‘What is the peninsula in the distance?’ she asked as the sun lit up a long low tongue of land to their left.
‘The Eddington Finger,’ he said promptly. ‘Though my great-great-grandfather always called it “Return Home Bay.” The last sight of Falder lands as he left the coast, I suppose. He was a sailor with a love for adventure.’
He stopped as they cantered down on to the sand and dismounted and the image of an old duke naming the place made Emerald laugh.
‘What was his name? Your great-great-grandfather’s name,’ she qualified when he looked puzzled.
‘Ashland. My father was Ashborne and his father Ashton, all derivatives of the original family name of Ashalan. It is tradition.’
‘Tradition.’ Longing welled on her face. She was certain he must have seen it and was surprised when he smiled. It made him look younger, as young as he had looked on his ship off Turks Island with the sea winds at his back. As young as the man staring out from the portrait in the small salon with a loving wife on his arm.
Desire snaked through caution and she was shocked by the heavy hammering of her heart. She, who had been around men all her life. Handsome men. Dangerous men. But none like this one. None who had haunted her dreams for five long years with his velvet eyes and night-black hair. None who spoke of a family name that they could trace back through the generations and whose ancestral seat rivalled that of any lord of the realm.
Responsibility and place.
A combination that became all the more appealing with the land of his birth at his back and the full blue day upon his face. Her own shifting lifestyle completed the equation. What must it be like to have your children run in the same fields as their children and their children’s children? Oh, tradition was sweet when you had never had it.
The silence between them stretched in an endless vacuum as he helped her dismount and she felt a breathless shiver of wonder. Did he feel it too? How could he not? She was shocked at her thoughts, shocked at the sheer bald desire for his touch. Schooling herself to wait as he tethered the horses to a branch, she was surprised at his first question.
‘What were you doing in the blue salon last night, Lady Emma?’
‘Last night?’ She hoped the slight catch in her voice would be interpreted as chagrin rather than the bone-deep fear she was suddenly consumed with.
‘Last night when you slipped through the rooms of my house in the guise of one suspiciously similar to the description my sister gave of Liam Kingston.’ He was very still.
‘I am not certain what you mean.’ With her back against the wall she couldn’t afford to give an inch.
He changed tack, easily. Distrust coated his words and was seen in the hard planes of his face. ‘What is it you want from me?’
‘Want from you? Nothing, your Grace. And there is a simple explanation for last night. I have never slept well since my father’s passing. Sometimes in the dead of night I wander…’
‘Dressed as a boy and moving in and out of the house like a shadow. I think not.’
One hand encircled her wrist and she felt the same bolt of awareness that she was almost becoming used to in his company.
‘Are you a thief?’ he asked quietly, his thumb caressing the sensitive skin at her wrist.
‘No.’ The touch of his breath across the sensitive folds of her neck nearly undid her.
‘A spy, then? Who sent you here?’ His fingers tightened. Not a harsh hold, but a tempered one. She knew he must feel the hammering pulse beneath his fingers.
‘No one.’ She could barely get the words out.
‘I do not believe you, but if you are in trouble I could help.’
It was the last thing she had expected him to say.
He hardly knew her and yet here he was offering his assistance. Another responsibility. Another needy supplicant. Another duty on top of all his other duties. Pride made her shake her head and she saw a distinct flicker of relief.
‘You are a guest here at Falder and my sister would be disappointed, no doubt, if I packed you off before your due date of departure. But if you sleepwalk again, Lady Emma, take warning, for I shall not be as lenient as I have been this time. Do I make myself clear?’
‘Perfectly.’
‘Then I’m glad of it.’ Again, his thumb traced the blue veins on the thin skin of her wrist and she felt her world throb. When she looked up, there was muted calculation in his eyes and a worm of worry niggled.
Had he used the caress as a means to an end by underlining his threat with a promise? Admiration surfaced in equal proportions with ire. Such cunning would not be out of place on board the Mariposa, for with it he had gained exactly what he wanted.
And all without raising a finger. She was too much her father’s daughter not to applaud his craftiness.
Taking her reins when he offered them back, she walked her horse down towards the water, the mist of salt enveloping the beach with an opaque whiteness. A wilder bay than she was used to, and colder. Shivering, she bent to pick up a shell and the sound inside as she raised it to her ear was exactly the same as it was at home.
For a second she felt displaced, uncertain, lost in the pull of what had been taken from her, and drawn to the man who now came to stand beside her, his cheeks lightly spattered with the mist of ocean. If she had been braver, she might have leant forward and touched the wetness, felt the swell of cheek beneath her fingers, and understood what it was that she could now only guess at. But she was not brave. Not like that. Not here with the wide brim of her hat tugging in the wind and the fullness of her riding skirt unfamiliar around her legs.
Don’t. Don’t. Don’t.
She recited the word over again and again beneath her breath, trying to incite some sort of sense in her actions. Trying to make herself step back from him, out of reach, out of harm, out of temptation. But when his thumb came up to caress the sensitive skin on her bottom lip, she closed her eyes and just felt.
For once.
For this once.
For the time it took to run her tongue across the length of skin and bring his flesh into her mouth.
‘Lord, what you do to me.’ The darkness in his eyes was bottomless as his lips slanted down across her own, the hunger in them easily definable in the afternoon grey. Just the two of them with the damp rivulets of water running beneath her feet, and the green lands of England all around. Just the two of them coming together along the full lines of their bodies and pressing hard.
And then there was nothing.
No today or yesterday, or tomorrow with its sharp uncertainty.
Just him. Just the warmth of skin against the cool of the rain and the burning fiery want that consumed her. She did not notice when he cast aside her hat, loosening the curls to his touch. All she knew was urgency and want and need.
A man’s touch.
