He was quiet for a long while before he moved close again and looked at her skirts, settled across Grendel’s girth. While she watched, his gaze slowly moved upward, lingering at her breasts. “I imagined how you might look without your traveling gown. It was purple, and exposed a fair amount of your bosom.” His gaze moved to her hair. “You wore a pretty bonnet and when you removed it in the front hall, part of your hair escaped its pins, so I knew it was long. I imagined what it would look like, all of it down, across your naked back. I wondered how soft it would feel against my own skin.”
Her languor slowly began a metamorphosis. He recalled the color of her gown?
Now he looked at her mouth. “Your lips were plump and pink and I knew kissing you once would never be enough.” His eyes met hers. “You have beautiful eyes, Jane, an unusual shade of blue. I’m certain anyone would agree, and had you simply looked at me with cool composure, I’d not remember with such clarity the effect they had on me.” He leaned toward her, staring into her eyes. “No woman ever looked at me as you did, before or since.”
The warmth of the day increased and she became flushed with heat. “I thought myself wildly in love with you. Is it any wonder I looked as though I’d like you for breakfast?”
“Ah, but I didn’t know, couldn’t fathom why a young miss would boldly stare back at me with as much hunger as I felt.”
“Hunger, Blixford? You mock me.”
“No, Jane.” His hand reached out and caressed her jaw, stroking downward to her throat. “I stood in my sister’s front hall and allowed my imagination to race off with you to my bedchamber, where I stripped you of your clothes, laid you across the bed and had my wicked way with you.” His lips curved into a sinful smile. “The finer points I’m unwilling to share, primarily because you wouldn’t understand, can’t conceive such things are possible.”
Jane licked her suddenly dry lips. “Do you suppose you might demonstrate the finer points in the near future?”
“It will be my pleasure,” he said, leaning closer. His hand moved to the nape of her neck and he tugged her toward him that he could capture her mouth with his –moist, hot, and promising. Desire stabbed through her center, all the way down her inner thighs.
He released her and drew back. “You’ll think me insatiable.”
She eyed him carefully, noting the bulge at his crotch that pressed against the saddle. Now she understood why he appeared to lean back a bit. Realizing her own state of arousal was equal, though not nearly so obvious, she sat up in her saddle as she looked ahead. “How far did you say we are from the house?”
“Less than a mile, I believe.”
“Hmm. Pity the horses are tired, or we might run the remainder of the way.”
Although she didn’t turn her head, she knew he jerked a startled glance toward her.
She calmly added, “It’s been a tiring day and I believe I’d prefer to have supper in my room and retire early, if you’ve no objection.”
His voice was deep when he drawled, “You may have whatever you wish, Jane. We are, after all, in the country, and it’s expected we keep country hours.”
This he said, despite the fact that sunset was still at least an hour away. Even country hours didn’t dictate bedtime before sunset.
***
Beckinsale House was a lovely old manor, in the style popular a hundred years ago, its rose bricks mellowed with age and its corners lovingly embraced by creeping ivy, neatly trimmed lest it encroach completely. The relative warmth of southern England and its milder winters meant the windows were large, oversized even, and this lent an air of brightness to the interior, highlighting the warm honey paneling and shining oak floors. A small hall in the entry was flanked by a study to one side and a parlor at the other, the dining room farther back, its wide windows facing south, overlooking a free-form garden, just beginning to burst into spring bloom. Farther along, past the garden, was a wilderness, carefully cultivated, Blixford said, to remain a wilderness. “We’ll walk there tomorrow,” he said, “and I’ll show you a secret place no one knows about but me.”
“Really, Blixford, I’m not such a green girl to fall for anything so melodramatic.”
He was mysterious when he said, “Ah, a skeptic. You shall see.”
The housekeeper was a rotund, cheerful woman by the name of Hester, and her counterpart –her husband, in fact –was an equally rotund man named Clive. He was a proper butler, but it was difficult to take him too seriously because he chuckled often, setting his belly to quivering in a comical way.