want to talk. His need for her had pushed him beyond that but still the bitterness in him could not be denied. His voice was harsh. “Four years ago I asked you to elope with me and instead you laughed at me and threw me from the house. It was clear that you did not wish for any emotional entanglement.”
“No, I did not…” Her voice caught. “But I did not intend you to interpret that as a desire for an affair.”
“No?” His anger increased by several notches. It seemed as uncontrollable as his need for her and his lack of restraint only served to inflame him further.
“So all you sought was one night of passion,” he said bitterly. “I realize that when your appetite was slaked you wanted nothing other than for me to leave.”
He did not give her the opportunity to reply. His delusion of self-restraint vanished and he bent his head and kissed her, determined now to prove that there was nothing unique or exceptional in his response to her and there never had been.
As soon as they touched he knew he had lost.
His mouth slanted over hers with the same precise perfection that he remembered. They matched as though they were made for one another. Their bodies came together gently, flawlessly, with the same exquisite sense of rightness as before.
The thought knocked the breath from Dexter’s body as powerfully as any physical reaction. There was no uncertainty between them. Their bodies recognized each other with an instinct older than time. The sense of belonging together was strong and dangerously seductive. Old feelings and emotions started to awaken.
“This is how it was always meant to be…”
Dexter knew that such thoughts and emotions were an illusion. They had to be. He might achieve physical bliss with Laura Cole but there was no more to it than that. There was no real sense of rightness, no belonging, no love. Love was a misnomer for infatuation anyway, and he was too old and experienced to feel that now. But in trying to banish the need he felt for her all he had managed to achieve was to awaken every last yearning, every last desire. He ached with the need for satisfaction. He wanted Laura so much it actually hurt. He closed his mind to complicated emotion and allowed himself simply to feel.
He deepened the kiss, coaxing her lips apart, his tongue sliding inside to search and caress and seduce. She tasted sweet as honey. He sensed a hesitation in her beneath the hot, helpless response that she could not deny, and he almost drew back, but a moment later her uncertainty had gone and she pressed closer against him, meeting his demands with a heated need of her own. Her hands slid across his bare chest, raising sensations in him that roused a firestorm of physical desire. This was the secret duchess that he remembered, the woman who responded to him without fear or modesty, who gave all of herself, in contradiction of her cool public persona, and aroused an answering ache of need in him. He had wondered if he had imagined their response to one another or if, in his innocence, he had made it more powerful and extraordinary than it really was. Yet now there was the same cascade of sensation and emotion, an explosion of feeling, sparks of fire in his blood. He was not a fanciful man but the force of it almost swept him away.
But as he reached for her to draw her closer still, she drew back with a gasp.
“No! I cannot do this.” She took a step back and raised one hand to her forehead. A frown dented the smooth skin between her brows as though she had a sudden headache. “I do not want this.”
Some of the white-hot fever eased within him and this time when Dexter made a determined effort to regain rational control, he succeeded. He too took a step back, his hands falling to his sides. So it seemed that what had felt so real, so right to him had been no more than an illusion. Once again it had meant nothing to her.
“Forgive me,” he said with biting sarcasm, “but I was under the impression that you kissed me back, your grace. Were you merely curious to see if all that whorehouse experience had changed me?”
She flinched. The color flooded her cheeks. Her lips were deep pink and slightly swollen from his kisses and she pressed a hand to them. “I have my reputation to consider,” she said steadily. “Fortune’s Folly is a small place and I cannot afford to lose my good name—”
Dexter laughed. “You were not so careful of it last time and I would swear you still want me.”
She bit her lip hard. “That is beside the point. There is more at stake now.”
“You are no more than a hypocrite,” Dexter said brutally. “You always were concerned for nothing but outward show.” The anger licked through his blood. He was in danger of making the same mistakes all over again and being carried away by his lust. His self-restraint where Laura Cole was concerned seemed as wafer-thin as before. He wondered bitterly why it took him so long to learn. Sanity was clearing his mind now and with it came a mixture of fury and perplexity that he had even thought of pursuing her again. He was in Fortune’s Folly for work and also to swallow his pride and find a rich, conformable wife who would fit into his life without causing any trouble. He did not want to behave in a way that reminded him of his parents’ disastrous indiscretions. The thought of such emotional incontinence made him feel cold to the bones. He had put all that behind him.
He grabbed his wet shirt and forced his feet into his soaking boots, wincing as the leather creaked in protest. “I won’t trouble you for those spare clothes,” he said. “I’ll walk back as I am.”
“Like that? From my house?” Laura was clearly taken aback.
It gave him the greatest pleasure to provoke her. “Indeed. If anyone gossips you may tell them that I have been fixing your medieval plumbing.”
“You are absurd.”
“And as I have said, you were always concerned with preserving public propriety when beneath the surface you broke every rule.” He gave her a brusque nod. “Good day, your grace.”
“Mr. Anstruther.” Her voice halted him before he reached the door and he stopped, deploring the fact that even now a part of him wanted her to call him back, back into her arms, back into her bed.
“I think it would be better,” she said, “if we avoided each other in future.”
That was going to be the devil of a problem in a small village like Fortune’s Folly but Dexter was not going to argue. In fact he would do his utmost to oblige her. He wanted to keep out of her way and forget that anything had ever occurred between them though he knew it would be the devil’s own job to do so.
“Of course,” he said. “It will be my pleasure.”
This time he walked out on her without being invited to leave.
Chapter Four
HE HAD CHANGED. The Dexter Anstruther she had known before would never have spoken, acted or behaved like that. He had become a man who was hard, experienced and cynical. And she had taken her part in making him so.
Laura, her soaking gown and underclothes changed for a clean, dry set, sat before her mirror combing the tangles out of her hair. Her body still hummed gently, frustratingly, with a pulse of thwarted desire. Her breasts felt heavy and full and her whole body was flushed with arousal. Woken from four years of celibacy, it was demanding satisfaction.
With an uncharacteristic impatience, she slammed the comb down on the dressing table. Damn Dexter Anstruther! It would
