he collapsed onto the bed beside her. She tried to draw air deep into her lungs, to breathe again. She held onto Ian tightly. She didn’t want to let him go yet, she didn’t want the cold world outside to encroach on this dream. It frightened her how much she had forgotten everything else here in his arms.
She felt him bury his face in her shoulder and press his lips on her damp, trembling skin. His arm looped over her waist, almost as if he didn’t want to let her go either.
Cassandra sighed and glanced at the window. It was still night-dark outside, but the falling snow cast an other-worldly silver glow. She stroked the sweat-damp strands of his hair and felt the softness of his breath on her bare skin. She closed her eyes, wanting to cling to him and flee all at the same time. What had she done?
“I should go back to my chamber,” she murmured.
Ian’s arm tightened around her. “Stay. Just for a little while longer. Please, Cassie.”
Just a little while longer. She wanted to stay forever just like this, wrapped in his arms. But he had left her before, after just a kiss.
Now that she knew the full force of his passion, and her fiery response to it, how could she lose him again?
Chapter Four
The light from the window pierced through Ian’s dreams, pulling him up out of the darkest, most peaceful sleep he could ever remember having. He groaned and rolled onto his back, throwing his forearm over his eyes to block that icy-white light.
The rumpled sheet slid low on his naked hips and he caught a hint of lilac perfume from the soft linen folds. Cassie. It hadn’t been a dream. It had been wonderfully real, Cassandra under his body as he slid over her, inside of her, as she came apart with pleasure around him.
“Cassie,” he called as he pushed himself up. But the bedchamber was empty and cold.
Ian rubbed his hand over his bristled jaw. Maybe it was a dream, born of the lust he had tried to suppress for her for so long? Yet his body felt relaxed with the perfect satisfaction that only came from sex, and there was that perfume. No dream could be that vivid.
He had to find Cassie.
Ian swung his legs off the bed and stretched. Pillows and blankets were tossed on the floor in a haphazard pile. Under the edge of one cushion he glimpsed a crumpled pale blue dressing gown.
He picked it up and ran the soft fabric through his hands, remembering the way Cassandra’s skin felt under his caress, her hair sliding over him. Her soft sighs and cries as he brought her pleasure. The faint scent of her perfume rose from the silk folds and made him grow hard all over again.
Ian cursed and tossed the gown onto the bed, turning away to stride to the window. He braced his hands on the polished ledge and stared out at the cold, white scene below. Snowdrifts covered the gardens like a soft, pale blanket, and the trees were coated with ice that sparkled like diamonds in the gray-bright sunlight. It looked like a different world outside—a new, clean, bright fairyland where anything could happen. Even the impossible—like him winning Cassandra.
He closed his eyes and saw again the first time he glimpsed her. Ian was a man who liked women, who enjoyed their company, and they enjoyed his, as well. Yet he had never been in love. He couldn’t even imagine what love could feel like. There were too many lovely, fascinating women out there in the world for him to think of settling on one. He was simply enjoying his life far too much.
Then he was invited to his friend Charles’s wedding. Charles had always been the most serious of Ian’s friends, so it was no surprise he chose to marry so young, and to one of an impoverished country earl’s four daughters, too. Ian waited with the rest of the congregation in that country church on a hot summer day, the scent of roses heavy in the air, the mother of the bride crying happy tears in her pew as Charles smiled nervously at the altar. Ian had shifted in his seat, wondering if he could possibly make it to a party that night to meet with the luscious red-haired widow he’d had his eye on.
The church doors opened, and a young lady appeared there on her father’s arm. She wore yellow muslin and white lace, like a ray of summer sunshine brought into the stuffy church. Her dark hair was loose on her shoulders, crowned with a wreath of yellow flowers, and she smiled shyly as she studied the gathering.
That was the moment Ian knew love was possible in the world. When he looked at the woman who was about to marry his friend, and everything else went still.
He didn’t go find his widow after all. He spent that night getting quietly drunk.
In the years that followed, he pushed down and ignored his feelings, convinced himself they didn’t exist. He befriended Cassie, learned of her sweetness and intelligence, which only made her more beautiful. And he searched for solace in other beds, other pursuits. He almost convinced himself he didn’t care for Cassie in that way.
Until he kissed her in the rain, and all those feelings came roaring free. After making love to her, tasting her passion—passion that equaled his own—he couldn’t let her go. Even though he knew he should, that she deserved far better than a rogue like him.
He glanced back at her gown on the rumpled bed. She had run away from him last night. But he wouldn’t let her run for long.
Cassandra slid down low on the settee by the library fireplace and tried to concentrate on the book she held in her hands. She had thought she could hide in there, both from Melisande’s other guests and from her own worries over what she had done last night.
Everyone else was engaged in a wild game of hide-and-seek along the corridors and up in the attics, so they weren’t likely to look for her, especially in the library. But her own thoughts … those were harder to escape from.
Every time she looked at the page, she saw Ian’s face as he leaned down to kiss her. Instead of the warmth of the fire through her thin muslin gown she felt his touch. Last night had been wondrous, beyond anything she could ever have imagined. She had never known pleasure like that could exist in the world. And to find it with Ian …
Cassandra snapped the book shut with a sigh. Last night with Ian was perfect. But when she opened her eyes to the light of dawn and saw his peaceful, sleeping face on the pillow beside hers, she was beset with doubts and fears. What if it was too perfect? What if he turned away from her again?
So she fled to her own chamber, not even going back when she realized she’d left her dressing gown behind. She had to decide how to behave, what to say, when she saw Ian again. Running to him and throwing herself into his arms as she longed to do couldn’t be an option.
There was a soft knock at the door. Glad of a distraction, Cassandra called out, “Come in.”
It was Smithers, Melisande’s butler. He held a folded letter in one hand and her fur-lined cloak in the other. “I beg your pardon for the interruption, my lady, but this message came for you.”
“A message for me?” Cassandra said, puzzled. Who would be sending her letters here? Her sisters were all scattered about the countryside with their families for the holiday, her parents off at Brighton with the youngest. Surely nothing had happened to them?
Smithers gave her the note and she ripped it open. It was very short, written in a dark, spiky scrawl, and definitely not from her sisters.
Meet
