Chapter 4
CHAPTER FOUR
Adena stared out into the darkness. It had certainly looked like a figure, moving about in the darkness, and around about Luke – my lord Luke, she corrected herself silently, pulling his greatcoat closer around her.
But when she had called out, the figure had stopped short, just out of the glare of the fire she had managed to light.
“My lord?” She repeated, eyes straining to attempt to make out just who the figure was. “Luke, I shall be most displeased if that is you, and you are not stepping forward.”
There was a deep laugh, and Luke strode into view, carrying with him what looked like half of the trees of the island.
“Your temper is quick to burn,” he said with a smile. “Much like the fire – how on earth did it get here?”
A small wave of irritation flowed through Adena as she stared at him: shirt covered in leaves, a scratch across his face, and yet utter charm on his features. He really did think that he was something special, she thought. Such a shame that on the outside at least, he was right.
“Get here?” She said, raising an eyebrow. “Really, Luke, do you have any grasp of the elements of physics? Unless a very small and quiet lightning storm decided to hit us here on the – what did you call this?”
“Squire’s Isle,” he said, throwing down the heavy branches near the makeshift shelter that he had built.
Adena tried not to notice the rise and swell of the muscles through the linen shirt as she continued, “Squire’s Isle, then I think the most reasonable thing to presume is that I lit the fire.”
Luke swung around, and she almost laughed aloud to see the astonishment and confusion on his face.
“You – the fire, you lit the fire?”
A twig in the flames shifted, throwing dancing light across his features, and something instinctual stirred inside Adena’s breast. My, but he was handsome, it would be foolish to deny it. Adena had never seen a man so perfectly formed, and in body as well as face.
She nodded with a smile. “I lit the fire.”
Luke moved slowly towards it, reaching out his hands to gain the full strength of its warmth on his fingers. Trying not to watch him too closely, Adena gently lowered herself onto the sandy soil, and gazed up at him.
“You had a tinder box on you, I suppose.”
She shook her head, and then added as he was not looking at her, “No, not at all.”
His head tilted down to look at her and she was suddenly overwhelmed with the feeling of just how strong he was: how masculine, how tall, how broad, and how utterly alone she was with him, in the deepening evening, on an island away from civilisation.
Anything could happen, she thought, and shivered at the unknowable excitement that flowed through her.
“No tinderbox?”
Adena smiled. “When I was growing up with two brothers, I very swiftly learned that unless I could run as fast as them, climb as high as them, and set fire to as much as they could, I was going to be left behind. No little sister wants that, and so I undoubtedly have a few skills in my gentlewoman’s repertoire that I have never needed to display at Almacks. ”
Luke roared with laughter. “I can quite imagine you let loose in your father’s garden, sticks in one hand and kindling in another.”
“Oh, far more than that,” a smile creeping over her face at the memory of it. “The garden almost merged with the parkland, and I am almost afraid to say that Kieran, Oliver, and I almost ran wild. There was nothing to stop us exploring for miles each day.”
“No tutor? Governess?”
For a moment, Adena wondered at his interest in her, but ignored it. It was nice to be given attention, though it made her feel ridiculous to admit it, even to herself. It was unusual to just be listened to, without a chaperone at each elbow attempting to prod you into marriage.
“No adults of any kind,” she answered, with relish. “I am sorry to say that I grew up totally wild, though my parents would always deny it.”
There was a minute of silence as Luke’s face turned once again to the flames, and she was given the chance to examine his features closely.
Dark hair, longer than most but still fashionable, with a trimmed beard across his face.
Dark eyes: darker than any she had ever seen before, almost black, though that could have been the firelight.
A strong mouth. A mouth of confidence. Being kissed by that mouth, and here Adena blushed but did not look away, would certainly be something.
“And so you are now a little firestarter,” Luke said finally.
Adena laughed gently. “I suppose you could say that. I have rarely used the talent, and I am almost relieved that I still have the knack when I really needed it.”
“Well, I must say that I am impressed,” he admitted with a wry smile. “I had not thought it possible, I must say – and I am rarely impressed.”
“That much I can believe,” retorted Adena quietly, and she coloured slightly as he roared with laughter. “You were not supposed to hear that, my lord.”
