Chapter 10
CHAPTER TEN
Liam had made it halfway down the corridor, still shaking his head—at Lady Saskia or himself, he couldn’t say—when the scream pierced the air.
His feet stuttered to a stop.
If he wasn’t mistaken, that scream had come from—
The door to number 7 slammed open and out flew Lady Saskia, her eyes wide and wild. She swiveled and stabbed an accusatory finger toward the open doorway. “In my room…it’s a naked—” She gulped. “Man.”
Liam had already made up most of the distance back to her door, but those words in combination—naked and man—had his hands clenched into ready fists and him charging into the room like a bull seeing red.
The sight greeting his eyes, however, had him stopping dead in his tracks.
There was, indeed, a naked man inside Lady Saskia’s room.
He was even on her bed.
But he was also sprawled face down on top of the coverlet, snoring, milk-white bottom bare to the breeze.
Liam lifted a single eyebrow. “Not who you were expecting in your bed tonight?”
Saskia snorted. “One would hope for better options in bed partners.”
There was her usual unruffled self recovered.
“You don’t mind sharing?”
She glared up at him, eyes narrow slits.
“Not with him,” chuckled Liam. “With me.”
Her eyebrows made a break for the ceiling.
Apparently, he hadn’t made himself clearer with his second attempt. “Come to my room, Lady Saskia. We’ll find a suitable sleeping arrangement.”
Her eyes harbored doubts, and her feet remained as unmoved as the rest of her.
“You cannot stay here.” He said this firmly. He wasn’t leaving her with a strange man.
At last, she sighed and nodded, then gathered her belongings, which totaled two unpacked leather satchels. The lady traveled light.
In no time, Liam was ushering Lady Saskia Calthorp into his room and shutting the door behind them. They were alone. Had the bed always been that big?
He gave himself a mental shake and ignored the bed as he crossed the room and deposited her bags near the corner washstand. She stopped in the center of the room looking as if she had a grand speech to deliver.
“I shall sleep on the floor, of course,” she proclaimed.
He’d thought she would say something like that. “You’re welcome to the bed,” he offered. “I’ve slept on worse floors.”
Unmoved, she held out a hand. “All I need is a pillow and a blanket.”
If Liam understood one thing about Lady Saskia Calthorp, it was that one gained little ground by arguing with her once her mind was made up. He grabbed a pillow and stripped the heaviest blanket off the bed and handed them over.
With a curt nod of gratitude, she began assembling her pallet for the night, which he observed from the periphery of his vision while he set to his own nightly ablutions, beginning with the removal of his boots.
He only realized he’d groaned with pleasure when he felt her gaze hit the side of his face.
“I have a question for you.” She’d lowered to a seat on her pallet. “For the memoir.”
“Ask away.”
“Do you have any race-day superstitions?”
He reclined in the straight-backed chair, rickety wood creaking beneath his weight. “Like a putting-my-left-sock-on-first superstition?”
She nodded.
“Aye, I have a few.”
Her head canted. She was waiting.
All right, he would indulge her. “Let’s see. I don’t eat or drink anything on race morning.”
“Not even coffee or tea?”
He shook his head. “I don’t talk to anyone if I can help it. I always brush my horse. I check the straps three times.”
“Three?”
“Three.” He rolled up his left shirtsleeve and extended his wrist for her perusal, revealing a thin leather band. “I score a new hash mark onto this band.”
“Win or lose?”
“Before I even race,” he explained, not because he had to, but because he wanted to. “It’s a way of marking the day, but also showing gratitude for it.”
“Win or lose.”
“Aye, win or lose, I’m grateful.”
“But you don’t like to lose.”
“I don’t.” He could acknowledge as much. It wasn’t a secret. “But I’m ever thankful to my mount for giving their all, win or lose.” He hesitated. “And I’m thankful for this life I’ve somehow attained.”
Understanding lit within her silvery-blue eyes that could be inflexible steel one moment and soft calm sea the next.
A feeling stole through him.
He liked being understood by this woman.
She reached for her pillow and began determinedly fluffing it. “Now, if you will extinguish the candle before you retire to bed, I’ll bid you a good night.”
“I would be happy to give you the bed.” He had to offer one last time. What he didn’t need to do was add cheekily, “Or I could share it with you.”
She flipped onto her side and faced away from him. A dry snort floated over her shoulder.
The thing was it wasn’t all cheek.
Though it fell well wide of their established professional boundaries, he would happily share a bed with this woman.
“Good night, Mr. Cassidy.”
It was only then he noticed something… “Lady Saskia?”
“Hmm?”
“Are you planning on sleeping with your spectacles on?”
“Of course not,” she tossed over her shoulder with no small amount of scorn, even as he noted her discreetly sliding them off her nose.
