Chapter 12 #3
He served her a plate of supper and then served himself.
They talked of nothing important as they ate, discussing things they’d seen during the day’s travel, bits about their preparations for the morrow.
When she thought he wasn’t looking at her, she studied his face.
He seemed distant, his eyes dark, almost murky in their depths, and his fingers drummed imperceptibly on the table.
Rafe’s restless fingers grazed the edge of his plate and dislodged his knife, which fell, clanging loudly against the tabletop.
Startled, he stared as if the utensil were somehow unfamiliar.
“Sorry, damnable habit my drumming; Jervis is always at me to stop.” Placing his napkin on his plate, he said, “Well then, I did promise I’d brush out your hair if you’d save me some hot water. And a promise is a promise.”
Like the annulment he’d told her he’d give her as soon as they reached England, he reminded himself.
He pulled the hairbrush from his trunk, wondering why he’d offered her this service. But he knew, knew that he needed to touch her in some way, if only by brushing out the tangles in her mahogany hair.
It was just hair, he told himself, as he drew the pins out and watched the rich waves cascade down her slender back.
He lifted a silken hank, his fingers grazing the curve of her neck, and began to brush in long downward strokes.
She leaned back, her eyes half closed, her lips slightly parted.
Rafe felt a wave of pure lust wash over him and settle in his groin.
He tied her hair back with a black velvet ribbon he used for his queue.
“Perfect,” he muttered, knowing he meant more than her hair.
“I think I’ll go downstairs for a bit and check on Jervis’s preparations for tomorrow,” he said, tossing his jacket over his shoulders and picking up his tricorne.
“You may take a nightshirt from my trunk if you’d like.
” He swallowed hard as an image of her lithe and nude slipping into his nightshirt rose unbidden into his head.
He needed a walk, he thought, to breathe in the cool night air and clear his head.
He needed to remind himself of Anne, and Elizabeth, and the life he had planned waiting for him in England.
It was dark outside, and torches had been lit along the main street of the little hamlet.
Candlelight framed the windows of the houses in flickering squares of amber.
Myriads of stars were scattered in the dark sky, caught up here and there in veiled wisps of clouds.
Rafe strode briskly along as if he had some destination in mind.
Keep walking Harcrest, he told himself, unwittingly recalling the first time he’d seen Alix on the street in Paris. It was becoming a bad habit with him, he thought grimly, this impulsive walking. He’d walked away from his proposal to Anne and now here he was trying to walk away from Alix.
He stopped suddenly, finding himself nearly at the end of the village, the unlit darkness of trees and road looming thickly ahead.
He could just make out the hazy gray shape of a kilometer post on the side of the road.
Leaning against it, he pulled a cheroot out his coat pocket, lit it, and inhaled deeply.
Anne loathed cheroots, referred to them as a filthy colonial habit.
Rafe puffed slowly, considering why he’d been so determined to make her his wife.
She’d certainly fit the part of a countess, elegant and composed, adept at handling social situations.
Even as a child, he recalled she’d been precise about her dress and manner, ever mindful of her position.
A wry smile twisted his lips as the aromatic smoke curled around his head.
He certainly couldn’t picture the regal Lady Anne dressing in Jervis’s clothes and climbing through windows.
She’d never embarrass him, never fight with him, or make his life unpredictable. Never, he thought, make his loins surge with passion, or his fingers ache to tear at her clothes and plunder the sweetness beneath them.
Cole’s words haunted him: “You don’t want to wind up one of those men who spends his life avoiding his cold fish of a wife, wasting his time at his club or in the arms of his mistress, pretending the passion he’s paid for is real.”
Rafe’s eyes narrowed; Alix wanted him as much as he wanted her, he’d seen it in her eyes, as wide and silver as the mirror she’d tried not to look at while he bathed that evening.
But was the passion he felt for Alix real or simply overwhelming lust?
He would never know unless he took Alix, made her his wife in more than name.
And suddenly he wanted that, more urgently than anything he’d ever wanted before.
He didn’t know if it would be worth throwing away the careful life he’d planned with Anne, only that he had to find out, now before he’d lost his chance, lost her.
He ground the cheroot out, the sparks scattering beneath his boot and began walking back into the hamlet, back towards the inn.