which was an altogether different matter.
Which was why she’d been sorely tempted to stay in her caravan tonight, pretend sleep, and skip the bonfire.
Because he would be there.
To call to her boldness and wildness.
But she couldn’t. The pull of a pagan bacchanal on the beach was too irresistible to miss. Already her feet were moving in step to the strains of fiddle music drifting on the breeze.
So it was that soon those same feet were treading down the path from this morning, music and laughter pulling her along, the orange glow of the bonfire growing brighter with every step.
She was dressed simply, white muslin shirt tucked into the waistband of a plain homespun skirt with only a shawl to keep encroaching night cool at bay. She’d left her shoes in the caravan.
Dirt and grass turned to sand beneath her bare feet and soon she was ascending the short rise of a dune.
She reached the top, and the view opened to her.
It was a beach utterly transformed from the one that had been quiet with morning stillness—where she’d held a duke’s clothes hostage and all but begged him to kiss her.
Scattered across the beach were the Albion Players.
A grouping over here joined arm in arm as they sang a bawdy sea shanty.
The company’s fiddler over there striking bow across strings much to the delight of those inclined toward dancing, trouser legs rolled above knees, skirts tucked into waistbands, allowing bodies freedom to dance and dance and dance.
Some arms were linked, others swayed in the air, as feet moved round the bonfire that crackled and roared and spread glorious heat and light at the heart of it all, bright red sparks ascending toward the heavens above.
Here, anyone could be naught more than simple human being, taken by the call of the night.
Here, she was able to see England in a way she never had before. An England free of the rigid mores and rules of the ton.
Free.
Somehow, she’d come to inhabit a world where life was fun.
She was a Windermere, and true to her birthright she always looked for—and found—the fun.
In London, though, fun never felt safe. Fun felt more akin to walking a tight rope at a high altitude, all eyes watching…
waiting…hoping for a fall, either from malice or simply for something to gossip about because the boredom ran so deep.
Yet here, on a wild stretch of Norfolk shore, fun was safe.
She was halfway down the sand dune when a hand reached for hers.
It belonged to the cook’s son. Lanny, he was called.
He couldn’t have more than eleven years on him.
On a laugh, she allowed him to take her hand and lead her into the scrum of dancing—bodies carefree and gyrating and sweating.
Though a head shorter than her, he twirled her around.
On another laugh, she ducked under his arm and her hesitancy fell away as she gave over to the dance that had no set movement or pattern.
One’s feet and arms simply followed where the heart and inclination led.
Someone shoved a mug into her hand, and she drank deeply of its contents.
Mead. On a usual night, it would be too sweet for her tastes, but tonight it was perfect. She took another long swig.
Every now and again, her eyes cast about—beyond the other dancers, beyond the bonfire. As much as she might try to tell herself she wasn’t looking for him, she was.
She knew it every time she felt a pang of disappointment when she didn’t find him.
Then, soon, she knew it when her heart jumped into a gallop when she did.
There, standing at the edge of flickering bonfire light, was Sebastian with a small group of other company men, giving them the entirety of his attention as he always did when in conversation.
Lit by the flickering glow of the bonfire, he was laughing and talking, the breeze lifting off the ocean tousling his hair about.
In the weeks since he’d joined the company, his hair had grown longer, curling at the ends, catching the sun in light blond streaks.
The man was simply gorgeous and glorious.
In all the years she’d known him, how had she never noticed?
She hadn’t allowed herself to, that was how. He’d been Archie’s close friend, and then her nemesis.
And yet…this Ravensworth—Seb—he was utterly unlike that version of Ravensworth—the one she’d had in her mind all this time.
Seb.
He had a good reputation with the other players, and more than a few of the women more than admired him. And today, he’d pressed his mouth to hers. His tongue had licked her bottom lip, and lit places inside her aflame that she hadn’t known existed.
And all she could think as she watched him converse with those other men was that she wanted to drag him into the dunes and make him do it again.
Seb…Ravensworth…
The man who was her nemesis. And yet…
Something about that didn’t feel right.
“I’ve never been your nemesis, Delilah.”
Those had been his words beneath the stage. But it wasn’t simply the words that had been haunting her since. It was the sincerity with which he’d spoken them.
He no longer felt like her nemesis.
And she wondered now if his words were true—that he never had been. And if so, how was that possible?
What was she missing?
One of the men in his group—she believed the man went by, improbably, Fix-All—must’ve said something particularly funny, for Ravensworth threw his head back on a laugh. She’d never seen him laugh like that—with abandon.
Then his gaze shifted and caught hers. No waver of surprise in those golden, moss-flecked depths. As if he’d known all along that she’d been observing him, and he’d let her take her fill. His smile didn’t altogether fall away, but turned quiet and assessing. It wasn’t a smile for his compatriots.
It was a smile for her.
He took a step, and she did, too.
Surely, slowly, they began walking toward each other, the hold of their gazes never wavering, the space between them nonexistent now that they’d locked eyes. It occurred to Delilah that, perhaps, it had ever been so.
For all the years she’d known him, a spark of awareness had lit through her whenever he entered a room. She’d never needed to look directly at him to know exactly where he was. It was an instinctive awareness. But it was more, too.
A pull.
A pull that didn’t feel rooted in dislike or enmity, but something else—something less tangible.
Could it be the opposite?
Could it be that she liked him?
Or perhaps like had nothing to do with what drew her to him?
Did a magnet have to like the object it was drawn to?
It simply was.
Elements colliding.
Her gaze fell to his mouth, the remembered feel of it against hers—firm… possessive… capable…
Oh, yes, this man was certainly capable, and her body demanded to know what more he was capable of.
They stopped a few feet from one another, firelight catching the sharp angle of a cheekbone, the strong line of his jaw, the blond streaks in his hair…
the intention in his eyes… A shiver traced through her, and she felt suddenly awkward and shy of him.
He was all man, and she wasn’t sure what to do with Ravensworth the man.
But one fact was certain: he knew precisely—deliciously—what to do with Delilah the woman.
He reached out, and without hesitation, she allowed his long, masculine fingers to twine through hers.
No question that she wouldn’t. He pulled, and the distance between them closed as she swayed forward, sand shifting beneath her feet, sliding between her toes.
His other hand closed about her waist, and her head tipped back, their mouths—mouths that had touched only hours ago—inches from each other.
All she would have to do was lift onto the tips of her toes to—
He shifted closer, but his mouth cut left and found the whorl of her ear. “May I have this dance, Lilah?”
Lilah… She was Lilah, and he was Seb. Tonight. How seductive an idea…
“Yes,” she whispered, breathless, against his neck, catching his scent.
Citrus and cedar. Something else, too. Sweat.
From building the bonfire, no doubt. A complex, musky scent that provoked a response—the elemental pull that was becoming quickly familiar.
Now that she was able to see it, she was coming to grasp it.
He pulled her closer, and she pressed herself against the hard, unyielding length of him.
As their feet began to move, she knew why, for she’d seen the proof only this morning.
Muscles that bulked his arms and shoulders, chest and stomach, thighs and calves.
She’d heard Archie mention Ravensworth’s penchant for the boxing ring, and here beneath the hand that rested on his shoulder she felt the consequence of that pursuit.
She gave a reflexive squeeze, and humor lit within his eyes. “Like what you feel?”
Her mouth opened, poised to speak the truth. Yes. She very much liked what she felt.
Or did she?
Because she felt with more than her hands.
A feeling had been coursing through her for days now—a feeling of restlessness and want and need—that he’d provoked, and she wasn’t sure she liked it at all.