“And your clothes, too?”
“I am.”
“Your boots?”
“Aye.”
“Your corset?”
“Aye.”
“You cannot possibly sleep in corset and boots.”
“I can manage myself very well,” came her cherry-tart retort.
“Then I shall, too.”
A second ticked past, and utter stillness reigned on her side of the floor.
Another second, and more stillness.
But the next second, she rolled over to face him. “You shall, too, what exactly?”
“Sleep in my clothes.”
“You cannot possibly sleep in your clothes.”
“I can.”
“But you rode in a horse race today.” Her matter-of-fact tone suggested it would brook no argument. “Don’t you have bruises? Won’t you be sore?”
He shrugged.
Three ticks of time passed, then she exhaled a blustery sigh. “All right.”
“All right?”
He was being disingenuous.
He’d won—and they both knew it.
She sat up. “But you can’t watch.”
“Wouldn’t dream of it.”
He flipped his chair around so it now faced the opposite direction—away from her—then began tugging a sock off his foot and giving every appearance of a man paying no mind to the woman currently undressing in his room.
But while he couldn’t see her, he could hear her.
The rustle of wool and muslin…the flick of one bodice button after another…
the whispery shush of her dress being shed and tossed aside…
the slide of corset strings coming loose and undone…
the inhalation of a relieved breath…the fall of the corset onto pine floorboards…
She would be down to chemise and stockings now.
It wasn’t only logic that had followed her every movement.
His cock had, too.
Lady Saskia in naught but chemise and stockings.
Stillness filled the air.
She was finished undressing.
Right.
He slipped his race shirt over his head, its spring-green and midnight-blue stripes coated with a film of turf grime, and before he could continue, her voice sounded, “What is that…garment?…affixed to your torso?”
Ah.
So, she’d been watching him—and had given herself away.
It was that curiosity of hers.
It couldn’t help itself.
“It’s a leather breastplate,” he explained. “It protects me if I fall.”
A few seconds passed. “Clever.”
He loosened the ties fastening the breastplate to him, then set it on the table. He reached for a small pot of salve and dug out a healthy dollop, which he began smoothing into various sore spots.
“Now what are you doing?” She sounded slightly exasperated.
So…
She was still watching.
“This will help calm tomorrow’s aches.”
Her eyes surely upon him, he continued rubbing the salve into various places known to give him trouble the day after a race—his shoulders…the small of his back…the muscles of his neck. What he didn’t have to do was take quite as much time and care with the task.
She was watching—and possibly liking what she was seeing.
Her voice pierced the quiet. “There’s a bruise you missed.”
For the first time since she’d undressed and since he’d undressed, Liam allowed himself to look at her. She was propped onto her side, strawberry-blonde hair loose and spilling around her, silvery-blue eyes unflinching upon him behind her spectacles.
Her spectacles had returned to her face.
“Can’t get them all.” A habit, his affable flippancy to matters of seriousness.
That flippancy had no effect on her. Before another second could tick into the next, she pushed to her feet and was across the room, her hand extended for the pot of salve. “Here, allow me.”
He extended the salve, despite the refusal that should’ve issued from his mouth.
She moved behind him—and the world went still.
Yes, the celebration to end all celebrations was presently roaring in the taproom below, bouncing through floorboards, but that world fell away, distant and muted. In this room, his skin awakened with anticipation…alive to the inevitability of her touch.
It wasn’t only his skin that had gone alive to possibility.
His cock, half-mast and poised for full turgidity, also held aspirations.
A fingertip that held the hint of a tremble touched the center of his back, just to the left of his spine. He sucked in a rough breath. She stilled her finger. “Does that hurt?”
“No,” grated across his gravelly throat.
Her finger resumed its progress, and the entirety of his consciousness lost its ability to concern itself with anything other than that half-inch pad touching him—skin against skin.
He groaned.
Her finger stopped.
He nearly groaned again.
Temptation beckoned. To beg her to keep going, to use the entirety of her hand, while she was at it, to dig in deep…
No.
He gave a loud, abrupt clearing of his throat. “Thank you.” His voice still sounded like it had been dragged down a long, gravel drive.
Her hand fell away.
And here was another groan that wanted airing—from the loss of her touch.
He remained still while she returned to her pallet. Then he extinguished the candle and took himself to that too-large bed, where he lay on his back, arms behind his head, and stared up at the ceiling, midnight shadows frolicking across the whitewash as the downstairs carousing raged on.
But it wasn’t the night’s revelries or sore muscles or his lack of a pillow that would keep him awake all the hours that remained of this night.
It was the woman presently occupying a six-by-two patch of his floor.
Well, her effect on him.
And his stubborn erection.
That, too, would hold him hostage to the sleepless hours that remained between now and dawn.