How did he do that? He didn’t even need to touch her. He didn’t even have to speak. Just a sweep of those intent eyes, and her nipples drew to tight points, chafing against the linen of her shift.
He noticed.
“It’s cold in here,” she said, inanely.
“Well,” he replied. “We can’t have that.”
Dash rose from the table and walked around it, coming to stand before her. The entire journey took three paces, but for Nora it was an eternity. Tension built between them. Her nipples were aching now, and a dull pulse throbbed at the juncture of her thighs.
Slowly, deliberately, he retrieved the quilt from where she’d tossed it aside, shook it out, and then draped it around her.
“There.” He tucked the blanket about her shoulders. “Better?”
She didn’t know how to answer. Her senses were muddled by the scents of brandy and leather and musk. She couldn’t stop staring at the gaping open collar of his shirt, and the intriguing whorls of dark hair it framed.
“Nora.” His voice was husky. Intimate. “If you think the idea of seducing you never crossed my mind, I assure you—you’re wrong. Quite wrong.”
“Then what stopped you?”
He took a step backward, breaking her trance. “My good breeding, of course.”
“Your good breeding. Please. What part of your good breeding was on display when we were in London?”
His mouth pulled to the side. “Yes, London. That was badly done of me, I’ll admit.”
“Badly done,” Nora parroted, mimicking his deep voice. “You promised my father you would look after me in Town. I waited three weeks at my aunt’s in Berkeley Square before you even deigned to call. And when you did, you appeared in her parlor unshaven and reeking of brandy. Worse, French perfume. But I forgave you everything because you were there, at last, and you invited me to a night at the theater with your friends.”
He rubbed a hand over his face.
“Finally, I thought. Here is the London season I dreamed about. You must know I never much cared for balls or dancing. I longed for culture. Experience. The opera, exhibitions, salons. I wanted to be a part of an exciting new circle of society, and you were my only way in. I spent four hours readying myself for that night. My best silk. New gloves. Every lock of hair in place.” She laughed at herself, remembering. “I so was worried about embarrassing you. I addressed my reflection in the mirror in German, French, Italian. I read the week’s newspapers, twice. And then . . .”
“And then I took you to the theater. Just as I’d promised.”
“Oh, yes. You did. We shared a box with your wastrel Oxford friends and their lightskirts. They rudely laughed and chattered through the entire first and second acts. You ignored me. I watched a woman in scarlet wedge a wine flute in her décolletage. And then I watched you drink from it.”
“I was a jackass that night. I know it.”
“I know you know it. You did it all on purpose, in public, in a calculated fashion, clearly with the aim of disappointing me. Wounding me. What I want to know is why.”
“You don’t already know why? You, who claim to know me better than I know myself?”
“I want to hear you say it.”
Dash was silent.
Her quiet fury only built. “My father made excuses for you, you know. When I returned home still weeping and humiliated, he tried to tell me you were hard-hit by Andrew’s death. You poor young man, how you must be grieving.”
“He was correct. I was grieving.”
“My mother consoled me, too. All men your age needed to sow a few wild oats, she said.”
“And your mother was right, as well. I was a man of two-and-twenty, wealthy, with normal appetites and few checks on my behavior.”
“You were a coward,” she bit out.
He flinched.
“You were a coward. You knew I had hopes. Hopes that were shared by my family. Rather than let me down gently, privately—as basic respect might have demanded—you decided to make me a spectacle instead. To humiliate me publicly. To make me a fool.”
“I was callow, I readily admit. Immature. So were you. You had unrealistic, girlish expectations. I know how the female imagination works, leaping from attraction to matrimony in a heartbeat. In your mind, you were probably naming our children and choosing new carpets for Westfield Chase. Embroidering ‘Lady Dashwood’ on your trousseau.”
“You’re wrong,” she hedged. About some of it. “I detest embroidery.”
Also, she’d only chosen girl baby names. She’d been planning to let him name the boys.
