Lady X

“Aye, I doona want ye to incur any trouble,” he answered on a serious note. “Off with ye then, so that I can watch ye take yer fence, and know ye are safely on yer way.”

She smiled, circled her horse back a few paces and set him at the fence before taking it at an easy and safe trot.

David watched his lordship and watched her vanish over the fence into the foggy mist. He turned and headed his horse for the main road.

David Horwich was burning with jealousy, anger and resentment. He was irritated that the little tart had invited his lordship’s advances but had previously spurned his.

He had watched and listened to their exchange with growing fury. It was possible that she was after a larger title and a fortune. If that was her game she would find, he was not a man to be trifled with. If she was going to behave like a little ‘bird of paradise’, she would do so with him as well.

He was going to make damn certain that she would end up in his bed before ever MacTorry got a hold of her.

If anyone was going to bed that very fine piece of fluff, it was going to be him and no other.

A voice at his back made him turn to find Jerry Swit dismounting with a jovial greeting and he growled at him, “You are late, but never mind, what have you for me?”

* * *

Hunter hurriedly slid the secret panel into place in the wainscoted wall and made his way out of the dusty cellar. After leaving Exerilla he had found that which he was already certain would be there.

He had used his magic as a last resort and discovered its location at once. There wasn’t much time. Sir Jacob and Jerry Swit might return at any moment.

He had known the moment he had seen the house that a Jacobean escape route would be within. Combined with his knowledge of architectural history were Jacob’s stories of his childhood at the Towers.

Thus, he had zeroed in on the cellar walls with his magic and it stood out at once. With his wand, he did the rest, lighting his way as he traveled the tunnel’s narrow corridor to its end.

He pointed his wand and saw that it would open into the woods that led to Horwich House where he had just left when he had escorted his Exerilla to the fence line. “His Exerilla?” He couldn’t, wouldn’t think of her that way and yet, every inch of his being, said that she was his, only his, forever.

Voices overhead interrupted his wayward thoughts, and he realized one of those voices belonged to Jerry Swit. The other, he did not quite recognize and yet, it sounded familiar.

He had no time, he had to hurry back to his room, wash up and change before the men returned. The tunnel, he had seen had not been used in years. He didn’t believe that Jacob was involved in the smuggling trade.

Even as he bathed all he could do was think of her, and thinking of her was getting painful. His shaft seemed to suddenly respond to every thought of her, every single thought.

He could still see her full breasts in his mind, still taste her lips and her tongue, and still feel those pert lovely nipples. Bloody Hell, he was on fire.

Everything about Exerilla astounded him, and awakened something in him he thought was dead. It wasn’t only her beautiful face, her tantalizing body, but her mind. By all that was holy, he loved her mind. The way she had of reaching out with those tantalizing fingers that turned his body into a myriad of sensations. She wove through his brain and took over. All he could do was whisper her name over and over again. What is driving ye man?

It was the little things she said, the way her thoughts scurried from one place to another, the manner of her speech, och aye, the way she smiled. Her smile slayed him.

She was a bright glowing creature and she ignited sparks of desire in him in a way he had never before experienced. He didn’t think past that. He wasn’t thinking about permanence and yet, when he thought of her, his entire being shouted that she was his. He had felt it and was surprised by it because somewhere deep inside of Exerilla Radley he sensed something dark.

She was a human and all humans had a dark spot inside them which they managed to overcome through determination, faith or love, but hers…hers was different.

He couldn’t quite put his finger on it. If she were a witch, he would have thought she was burdened and not quite a white witch, but she was human, so that was not the case.

Damn, but she was a beautiful woman, a mysterious American woman, but human. If he took her for his own he would only have her for her short human years.

Och aye, but when he touched her, he was sent into a universe of pleasure. He couldn’t think about anything else, but the feel of her silken skin, about the taste of her delicious lips, the rockets of fire she sent hurtling through his body making him want her beyond anything he had ever known.

It had taken everything he was to pull away from her today because he had kept a part of himself alert for intruders. He owed her that much.

As he threw on his clothes and made his way back downstairs to the library, Exerilla exploded into his mind. She took him down a road he didn’t wish to go, telling him, he had to win her for his own.

He couldn’t be distracted from his purpose by her. That wasn’t his reason for being at Cressly. He was here because it was convenient, because he wished to keep Jacob from Swit’s engineering, and work to help Ferrell.

Aye, he had failed to save his parents. He had failed to kill Baudali, but he couldn’t fail to save his brother and right the wrong. He simply couldn’t be deterred by this all consuming craving he had for a woman, exquisite and mysteriously intriguing as she was.

And that was another thing that set him on edge. Something about her spoke of another time, another place. Perhaps it was simply that she was from the wild American colonies.