‘Oh, come now, ma’am,’ he gritted, as if her denial made him angry as finding her half-naked in Bran’s bed when she should be working had not. ‘We have a decade worth of wanting on the slate between us. Sooner or later we’ll have an accounting.’
‘No, there isn’t and, no, we won’t,’ she informed him as furiously as she could when sitting here nearly naked.
She could hardly thrust the bedclothes aside and run away when her legs would refuse to carry her and where would she run to without scandalising half the household and any guests who happened to be standing about with their mouths open?
‘I may be a fool, Mrs Wheaton, but not such a one I’m prepared to pretend to you that passion couldn’t break us, if we let it. It might do us both less harm if we admit its existence,’ he said sombrely and their eyes met.
Chloe almost said the words in her head—Why not try it and see? There it was again, her wicked inner self, whispering sinfully in her ears and offering lures she thought she’d cut off in their heady prime a decade ago. She squirmed and made herself be glad even the sleep still clouding her brain hadn’t let her speak that impossible invitation aloud.
Wasn’t it exactly the sort of rash remark that landed her and her twin sister Daphne in the suds in their younger days? Chloe clamped cold fetters on her wilder self at the reminder how it came about she was sitting here glaring at her new employer like a hungry she-wolf. If she was careful enough, they could go back to stiffly avoiding each other until she left.
‘It might not do that much harm to you,’ she muttered crossly and folded her bare arms across her chest; because she couldn’t endure him standing there knowing how much she wanted him.
‘I shouldn’t be too sure about that,’ he rasped as his hot gaze now dwelt on the exposed upper slopes of her breasts, Chloe looked down to see she’d only made them look fuller and even more rounded by seeking to hide her tight, need-peaked nipples from his fascinated gaze. ‘I’ve always known you could be my ruin,’ he murmured, looking ready to resign himself to it if he could climb into this narrow bed and make use of every tight inch of space it would leave him to seduce her until she screamed for him with a sombre house party of guests a mere misplaced call away.
‘No, never!’ she croaked and almost gave in to the urge to scissor her legs together to deny the hot need and frustration grinding at the heart of her.
He was here; not some fevered fantasy she had woken up with, as she so often had in the first days, weeks and years after he left Farenze Lodge as if the devil himself was riding on his shoulders. Until today she thought she’d banished that folly to outer darkness along with him and now she knew better.
‘If things were different, I could make you eat those words with one kiss and you know it,’ he said grimly.
‘They’re not though, are they?’ she whispered and almost sobbed at the years of regret she’d betrayed with those stark words. ‘Please leave me be, my lord. I should never have slept when there is so much to do and it won’t happen again, I assure you.’
‘Nonsense,’ he said gruffly. ‘When I first laid eyes on you today I thought you looked as if you might break if you didn’t bend soon. You’re too thin and look as if you haven’t slept or eaten properly in weeks.’
‘I can’t sleep and food seems to choke me at times,’ she admitted reluctantly.
‘Go on like this and you’ll make yourself ill. Do that to yourself if you must, but how can you risk shocking your daughter with your wan appearance when she sees you? She must be struggling to come to terms with losing Virginia, close as I know they had become to each other while she was growing up.’
‘Yes, she was heartbroken,’ Chloe said heavily, remembering how it felt to hold her sobbing daughter whilst she cried as if her poor heart might break the day Chloe had Lady Virginia’s coachman drive her to Bath so she could tell Verity Lady Virginia was dead.
‘So eat something,’ he demanded.
‘I have, at regular intervals.’
‘Then eat more and go to bed and sleep properly tonight, instead of pacing the corridors like a ghost and making the night watchman think he’s being haunted.’
His voice was brusque, but there was what looked like genuine concern in his eyes as he inspected her face. His well-hidden kindness touched her as she couldn’t let herself be touched by her employer. She rubbed her eyes self-consciously, pushed an annoying curl behind her ear and tried not to gaze back at him as if she might adore him, if things were different.
‘I must look like something the cat brought in,’ she muttered unwarily.
The wretched man stared at her with a glint of humour and something they’d both declared forbidden in the depths of those grey-, gold-and green-rayed eyes of his. She wanted to fall into them and never land on solid ground again for a long moment.
‘You must know you’re beautiful,’ he said wryly, almost as if talking to himself and being overheard by the wide-eyed sceptic in front of him.
She shook her head in hasty denial and tried not to love the fact he thought so.
‘But you’re still too thin,’ he insisted, ‘and you have shadows under your eyes a Gothic heroine would envy.’
‘Well, she’d be welcome to them,’ she said unwarily and the quirk of humour kicking up his fascinating mouth became a true smile.
There was all the warmth and hope and unwary fellow feeling in them that had nearly carried them over the precipice a decade ago. Chloe felt them both balance on the edge of the inevitable again. It felt terrible and utterly desirable, as if even their thoughts were cursed to curl up together and purr with delight at being reunited.
He reached out a long finger, as if he wanted to physically brush the shadows away from her eyes. She felt the whisper of his almost touch on her skin and gasped with hope and fear at how much she wanted it. She slicked parched lips with her tongue and watched him hesitate, had the sense of a strong man fighting what he knew was wrong, yet he was still drawn on by what felt so strong between them it could overrule everything, if they let it. There was curiosity and impatience in his eyes, before he blanked them and my Lord Farenze was himself again; remote, self-assured and cynical and as distant from the housekeeper of Farenze Lodge as ever.
‘Eve and Bran are coming,’ he warned her huskily.
Chloe strained her senses to catch a hint of whatever sound or instinct told him they were about to be rescued from folly, whether they wanted to be or not.
‘Pretend I never came in here. Act as if you woke up the moment they asked what I’m doing here,’ he whispered.
Lost for words again, Chloe nodded, then burrowed her face into the pillows and drew the bedclothes over her chilled shoulders. At least pretending to be fuzzy with sleep would give her time to pull wanton Chloe into line and forget he’d been here as best she could. If she proved as obedient to the curb as his rampant side, she had nothing to worry about.
‘Bah!’ she muttered crossly into the pillow, ‘just bah, my Lord Farenze!’
No danger he might hear her. He was back through the door and nearly closing it again before she could slide down the bed and cover her now-shivering body. Nobody else would ever know he’d found her here, heavy-eyed with sleep and wanton desire.
She heard Miss Winterley express surprise at her father’s presence in