Courtesy of that incendiary kiss, he wasn’t going to find sleep any time soon. He was still half aroused, and desire thrummed through his veins, tensing his muscles and leaving his skin taut.
Making a mental note to suggest to the inspector that questioning Cecilia more forcefully might bear fruit, he closed his eyes, willed his mind away from Antonia—from anything to do with her—and valiantly tried to think of something else.
Chapter 10
An hour later, he was still wide awake.
Lying on his back, his arms crossed behind his head, he stared moodily at the shadowed ceiling.
Hunger still prowled beneath his skin, yet he was determined to ignore it. To deny it. Taking any further step with respect to Antonia no longer featured in his plans for this house party. Not even simply to discuss what he’d intended to discuss with her before they’d been sidetracked; given what had occurred in the conservatory, he could imagine all too well how any such discussion—which would necessarily have to be conducted in private—would end.
She’d wanted more. She’d had no intention of calling a halt, not until they’d been forced to.
Recalling her responses—her blatant encouragements—he seriously doubted he could rely on her to toe any conventional line.
And given how far their runaway passions had swept them, he couldn’t be one hundred percent certain he would be able to rein them—him and her in the grip of said passions—back.
He could foresee the problem looming—one with which he’d never before had to contend.
While he wasn’t about to make the classic mistake of imagining he could predict what she was thinking, he didn’t believe he was indulging in any overweeningly arrogant self-confidence. If he made it clear he wanted her, she would invite him to her bed.
With alacrity.
And then…heaven alone knew how matters would evolve.
The threat of being unable to exert control—of not being in the driving seat—bothered him. Troubled him. A lot.
If he was brutally honest, it made him nervous.
Control—as in being in control of himself and any situation in which he found himself—was something he strove always to maintain. He’d been trained to wield power more or less since birth, and in almost all situations, control was power.
He shifted in the bed, still restless—still nowhere near relaxed enough to fall asleep.
Outside his door, the house had quieted, settling, as large houses did, into brooding stillness. His eyes had grown accustomed to the dimness; the moon had shifted and now shone sufficiently strongly through the uncurtained window to the side of the bed for him to see across the room quite clearly.
The gentle creak of a floorboard outside his door drew his gaze to the panel.
He blinked, focused, and confirmed that the door handle was slowly turning.
He tensed to rise, then remained as he was. The shaft of moonlight fell across the bed; his face was in shadow. Anyone coming through the door wouldn’t immediately see he was awake.
The latch clicked back; the door was slowly—very slowly—pushed inward.
Eyes glued to the spot, he waited, breath bated, to see who would appear.
Cecilia?
The murderer?
* * *
Antonia drew in a tense, tight breath and slipped through the doorway into Sebastian’s room.
One swift, wide-eyed glance at the bed showed the molded line of his long legs, unmoving beneath the covers. The upper half of the bed lay in shadow, but surely by now, he would be asleep.
It had taken nearly an hour to conclude her internal debate. For her true self to win out—for her to accept that no matter the arguments against it, her best interests lay in pursuing their attraction to its logical conclusion there, at Pressingstoke Hall, where he and she stood on level ground.
If she was ready and willing to forge ahead, so should he be.
After that kiss, she had absolutely no doubt of what their future relationship would be, and if there was one fact that interlude in the conservatory had made abundantly clear, it was that he knew that, too.
Regardless, she could readily imagine he would seek to put things off until they returned to London—and the ability to manage their interactions tipped his way.
It would be unwise to allow that to happen—to allow them to return to their normal lives without establishing at least a basic framework for their future relationship. If she didn’t make a push to get that much settled now, while they were there, she might well find herself married without having gained the assurances she needed to make marriage with a man—a nobleman—like him work. And then getting that necessary framework in place would become a protracted battle.
Such a scenario found no favor with her. If he had any sense, it wouldn’t find favor with him, either, but then, he was a man. A nobleman. One who thought he could manage damn near anyone.