to leave and sat up in the neat little tent bed, holding every muscle and sinew tense and still in the hope he would go. Something about the silence on the other side of the door told her he was still there, but a woman could always hope.
‘Why the devil are you unpacking Eve’s things when one of the maids could do it if Bran is busy?’
‘I...’ She ground to a halt and told herself if she hadn’t slept so deeply and so stupidly in the middle of a working day she might be able to find an answer that would satisfy him somewhere in her befuddled brain.
‘Cat got your tongue?’ he growled and was that really a thread of laughter in his deep voice?
Impossible—Lord Farenze and Mrs Wheaton had nothing to laugh about. There was no level of intimacy to put a hint of smoky amusement in his voice. She’d imagined it and now her inner Chloe was busy imagining more than she ought to all over again. Such as how it might feel to wake up in his bed with her mind misted with sleep and loving, then share the closeness of lovers with him as he teased her back to full awareness of where she was, and who she was with, in his own unique fashion.
‘No, it’s still in perfect working order,’ she managed to reply as if she was merely too busy to argue with him.
‘Then come out here and talk to me face to face; I refuse to hold a conversation through inches of fine mahogany.’
‘I can’t, I’m far too busy today, my lord,’ she managed and heard the note of panic in her voice as she sensed him stepping closer to the door in question and about to discover her sitting here in a state of scandalous disarray.
‘No doubt but, since I’m master here now, you must deal with me sooner or later. Far better to get the plans we must make for the next few days out of the way as soon as possible and rub along as best we can, rather than skirt round the subject all week and send the staff spinning about in opposite directions between us.’
He sounded as reluctant to have that discussion as she was, so why couldn’t he put it off until he was rested from his journey and she was back in her buttoned-up gown with her wretched hair wound safely under a neat cap and hidden away with feral Chloe, who so badly wanted to respond to him in every way a woman could?
‘Very well, my lord, I will meet you downstairs as soon as I have finished here,’ she said and heard the waver of uncertainty in her own voice.
Her reluctance to confront him with the memory of sitting here half-naked and all he could have been to her, if everything was different, wobbled in her too breathy voice. She didn’t dare stir in case he heard the rustle of crisply laundered sheets and realised she was in bed. Sitting frozen and speechless, she gasped in horror when he finally lost patience and thrust the door open.
Time seemed to stretch and waver as he strode into the little room then stopped dead, as if a wicked witch’s spell had frozen him in his tracks. He stood staring hungrily back at her and how could she fool herself everything that could have been between them was dead now?
He should turn and walk away of course; leave her to blush and squirm and be furious with herself for giving in to exhaustion and his daughter’s urgings to rest. He didn’t, though, and it was there in his eyes, the might be. Not a never, but a might be; a dangerous chance of more between master and servant than there ought to be.
A detached part of her seemed to be looking down on them; speculating how two rational human beings could look so much like codfish and still stare rapt into each other’s eyes as if they’d longed for the sight of the other all unguarded for the years they’d been apart. The rest couldn’t even find the presence of mind to squirm down in her bed and hide her disarray.
Now he looked like all the robber barons who founded his mighty dynasty rolled into one as he stood stock still, so vividly present he seemed to suck the air out of the room along with her common sense. Like a very well-dressed statue of a warrior prince, that annoying wanton Chloe remarked, would he was a little less still and a lot less well dressed. ‘Be quiet!’ she whispered, then covered her mouth. She couldn’t believe she was arguing with her wicked inner self with him in the room. Perhaps she really was going mad?
A wistful hope she might wake up and find she’d dreamt him made the tension drain out of her muscles for all of half a minute. Nobody could dream muscular, powerful, intimidating Lord Farenze when he was all too present. He was a living, breathing human being, staring at her as if being torn by a raging tumult of contrary emotions as well. There just wasn’t enough dreaming in the world to conjure up a man like him, here, locked in this particular moment with her.
‘I didn’t say a word,’ he managed in a rusty voice that sounded forced out.
‘Not you.’
‘You have a lover hidden under the bed?’ he barked as if he thought her everything a woman shouldn’t be if she wanted to retain her self-respect.
His hot eyes dwelt on her wildly flushed cheeks, shocked and hazy eyes and the tumble of hot gold curls she knew were in nearly as big a tangle as her tongue.
‘No room,’ he mused more softly and let his gaze explore the little room as if he’d never seen one like it before and saw the exposed space under the high little bed with what looked suspiciously like satisfaction, ‘nor a second door for a coward to escape through if he was in danger of being found and the closet’s not big enough.’
‘I don’t have a lover.’
Now she sounded like an outraged stage heroine and Chloe thought it as well he couldn’t see her toes curling under the bedclothes. His black brows rose and a smile of cynical appreciation she assured herself she would like to slap off his face kicked up his mouth and made him look nigh irresistible for a breathless moment.
‘Any man who saw you thus would be your slave as soon as he could persuade you into his eager arms. Say the word and we’ll adjourn to my own lonely and echoing suite along the hallway,’ he offered half-seriously.
‘Never, never, never,’ she shot back at him, spine rigid and chin high.
He couldn’t know she burned for his touch. Even the tips of her toes seared her with a need to be kissed and seduced that made a lie of her conviction there could never be anything between them, after she’d angrily informed him she would rather die than become his mistress ten years ago.
And he just stood there; let his complex grey gaze play over her as if she had been arranged here especially for his pleasure. He wanted her, the need in his complicated eyes was as real as the hot rush of heat between her legs. She clamped them together under the sheets then instantly regretted it as the movement drew his attention to the fact her breasts had rounded and peaked under the inadequate fine lawn chemise.
‘Oh, come now, ma’am,’ he gritted, as if her denial made him angry as finding her half-naked in Bran’s bed when she should be working had not. ‘We have a decade worth of wanting on the slate between us. Sooner or later we’ll have an accounting.’
‘No, there isn’t and, no, we won’t,’ she informed him as furiously as she could when sitting here nearly naked.
She could hardly thrust the bedclothes aside and run away when her legs would refuse to carry her and where would she run to without scandalising half the household and any guests who happened to be standing about with their mouths open?
‘I may be a fool, Mrs Wheaton, but not such a one I’m prepared to pretend to you that passion
