Her hands clenched in her skirts as fear tightened her throat. Lacerating as Kinvarra’s tongue could be, he’d never shown her a moment’s violence. But did that extend to the man she planned to take into her bed? Kinvarra was a crack shot and a famous swordsman. If it came to a duel, Harold wouldn’t stand a chance.
“My lord, I protest the description,” Harold bleated, sidling further away. He’d clearly also heard the unspoken threat in Kinvarra’s question.
Oh, for pity’s sake. Was it too much to wish that her suitor would stand up to the scoundrel she’d married as a silly chit of seventeen? Alicia drew a deep breath of freezing air and reminded herself that she favored Lord Harold Fenton precisely because he wasn’t an overbearing brute like her husband. Harold was a scholar and a poet, a man of the mind. She should consider it a mark of Harold’s superior intelligence that he was wary of Kinvarra.
But her insistence didn’t convince her traitorous heart.
How she wished she really was the callous witch Kinvarra called her. Then she’d be immune both to his insults and to this insidious attraction that she’d never conquered, no matter how she tried.
“My lady?” Kinvarra asked, still in that even voice that struck a chill into her soul sharper than the winter wind. “Who is this…gentleman?”
She stiffened her backbone and leveled her shoulders. She was made of stronger stuff than this. Never would she let her husband guess that he still had power over her. Her response was steady. “Lord Kinvarra, allow me to present Lord Harold Fenton.”
Harold performed an uncertain bow without stepping any nearer. “My lord.”
As he straightened, tense silence descended. Alicia shifted to try and warm up her icy feet, fulminating against the bad
luck that threw her in Kinvarra’s way tonight.
“Well, this is awkward,” Kinvarra said flatly, although she saw in his taut, dark face that his anger hadn’t abated one whit.
“I don’t see why,” Alicia snapped.
It wasn’t just her husband who tried her patience. There was her lily-livered lover and the perishing cold. The temperature must have dropped ten degrees in the last five minutes. She shivered, then silently cursed that Kinvarra noticed and Harold didn’t. Harold was too busy staring at her husband the way a mouse stared at an adder.
“Do you imagine I’m so sophisticated that I’ll ignore discovering you in the arms of another man? My dear, you do me too much credit.”
She stifled the urge to consign Kinvarra to perdition. Just as she stifled the poignant memory that once he’d called her his dear and his love and he’d meant it. Once, briefly, long ago. “If you’ll set aside your bruised vanity for the moment, you’ll understand that we merely require you to ride to the nearest habitation and request help. Then you and I can return to acting like mere acquaintances, my lord.”
He laughed and she struggled to suppress the sensual awareness that rippled down her spine at that soft, deep sound. “Some things haven’t changed, I see. You’re still dishing out orders. And I’m still damned if I’ll play your lapdog.”
“Can you see another solution?” she asked sweetly.
“Yes,” he said with a snap of his straight white teeth. “I can leave you to freeze. Not that you’d notice. Your blood has always been colder than Satan’s icehouse.”
Her pride insisted that she send him on his way with a flea in his ear. The weather—and what common sense remained under the urge to wound that always flared in Kinvarra’s vicinity—prompted her to sound more conciliatory.
It was late. She and Harold hadn’t passed anyone on this country road. Bleak, snowy moors extended for miles around them. The grim truth was that if Kinvarra didn’t help, they were stranded until morning. And while she was dressed in good thick wool, she wasn’t prepared to endure a night in the open. The chill of the ground seeped through her fur-lined boots and she shifted again, trying to revive feeling in her frozen feet.
“My lord…” During the year they’d lived together, she’d called him Sebastian. During their few meetings since, she’d clung to formality to keep him at a distance. “My lord, there’s no point in quarreling. Basic charity compels your assistance. I would consider myself in your debt if you fetch aid as quickly as possible.”
He arched one black eyebrow in an imperious fashion that made her want to clout him. Not a new sensation. “Now that’s something I’d like to see.”
“What?”
“Gratitude.”
He knew he had her at a disadvantage and he wasn’t likely to rise above that fact. She ground her teeth and battled to retain her manners. “It’s all I can offer.”
The smile that curved his lips was pure devilry. A shiver with no connection to the cold ran through her.
“Your imagination fails you, my dear countess.”
Her throat closed with nerves—and that reluctant physical reaction she couldn’t ignore. He hadn’t shifted, yet suddenly she felt threatened. Which was ludicrous. During all their years apart, he’d given no indication he wanted anything from her except her absence. One chance meeting wasn’t likely to turn him into a robber baron ready to spirit her away to his lonely tower where he could have his way with her.
Having his way with her was the last thing Kinvarra wanted, as she was humiliatingly aware.
Nonetheless, she had to fight the urge to retreat. She knew from dispiriting experience that her only chance of handling Kinvarra was to feign control. “What do you want?”