making her face him. The moment he’d touched her, she’d gone so weak in the knees that she’d had to lock them. Then the warm, weak feeling transferred to her hips, up her back, and into her throat, suffusing her with a warmth and sense of security she’d never known or believed existed.
“You dinna’ look in your mirrors oft, do you?” he asked softly.
A bit of her realized he was about to kiss her; a larger bit wondered at the reality of it, while the largest portion was still in shock. It had to be. That’s what had her standing so still, holding her breath as she waited, making it easy.
Vincent hovered above her, a slight smile on his handsome features and his lips pursed in an expression she had now memorized.
The thudding of her heart got louder, deeper, more strident, and then he was lifting his head with a heavy sigh and looking over his shoulder as he released her to answer the knock.
The apothecary cabinet rocked slightly with her weight as she fell against it. Sybil was eternally grateful that he was already answering her door and wouldn’t have heard it. Nor would he have seen her legs crumpling beneath her. She’d gained her feet before he opened the door a fraction and peered out and was working on getting her composure in the same state when he turned from contemplation of the hall and closed the door again.
“What is it?”
“A serf. Appears they’re requesting you. In the hall.”
“I dinna’ hear anything.”
“You canna’ hear anything, because yon serf will na’ venture farther than the top of the steps and whispers his orders from there.”
“He whispered?”
“He dinna’ wish to disturb your dragon at his feast. I’m different. And I have great hearing.”
Sybil tilted her head to one side and peered up at him.
“What?” he asked.
“Did he say why?”
“He dinna’ say much. He does na’ appear fond of your hall. Again.” He lifted his shoulders in a shrug of motion. “I canna’ fash why. I found it comfortable enough.”
“You did?”
“Aye. And warm, once my body heated the stone floor enough.”
“Liar.”
“Ah, lady. I dinna’ lie. Not in truth. I make light of circumstances that I canna’ change, and turn to it with humor to make it palatable.”
“Why?”
“It beats the other.”
“Other?” she asked.
“Dinna’ tell me you dinna’ do the same. I’ll na’ believe it.”
“You speak riddles.”
“Good. Now go. See what they request of you. And then hurry back to me.”
“I’m na’ leaving you in my chamber!” Her voice rose on the last of her words, making him look at her with one eyebrow cocked high. That look was close to sealing off her throat. He did it on purpose. He knew the effect! The man was becoming a thorn in her side, and that was the last thing she needed.
Sybil required an orderly, structured life where she controlled every moment. That’s what she’d always had. This man was already getting past that.
He’d given up the eyebrow-raised look and had pursed his lips again, narrowing his cheeks and making her heart stumble through two beats before she had it covered over. Her thoughts were scrambling, and her pulse was impossible to control, and she even had her hands fisted at her sides. This was horrid. The man was horrid.
It was wondrous, too.
“I dinna’ see that you have any option,” he finally replied.
“To what?” she asked.
“My continued presence in your rooms.”
Sybil blinked several times. She was losing in this confrontation. That never happened. It was inconceivable, impossible…. But there it was.
“Remember?” he said in the vast silence that had only the sound of her rapid breathing punctuating it.
Sybil nodded. Better to retreat and regroup. And with his continued smile, she knew the wretch was following her train of thought.
“You’re na’ to touch anything,” she said.
“You intending to send the dragon after me again, are you?”
“Nothing. I’ll na’ have my possessions touched and handled by a…”
His grin widened as her voice stopped. “I’ve been called every name, my lady. You canna’ improve upon them, nor can you inflict harm. As I already mentioned, you are up against a master.”
“I’ll ken if you touch anything.” Sybil scanned the room for the peg she always hung her cloak from. Which was odd. Of course it wouldn’t be anywhere else. The fact that she’d worried over it was another strange event in a short evening of them. She crossed the room to where he’d been standing and passed him as he made the exact same move to where she’d just been. Their eyes locked as they did so, but neither of them moved their heads to continue it. She was just reaching for her cloak when he spoke again.
“Do you have a pallet I can stretch out upon?”
Sybil forced the instant reaction away and turned, swirling the cloak about herself as she did so. Imagining him stretched out was going to be imprinted on her mind. She just wished she could overwrite her own imagination with a torture rack to stretch him out the proper amount. And then some.
She had a slight smile on her face that froze when she saw him patting the white coverlet on her own bed. With his bare hands! Sybil sucked in the shock, and then had to deal with what had to be anger.
“This might do…although ’tis short.” He said it as he stretched full-out on her bed—without even doffing his boots, which was a moot point since the bottom of him was hanging over the end of her mattress. Sybil watched as the slight, carved wood contended with his weight and used the time to wrap her cloak securely about her and tie it with a precision and tautness that was going to have to be loosened the moment she stepped from the chamber. She turned a deaf ear to his chuckle as he watched.
“You’ll na’ leave me unattended long, will you? I’ve a horrid injury. I’ll need your touch. And I’d like a bit of your gravy, too, I’m thinking.”
He was lifting his arms up, showing the tanned size of them as he looped them about pillows covered with white linen she’d embroidered with such care that it was impossible to spot the stitches. And then she had to deal with how that violation felt as well.
“’Twas terribly difficult to recover from my injury in yon hall, Lady Sybil….”
His voice had softened as if he were exhausted,
