to meeting you,’ he replied. ‘I must warn you, though, she’s very thin and she’s lost all of her hair through the chemotherapy. So try not to look shocked when you walk in. Rebecca might only be seven but she’s very much a girl, and very sensitive to her appearance.’
Marina’s heart turned over. ‘Oh, the poor little love,’ she murmured.
The Earl of Winterborne gave a very un-earl-like sigh. It carried a weariness born of worry and grief, plus a type of resignation which came from feeling totally helpless. Marina understood perfectly what he was going through, because that was how she had felt while her mother had been dying of cancer. It was the reason why Marina had put herself on the bone marrow register. Because she’d wanted to give someone else hope where there had been none for her mother—or herself.
‘Yes. Yes, that sums Rebecca up entirely,’ he agreed. His face had grown as bleak as his voice, and his hand dropped away from Marina’s elbow. The suitcase was lowered to the floor once more. ‘She’s had little enough love in her life so far. And little enough luck. But that’s been the way with things at Winterborne Hall for quite some time.’
Marina found herself reaching out to put a comforting hand on his nearest sleeve. His handsome head dipped slowly to glance down, first at her hand on his arm and then up into her sympathetic gaze.
‘Let’s hope my coming will turn the tables, then, shall we?’ she said softly, giving his arm a gentle squeeze before letting it fall back to her side.
He stared at her in silence for ages. Or so it seemed. It was probably only a few seconds.
A thousand emotions seemed to flitter across his face, none staying long enough for her to gauge properly. But she was left with the impression of a deep distress, one which was disturbing him greatly.
‘I would like to think so,’ he said staunchly at long last. ‘But I have a feeling that might not be the case. They say things are sent to try us,’ he added in a strangely bitter tone. ‘To test our characters. I can see that the next few days are going to test mine to the limit.’
Marina was not sure what he meant. Had the doctors already given up all real hope for the child? Was her own trip over here a waste of time, as Shane had suggested? She wondered what other misfortunes had befallen his family lately. Marina suspected he had more on his mind than the health of the child. The Earl of Winterborne clearly had many burdens on his shoulders.
But they were very broad shoulders, she noted when he bent to pick up her suitcase a third time and began to stride off with it. She wondered if they would look as good without the suit. If they were mostly padding or real.
Marina frowned as she trotted after him. This was the second time in as many minutes that her mind had swung unexpectedly to the physical where this man was concerned. It wasn’t like her to have thoughts such as this. Well, not till recently, anyway, and certainly not about any man other than Shane.
Not that she’d had anything to do with any man other than Shane lately. She’d taken compassionate leave from her teaching position after her mother’s death and had stayed at home ever since, helping Shane with the administrative side of running the riding school. For the last few weeks her life had revolved around her fiancé and the astonishing things he could make her feel.
Her frown deepened as she tried to make sense of her unbidden responses to the Earl of Winterborne. Was her recent sexual awakening able to be transferred to any attractive man who came along? Had she turned into an ogler of male flesh? A female fantasiser?
The prospect appalled her. She’d never liked the way some women talked about men and sex all the time when they were together, as though there was nothing else in their lives. Or the way they stared openly at certain parts of the male anatomy.
Marina’s eyes drifted down from those broad shoulders to where Lord Winterborne’s suit jacket outlined what looked like a nicely shaped derrière.
You’re doing it now, that annoyingly honest voice piped in her head—the one which Marina could never deny.
And enjoying it, another sarcastic voice inserted slyly.
The first voice came to the rescue with a vengeance.
And what’s wrong with looking? it challenged belligerently. There’s no harm in looking!
She wants to do more than look. She’d like to touch, too. She’d like to see if an English earl makes love like an Aussie stablehand. She’d like to—
‘Oh, do shut up!’ she muttered aloud.
‘Pardon?’ The object of her mental warring glanced over his shoulder, slowing his stride at the same time.
Marina almost cannoned right into him. She stopped herself just in time, rocking backwards and forwards on her toes as she hitched the tapestry bag higher on her shoulder for added balance.
‘Nothing,’ she said with a blithe and decidedly false innocence. There was definitely nothing innocent going on in her mind at that moment. ‘Just talking to myself.’
‘You do that often?’ His drily amused smile did wickedly attractive things to his mouth. Marina decided she preferred him dead serious.
‘All the time,’ she admitted, wrenching her mind back from the path to hell with great difficulty. ‘I was an only child, and only children often talk to themselves. I used to talk to a tea-towel as well.’
‘A tea-towel?’ He laughed, and Marina gritted her teeth. Laughing did to his whole face what that smile had done to his mouth: transformed it from merely handsome to lethally sexy.
‘Why a tea-towel? Why not a doll? Or a teddy?’
Marina pulled a face. ‘It’s difficult to explain. The tea-towel wasn’t another person, or a pretend friend. It was me. Or another side of me. My…secret side.’
‘Sounds fascinating. Do you still talk to tea-towels?’ he asked as he walked on, more slowly this time, so that she fell into step with him by his side.
‘Not since I was eighteen.’
‘What happened to you at eighteen?’
‘I left home to go to teacher’s college. I didn’t think my new flatmates would indulge my peculiarities like my mother did. Since then, any conversations with my secret side take place in my head.’
He slanted a thoughtful glance across at her. ‘And how often do these conversations take place?’
‘Not that often nowadays.’ But she had an awful feeling they were about to pick up frequency.
‘Do you tell anyone about them?’
‘Lord, no!’
‘Not even your fiancé?’
Marina hesitated a fraction.
‘That is an engagement ring on your finger, isn’t it?’
‘Yes.’ Marina had pretty well decided on the flight over that she’d blown the incident before leaving home way out of proportion, that of course she loved Shane and wanted to marry him. But her responses to the man standing before her had shaken that conviction anew.
