LITMIR.BIZ

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all those years ago before charging into battle.

      Then, however, he had had all his faculties and the ability to catch sight of the slightest movement from a great distance away.

      Could he protect Bea here if the man should choose to play his hand? The knife tucked into the specially made sock in his boot would help, as would the ring he wore. By turning the gold circle he clicked the edges into place and the heavy bauble changed into a lethal collar of diamond spears. Enough to surprise anyone. His cane would do the rest.

      He tilted his head to listen and the silence in the house was comforting. At a guess he would say the lawyer had gone, but why had he been here in the first place? And had he come alone?

      ‘Did Mr Radcliff ask you for anything?’

      ‘He wanted to see some ledgers that were sent to me. He asked after them.’

      ‘And where do you keep them?’

      ‘Well, that is the strange thing—I do not remember having them.’

      ‘Does your door have a sturdy lock on it?’

      ‘I think so.’ Her answer held worry and hope strangely mixed.

      Standing, Taris made his way over to it and threw the bolt, testing the door when he had finished doing so.

      After listening for a further few moments he crossed to the bed, realising as he came closer that she was fast asleep.

      She came awake instantly and fully, with the fright of one who did not quite understand where she was or what time of day it was.

      Taris sat in a chair next to the bed, his long legs stretched out before him and the stubble of lost hours shadowing his chin.

      Not quite asleep. When she stirred his amber eyes flicked open, unfocused and then alert.

      ‘What is wrong?’

      When he moved his hand she saw a circle of diamond points coming from his ring. A knife lay in his lap, the other fist curled about it, easily, familiarly, in the way of a man who had long courted peril.

      But as she frowned both the knife and ring were gone. A short illusion, a little fancy, and then gone; the accoutrements of battle disappearing from the everyday life of an aristocrat who walked the delicate pathways of the ton.

      Secrets and menace and something more charged again, sensuality the other side of a dangerous coin.

      The jeopardy of today’s accident made risk more accepted, made the fear of rejection less concerning, made the moments she had been given with him here in the night a chance that was to be taken and not lost.

      She placed her hand across his and pressed down.

      ‘Thank you for coming today.’

      ‘How could I not have?’

      ‘Easily,’ she answered back, years of coping alone a burden she was more than used to. ‘I thought the carriage was going to run me over.’

      ‘As it did your hat?’

      ‘You saw it?’

      ‘Felt it.’

      ‘Could the person who did it come back here tonight?’

      ‘No.’ She liked his certainty, liked the way he did not even waver. A man who would protect her against everything.

      ‘Will you kiss me?’ Hardly even a question.

      ‘Could you stop me?’ His was not either.

      ‘I want to forget everything else save what is here, now, between us.’

      ‘Flesh?’ This time he ran his finger across her breast, easily distinguished under silk.

      ‘And blood,’ she answered, her tongue drawing a single wet trail through the stain on the skin of his hand.

      ‘I would not wish to hurt you.’

      ‘You will hurt me more if you do not come…’

      ‘Inside of you?’ No longer careful or limiting, the obvious stated, a balm to fright and hate and hurt.

      In reply she held his finger to her lips and sucked in, the small noise thrilling and daring in a way that she had never been before.

       Frankwell frowning at any enjoyment, the ghost of need always replaced by hurt.

      Never again, she thought. Her body ached with the want of him, the air on her skin orange-glowed from the fire and the scars of her past disappearing into shadow, feeling and hot hard passion.

      ‘Call me Taris,’ he said. ‘Call me by my name.’

      She wrote it on the back of his hand, in the wet of her tongue, and saw the way the hairs rose on his arm and the breath in his throat just stopped.

      One second and then two. Suspended in time and place before beginning again, neither will in it nor choice.

      A small touch here, a longer caress there. The music between them was heard in breaths and heartbeats and sighs.

      Their music. A symphony. To life. To living. To danger. No past or future. Just now. Risking it all.

      Beatrice wished the world might stop.

      ‘Love me, Beatrice?’ Barely his voice.

      She laughed as she peeled back her nightgown before taking his fingers and placing them on to the warmth.

       Chapter Twelve

      She was sick into the china basin kept beneath her bed and then sick again as Taris stirred.

      Swallowing, she could hardly hide her embarrassment. Such a far cry from last night’s loving and the first rays of dawn slanting through the gap in the curtains at her window.

      Her stomach heaved again and she held back her hair, the sweat of exertion marking her skin with a glistening dew. She noticed that the grazes on her arms this morning had crusted, the first scabs of healing formed across open wounds.

      Breathing heavily, she shut her eyes, shut everything out whilst she tried to find an equilibrium, the nausea receding as quickly as it had come and leaving a tiredness that was all encompassing.

      ‘Has this happened before?’ he asked when she turned towards him.

      ‘It has,’ she replied, wishing that she could have hidden it. Perhaps she was dying? Perhaps this was a sickness that had no cure, the exhaustion that accompanied the early-morning routine just another symptom of its severity. Frankwell had vomited often in the mornings in the last months of his life.

      Taris didn’t look happy at all. ‘Hell,’ he said, pulling the length of his hair back off his face. Naked, the muscles of his chest stood out along the contours of his hard brownness. ‘Hell,’ he repeated when she did not say a thing.

      Rallying, she tried to make light of her suppositions. ‘I am certain it must be something I am eating and—’

      He interrupted her. ‘How old were you when your mother died?’

      ‘Seventeen.’

      ‘And you were close?’

      Bea didn’t understand the meaning of such a topic change. ‘Very.’

      His silence unnerved her.

      ‘Well, perhaps not as close as we had been when I was younger, but—’

      ‘I want you to come with me to Falder. I am repairing there today and Emerald and Asher will arrive later in the afternoon.’

      ‘I don’t understand?’

      ‘You need to be away from London.’

      ‘Because you feel that I might have another accident?’

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