had no effect on her silly heartbeat.
‘I like your waif, Marcus.’
‘You liked every pretty female you ever set eyes on.’
‘Well, they like me,’ he replied smugly.
Thea chuckled and got a penetrating stare from his cousin that she met with proud contempt, in case he thought her susceptible.
‘Will the Captain be fit to ride tomorrow?’ she asked at last.
‘He wasn’t fit today, but that didn’t stop him.’
‘You’ll be on your way at first light, then?’
Marcus frowned. ‘I shall be, but I hope you’ll stay while I fetch our cousin’s carriage to take him to Rosecombe.’
‘To the Park?’
‘Yes, do you know it?’
‘I saw it on my way,’ she said casually, trying not to sound wistful.
From the road she had caught a glimpse of the beautiful neo-classical mansion through still-bare trees and thought it everything she could never have. Elegance and harmony, she thought now, and the protection of a loving family. These two men were inside that family, and she could not keep a twist of bitterness from her lips.
‘You dislike the aristocracy?’
‘No, I just wish they’d give me a job in one of their grand houses, but no respectable family employs a vagrant maid.’
‘Oddest vagrant I ever set eyes on,’ Nick observed faintly from his makeshift mattress.
‘Oh, for heaven’s sake, go to sleep,’ his loving relative ordered sharply.
‘Don’t see how I can with you gossiping.’
‘I’m going out, so I suggest you recruit your strength. Lydia won’t be best pleased with you as it is, without working yourself into a high fever.’
‘No, the little darling will no doubt give me the scold of my life.’
‘Then get some sleep, instead of fantasising over Cousin Ned’s wife.’
‘Got to be fresh tomorrow to greet the flower of the regiment,’ Nick said irrepressibly and closed his eyes at last.
After a few minutes they heard his breathing deepen and knew he was genuinely asleep at last. Marcus put a finger to his lips and quit the room with a significant nod at his patient.
Did he think she would make a bolt for the open road in the middle of the night then? Thea tried hard not to feel insulted. It seemed that the rifleman’s trust was hard won, and she wanted it for some reason. Which was ridiculous, she decided, stoking the fire from a dwindling reserve of logs before she sat against the wall next to the primitive fireplace.
The rifleman’s bedroll was under his cousin along with his own. Their cloaks lay over him, with Thea’s cherished blanket, but she didn’t expect to sleep. It wouldn’t hurt her or the Major to pass the night in a draughty shed, but their patient was a very different matter. She focused her tired eyes on the pallid oval of his sleeping face. She was supposed to be watching him, not thinking about his arrogant cousin.
Hours later, Thea felt someone shake her gently and came awake, panic stark in her startled face. Gracious! She was leaning confidingly against Marcus Ashfield’s mighty torso. No, she had snuggled into his warmth like a shameless hussy in her lover’s arms. Thea tried to put as much space as possible between them and her hair promptly fell out of the knot held in place by her diminishing supply of hairpins.
‘If you have a particle of sense you’ll hold still, if you don’t want to make me into the rogue you seem determined to cast me as,’ Marcus gritted as if an armful of bedraggled woman fighting sleep represented limitless temptation.
Finally realising her dishevelled state, she flushed and shook her head to try and clear it of the nonsense his coming upon her last night seemed to have stuffed it with, and felt her heavy locks fan out in an untidy cloak that threatened to enmesh them both.
‘Why?’ she managed to whisper at last, nodding at his scandalously positioned arms.
‘For warmth,’ he said abruptly and her heart sank ridiculously.
‘Of course,’ she mumbled and rubbed sleepy eyes before stretching against his muscular chest, feeling a terrible temptation to rub up against him like a luxuriating cat.
‘I could not have you catch your death, Miss Smith.’
‘No, I would be for ever on your conscience, I suppose.’
‘I think you could be anyway,’ he replied with a sombre look and Thea’s heart plummeted; she didn’t want to be numbered among an officer’s obligations, especially not his.
‘I’m an independent woman,’ she informed him crossly and felt him chuckle through the warm connection of their still-entwined bodies.
‘You’re a penniless runaway,’ he corrected and the growing daylight revealed that his grey eyes were shot through with hot silver sparks she should definitely be wary of, since excitement and curiosity were coursing through her in the most immodest fashion.
‘I still have my pride,’ she assured him crossly.
‘Does it keep you warm at night?’ he asked huskily and the feel of his superbly fit body lying so close said the rest for him.
He had kept her warm all through the night, and for the first time in her life she felt the traitorous stir of passions she did not understand, and could not hope to resist if she spent much longer in his arms.
‘No, but it ain’t so likely to land me back at the foundling’s in nine months’ time.’
‘I told you I honour my obligations, I believe,’ he informed her rather coldly and in turn shook his head as if to clear it of incendiary thoughts. ‘I must apologise if I have behaved in an ungentlemanly fashion toward you, Miss Smith. I promise I am not a vile seducer.’
No, a wayward voice informed her, he would probably prove all too pleasant a one. She tried to rein in scandalous images of being locked in his strong arms, and learning things a proper young lady would never picture. Her baser self told her that if she was to lose her virtue, how much better to do so to a virile and attractive man like Marcus Ashfield rather than Granby. She shuddered at the memory of the night she spent in the dissolute baronet’s bedchamber, and tried not to protest when Marcus misinterpreted her revulsion and let her go, as if he had just unwarily touched a burning brand.
‘Will you stay?’ he asked abruptly.
‘How long will you be gone?’
‘I should reach Rosecombe by breakfast time, if I set off now. Unless yon lunatic wakes up and insists on coming too.’
The subject of lunatics reminded her what she was running from, and panic threatened, heedless of the injured man only feet away. Fighting it cost her a bruised lip as she bit down on her full lower one, but she managed it and looked up
