LITMIR.BIZ

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her reins when he offered them back, she walked her horse down towards the water, the mist of salt enveloping the beach with an opaque whiteness. A wilder bay than she was used to, and colder. Shivering, she bent to pick up a shell and the sound inside as she raised it to her ear was exactly the same as it was at home.

      For a second she felt displaced, uncertain, lost in the pull of what had been taken from her, and drawn to the man who now came to stand beside her, his cheeks lightly spattered with the mist of ocean. If she had been braver, she might have leant forward and touched the wetness, felt the swell of cheek beneath her fingers, and understood what it was that she could now only guess at. But she was not brave. Not like that. Not here with the wide brim of her hat tugging in the wind and the fullness of her riding skirt unfamiliar around her legs.

      Don’t. Don’t. Don’t.

      She recited the word over again and again beneath her breath, trying to incite some sort of sense in her actions. Trying to make herself step back from him, out of reach, out of harm, out of temptation. But when his thumb came up to caress the sensitive skin on her bottom lip, she closed her eyes and just felt.

      For once.

      For this once.

      For the time it took to run her tongue across the length of skin and bring his flesh into her mouth.

      ‘Lord, what you do to me.’ The darkness in his eyes was bottomless as his lips slanted down across her own, the hunger in them easily definable in the afternoon grey. Just the two of them with the damp rivulets of water running beneath her feet, and the green lands of England all around. Just the two of them coming together along the full lines of their bodies and pressing hard.

      And then there was nothing.

      No today or yesterday, or tomorrow with its sharp uncertainty.

      Just him. Just the warmth of skin against the cool of the rain and the burning fiery want that consumed her. She did not notice when he cast aside her hat, loosening the curls to his touch. All she knew was urgency and want and need.

      A man’s touch. On her woman’s body. The living reality of her countless dreams. She felt the puckering of her nipples and the clench of an almost-pain between her legs.

      More. More.

      Everything, she longed to whisper, everything, and when he drew away she tried to hold on, tried to take his mouth in the same way that he had taken hers, but he stopped her simply by pulling her against him, head firm beneath his chin, fitting well into the spaces of his body.

      ‘Emma.’ Whispered. Barely there.

      The frantic beat of his heart against his throat told her that he was as affected as she was. Not all onesided, then, not all her fault. She could not find it in herself to raise her eyes to his.

      ‘I’m sorry. That should not have happened.’ His voice was husky. ‘There is no excuse at all. I should not have—’ He stopped and the shrill cry of a gull could be heard over the silence.

      He was sorry? She stiffened. An apology. For this?

      Every man she had ever known in her life would have taken what it was she had just offered and be damned with what happened next. But not Asher Wellingham. No, not him. Confusion ripped through guilt and sheer embarrassment chased hard on the heels of that.

      Lord. What now? When she felt his hands slacken she stepped back and reached for the bridle, angry at the help she needed to mount and pleased when he did not speak again as he handed her her hat. Did not explain. Did not even try to draw level with her as they cantered along the beach and up into the valley that led to Falder Castle.

      Gaining her room she laid her head back against the solidness of the portal and tried to catch her breath, lost in the run up from the stables. Her breathing was closer to normal when she opened the connecting door to see Miriam sitting in a chair by her window, reading a book.

      ‘Whatever has happened? You look like you have come across a ghost.’

      Emerald’s smile was laboured. Hardly a ghost. Asher’s lips still burnt into the recesses of her memory and raised the temperature of everything.

      Hot. Scorching. Torrid.

      She poured herself some water, watching the drips run jagged against the side of the glass before drinking it all.

      ‘You seem better, Aunt.’

      ‘If you could find the cane, Emerald, I’d be better still.’ The sentence was finished on a bout of coughing and Emerald’s worry grew. After her behaviour today, she was uncertain whether the Duke of Carisbrook would even want her to stay till the end of the week and here was her aunt plagued with illness.

      Lord, could things get any worse? She shook her head and made herself concentrate on what Miriam was saying.

      ‘Carisbrook has a map room at the back of the eastern wing. I saw it today when I attempted a walk round the rose garden. Perhaps he has already found the map, and keeps it there.’

      Emerald’s interest was piqued. ‘Near the rose garden you say?’

      ‘Yes. The Wellingham family mausoleum sits further over to one side. The footman I walked with said that the garden has been laid out in memory of the Duchess of Carisbrook.’

      ‘Melanie Wellingham is dead and buried at Falder?’

      ‘She is indeed. The tomb of their son is there too.’

      ‘A son?’

      ‘Stillborn at full term three years before she died.’

      Death and loss and waste.

      The enormity of Miriam’s revelations changed everything. The Duke of Carisbrook had loved his wife. He still loved his wife. The sapphire ring on his finger, the picture in the library and the flower garden, and his self-confessed resistance to being plunged again into the state of holy matrimony—suddenly everything added up, made sense.

      She was a small detour in the course of his life. That was all. He was a duke with lands stretching hundreds of miles in every direction and a shipping fleet that plied the world.

      He was not for her.

      Would never be for her.

      She reached into her pocket for the shell she had collected and wished that she could find the map and just go home.

       Chapter Seven

      He was drunk.

      He knew he was by the way the portrait of Melanie that he sat in front of swam in and out of focus. He hated this painting. Hated the sheer memory of it. A brutal reminder of all that he had lost.

      He should not have kissed Emma Seaton. Not like that. Not with the raging want in his blood and the sure damned knowledge of duplicity in his head. She was not as she said she was. She was a liar and a would-be thief. She was dangerous to his family. To him. To the world he had spun around himself ever since he had returned home, a slim wedge against chaos. He should kick her out, right now, before the calmer shifts of reason took hold and her turquoise eyes reeled him in like the sirens of Circe, haunting, familiar and undeniably false.

      And yet he couldn’t. He couldn’t. He sighed and leant his head back against the wall wondering just why it was that he couldn’t. Not just the warm willingness of her body or the sharp raw hit of lust that had floored him when her lips had met his. No, there was something else too. Something he had felt unexpectedly as he had held her on the beach against him. Something close and safe and right. Something that took away the cold for ever etched into his very bones and left a question of possibility.

      ‘I thought that I might find you here. And drinking.’ The heavy censure in Taris’s words jarred his thoughts and Asher closed his eyes against it. Tonight his more usual reserve was lost under the fiery belly of too much whisky.

      ‘When I was with Emma Seaton today … I forgot

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