LITMIR.BIZ

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out?’

      That provoked a deep chuckle as she came in, pulling her shawl snugly around her shoulders. ‘What a wonderful image that conjures up. Charlton does not have the figure for duelling, let alone the temperament. Bates and Pru are still asleep and I am starving.’

      ‘So am I. Now, you said you could cook, more or less.’

      ‘I exaggerated…no, I lied.’ Decima flushed and regarded her toes. ‘I might as well be truthful about it. I haven’t the first clue. Shall we look in the larder and see what there is?’

      The meal they spread on the kitchen table—Decima having put her head around the dining-room door and pronounced it fit only to act as an icehouse—owed nothing to any culinary skill whatsoever.

      Cold mutton, cheese, the heel of a loaf, butter and plum cake were washed down with ale, or, in Decima’s case, with water. Adam could not recall enjoying a meal more.

      For a start it was a pleasure to eat with a woman who showed a hearty appetite and didn’t starve herself and pick at her food in an effort to appear ladylike. Then, Decima did not stand on ceremony either: she forgot to take her elbows off the table when they were in the middle of an argument about the Prince Regent’s taste in architecture, she waved her knife in the air to make her point when she lectured him on horse breeding, and she completely forgot herself and doubled up laughing when he recounted a particularly wicked story about two of the Patronesses of Almack’s and the Duke of Wellington.

      ‘No! They didn’t? Not both of them,’ she gasped, emerging from her fit of the giggles, pink and glowing.

      ‘I should not have told you that,’ Adam confessed ruefully. The trouble was, she seemed so at ease with him, and had such an individual character, that it was like talking to one of the dashing young matrons he was used to in London society. Only Decima had a delicious innocence that none of those sophisticated ladies had shown for many a year.

      ‘No, I don’t expect you should,’ she agreed with a twinkle. ‘But I am glad you did. They were so beastly to me when I came out, it is wonderful to be able to imagine them in such an embarrassing fix.’

      ‘Why were they beastly?’ It was hard to imagine anyone being unkind to Decima. ‘Did you break one of those tedious rules and waltz before you’d been approved or something equally heinous?’

      ‘Waltz?’ She stared at him as if he was mad. ‘Who on earth would ask a girl five foot ten inches tall to waltz with them?’

      ‘I would,’ he replied simply. ‘Do you mean you cannot waltz?’

      ‘I can, I just never have for real. Charlton insisted I learn. Poor Signor Mazzetti. He did his best, but he came up to…’ she coloured and waved a hand vaguely in the direction of her bosom ‘…up to there and I don’t think he knew quite where to look. And I trod on his feet a lot because I was embarrassed. So it was a good thing I was never asked.’

      ‘Well, I come to considerably higher up, I know exactly where to look and my feet are large enough for you to tread all over with impunity.’ Adam found himself pushing back his plate and getting to his feet. I must be mad. ‘Shall we?’

      ‘What? Here?’ She thought he was mad, too. ‘There is no music and, besides, who’s going to do the washing up?’

      ‘Yes, here. I’ll hum and I expect we will both do the washing up, eventually. Now then, this side of the table, I think, we don’t want your skirts flying into the fire.’

      Those wonderful grey eyes were wide and she was staring at him with a mixture of horror and mischief. Adam liked the mischief. ‘Flying?’

      ‘I am a very vigorous waltzer, Miss Ross. May I have this dance?’

      There was that rich chuckle again. Decima got to her feet and made a neat curtsy. ‘Thank you, my lord, although I fear I have not been approved by the Patronesses.’

      Adam took her in his arms. Oh, yes. ‘To hell with the Patronesses. Now. One, two, three…’

      He was right: it was nothing like dancing with Signor Mazzetti at all And she could waltz, despite her sensible winter shoes and her heavy skirts, whirling between kitchen table and butter churn, dresser and flour bin, laughing, lending her voice to Adam’s tuneful, humming dance rhythm, breathless, exhilarated, round and round in the circle of his arms until she stumbled and found herself caught and held safely, close against his chest.

      ‘Oh, dear.’ Her breath was coming in pants; part effort, part laughter, part a strange, fizzing excitement. ‘That brandy—I must be tipsy.’

      ‘You are dizzy. Rest a little.’ Adam’s eyes were on her, their colour that strange, unsettling silver grey that became green as they caught the candle flare. ‘Just stand a moment.’ He did not release her, one hand quite still at her waist, the other one lowering her own hand until it was at waist height.

      Adam’s breath was coming short, too—they must have been dancing more vigorously than she had thought. Decima felt herself leaning into him, towards that intent gaze, towards that sensuous mouth that so fascinated her.

      Her lips parted instinctively. Why…what was she feeling? So breathless, so hot, so sensitised as though someone was drawing velvet over her bare skin. She should never have drunk that brandy; it was no wonder unmarried girls were forbidden spirits. ‘I think…’

      ‘Don’t think.’ His mouth was so close now, all she had to do was stand on tiptoe, just a little, lean just a little, raise her face. Her eyes closed. This was going to happen. Decima could not think any further forward than the next ten seconds. There was nothing beyond that. Nothing.

      Warm breath feathering her lips. The scent of him, remembered from that cold ride: citrus, leather and now rather more of the exciting, disturbing muskiness of warm man. ‘Decima.’ The word was spoken so close to her lips that she felt, rather than heard, it.

      ‘Mmm?’

      The sound of a door banging upstairs. A faint voice. ‘Miss Dessy?’ Decima blinked, staggered backwards and caught a chair back in both groping hands.

      ‘Pru. She must have woken up. I will just—I’ll just go and see…’ She fled.

      Pru was standing unsteadily in the open doorway, blinking in the candlelight of the torchère that Adam had left on a table at the head of the stairs. Decima snatched it up and urged the maid back into the bedchamber. ‘Get back into bed, Pru, you’ll get chilled out here.’

      ‘I need the privy, Miss Decima, and I can’t find a chamberpot.’

      That at least was one eminently practical problem to which she had an answer. ‘There is a real indoor water closet, just along here at the end of this side corridor.’

      The pair of them, both unsteady on their feet for very different reasons, gazed at this modern luxury, then Pru tottered inside and closed the door, leaving Decima with no excuse to think of anything but her behaviour in the kitchen. The exhilaration of the dance still fizzed in her veins but under it was a deep ache of unsatisfied longing. Adam had almost kissed her. She had wanted him to kiss her and her body was punishing her now for being left unsatisfied.

      No one had ever kissed Decima other than family members. How does my body know what it is missing? she thought distractedly, passing her hands up and down her arms to try and rub away that strange shivery feeling. Her breasts felt heavier, too, her stays tighter, and lower down there was a hot, molten sensation that was very disturbing indeed.

      How on earth am I going to face him again? He must think me some love-starved old maid desperate for caresses. A nagging little voice, the voice that she had thought she had left behind with Charlton and would form no part of her new, resolute self, hissed, And so you are. A desperate virgin, throwing yourself at a handsome man.

      The rattle of the metal mechanism and the gush of water provided a fitting counterpoint to this unpleasant truth. Decima forced herself to concentrate on the matter at hand; at least Pru could not be feeling

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