Still laughing, Luke threw himself down beside her and laid out, propping himself up on one elbow. “Oh, my lord this, my lord that – I think, given the circumstances, that we can dispense with that as well.”
Something like a shiver moved through Adena’s body as he spoke. Perhaps it was because he was so close to her. Perhaps it was because he stared so deeply into her eyes, not looking away, refusing to break the connection.
Whatever it was, it was intoxicating, and overwhelming, and she looked away.
“I must admit I am a little jealous of you,” Luke said quietly, and though she had turned her eyes back to the fire, she could sense his gaze still on her.
“Jealous of me?” She managed.
He picked up a twig from the ground, and started to pull it apart with his fingers. “I was never that close with my brothers, of which I have several. No running about in the woodland tearing it up for firewood.”
Adena was intrigued, despite herself. “How many brothers do you have?”
There was a pause, and she could not help but look round at him. “You are struggling to remember?”
She wished that she had taken back those words as soon as she had uttered them, when she saw the pain that swept across his features.
“I apologise,” she said quickly, “I should not have – ”
“There are four of us now,” said Luke heavily, “but my mother had seven sons at one time.”
Adena bit her lip. There she went, careering into a conversation with no thought for the consequences, and now she had evidently opened up old wounds.
“I am…I am so sorry,” she murmured. “I should not have pried into your private – ”
“Oh, do not concern yourself.” Luke pulled himself up and sat, one leg stretched out and the other bent at the knee, next to her. “‘Tis no great secret, half of society know about it, so it just happens that you are in the other half.”
For a moment, Adena thought that the conversation had closed, but then the deep voice beside her continued.
“Simon died when we were very small. He must have been, what….five? George and Harry had not even been born then, he caught some sort of pox. Richard was fourteen when he was thrown from a horse in a hunt – that was terrible, the whole family was there, I do not think my mother truly recovered.”
His voice was low, but it was steady. Adena risked a glance at him, and though there was pain etched in his features, there was a sort of resoluteness in his eyes, as though now he had started to speak of them, there was no ending the conversation until it had run its course.
“But it was Magnus that was the true loss,” Luke said heavily, and she heard the first quaver in his voice.
“Our youngest, George, had been reading in the library with him, and his twin Harry had already gone up to bed. When George was leaving, he saw that Magnus had fallen asleep in his armchair – a common occurrence, for Magnus could sleep anywhere.”
Adena saw the bitter smile creep over his face, and then disappear.
“George thought he would leave him the candle,” Luke sighed heavily.
“Poor soul, he could never have known what consequences that action would have. By the time that we realised the fire had spread through the library, through the drawing room, and up the stairs, it was impossible to get everyone out.”
Horror filled Adena’s heart and lungs. “Fire?”
He nodded.
“But I have just been boasting to you of my own prowess with the flame,” she said quietly, horrified at her own stupidity.
Luke wafted away her words with his hand. “How could you have known? And it is a skill, no matter what happened that night.”
Adena swallowed. “So…so you lost Magnus that night.”
He nodded gravely, and then a bitter smile appeared on his face, almost throwing his features into greater handsomeness. “Magnus, two maidservants, our butler who attempted to put out the flames…and my mother.”
“Your mother!”
“She would not leave the house without her boys,” said Luke, and it was now a genuine smile that Adena could see on his face.
“She was, truly, the most loving mother. I was in town, as the eldest, and George had roused Harry and the others, taken them by a different route. As soon as my mother realised that Magnus was still inside, she broke free of my father and went back in.”
Sympathy was pouring into Adena’s heart almost in rhythm with the soft sweeping of the waves on the shore. “I am so sorry for your losses,” she whispered.
Luke started, as though he had forgotten she was there. “Thank you.”
Adena moved without even thinking, running on pure instinct. His hand was on his knee, and she reached out with her own and clasped it.
Perhaps it was all this talk of fire, but Adena gasped aloud at the heat from his hand that seared hers like a branding iron. At the same time, a flush of heat moved across her face and descended into her stomach, curling into a ball of warmth that felt strange, but not unwanted.
“Oh, Luke,” she said, her breath caught in her throat.