“I did have respect for your family,” he said. “And for you. A great deal more respect, I daresay, than you have shown me.”
“You had respect for me? Oh, that is rich. That display in London aside, when you accepted the position with Sir Bertram, you never even bid me farewell.”
“I paid a call at Greenwillow.”
“And you spoke to my father, yes. I heard you downstairs.”
“You were out, I assumed.”
“You knew I was there. I came hurrying down to greet you. I told myself I should have more pride, but I couldn’t help it. And yet I was too late. You were already out the door. I stood there in the entryway, watching you all the way down the lane. You never once looked back.”
Her eyes burned. She forced herself to take a deep, slow breath. Long ago, she’d vowed to herself—she would not shed another tear for him, ever again.
“I used to daydream,” she said. “About what would have happened if I’d rushed after you that day, caught up to you in the lane . . . I could have made you stay. I could have changed your mind.”
“Nora.” He exhaled her name as a weary sigh. “You could not have made me stay.”
“You can’t know that.”
He was silent for a long moment. “Very well, then. Have your chance now.”
“What?”
“Whatever it was you would have said or done. Let’s hear it now. You said you played the scene again and again in your mind.”
“Well, if we’re going to play the scene,” she said, “you must do your part. You were leaving.”
“Fine.” He walked to the door and lifted the wooden latch. “Here I am, leaving Greenwillow Hall.”
He opened the door. A blast of cold invaded the small cottage, bracing and fierce.
“This is your chance, Nora. Convince me. Give me a reason I should stay.”
With one last, daring look at her—he left.
She went to the open door, watching him walk away from her for the second time in her life. Making big footprints in the drifting, swirling snow.
Not looking back.
“Far enough?” he asked, not turning.
“Further,” she called to him. “Keep going.”
His figure grew smaller and fainter as he stomped into the snowy night.
For a moment, Nora contemplated slamming the door and barring it. She didn’t need to prove herself to him. Not anymore.
She stood there, watching. He never slowed. Never once looked over his shoulder. As though he would desert all over again. Growing smaller and smaller, melting into the dark night.
Let him go, she told herself.
But something in her heart twinged and snapped. Like a strand of India rubber pulled to its limits, then released. It stung. It pulled her off balance. And before she knew what she was doing—
“Wait.”
She gathered the hem of her chemise, lifting it to her ankles, and charged out into the snow, calling his name over the howling wind.
“Dash! Dash, wait.”
By the time, she caught up to him, she was breathless. She put her hands on his shoulders—those broad, strong shoulders—to turn him toward her.
“Wait. Don’t go. Come back inside.” She slid her arms around his neck. “Stay with me.”
And then she kissed him.
As many times as she’d thought of this moment . . . dreamed, schemed, choreographed, imagined how she would persuade him to stay . . . none of it mattered. Her actions were entirely instinctual, driven by impulses and needs deep inside her.
They came from the heart.
She pressed her lips to his, and a touch of frost between them quickly melted to fire. Delicious, intoxicating, brandy-flavored warmth. She wanted more. It didn’t even concern her that he was standing as still as if he were frozen, not responding. She’d wanted to touch him for so long, and now her hands were on the strong column of his bared neck, her fingers twining in his dark, unruly hair. She tasted his lips, tilting her head to the side and stretching to make herself taller. Pressing light kisses to his mouth, again and again.
“Stay,” she whispered between kisses. “Stay with me.”
The freezing wind caught the hem of her chemise and tugged it, snarling the tissue-thin fabric about her ankles. She shivered and pressed the full length of her body into his enticing masculine warmth. He was warmer than any fire. As though he’d soaked up the sun of tropical shores and taken it into him, saved it for just this moment—so that he might give it back to her on this cold, snowy English night.
She pulled back from the kiss and stared up at him. The faint light from the hut illuminated half his face. He was half light, half darkness. She wanted him for all of it. Always had.