“You asked me to invite them.” He valued his privacy, yet still…“You know them all—you chose them.”
“Indeed. They’re the excuse for me to join you socially, if and when I choose. What more natural than that, while paying a duty visit to an aging relative in the neighborhood, I should join your party for a day or an evening?” He paused, then continued, “No. The arrangements are perfect as they are.”
His arrangements. She didn’t even know where he was staying, couldn’t even guess whether there truly was an aging relative or not.
“If only the rest were going as well.”
She frowned. “What do you mean?”
“The ship I’m waiting for. It hasn’t come in.”
His fingers continued to play, palpating her firm flesh; although his touch had grown harder, edged with suppressed anger, it was his tone, flat, cold, that set her nerves skittering.
“I expected it two or three nights ago, but it hasn’t been sighted.”
His accents had grown more clipped, quite different to the drawl he usually affected.
He had a temper. She’d only seen glimpses, fleeting at most, yet she knew it was there, formidable and frightening. He was ruthless, entirely devoid of softer feelings, and sometimes his intensity, his obsession with his plans, with having them succeed, made her more than uneasy.
She swallowed, kept her gaze on the darkness beyond the window. “Perhaps I could ask around, see if anyone has heard anything?”
He was silent, considering, then replied, “Not yet. But I want what that ship is carrying of mine.”
His thirty pieces of silver. His payment—his ultimate reward, also his ultimate triumph. His ultimate revenge.
He wanted it, thirsted for it, could almost taste it. So close, but it wasn’t his—in his hands, his to gloat over—yet.
“I want that cargo.” He glanced down at her perfect profile, flexed his fingers more powerfully. “But I don’t want to risk any undue attention. Not yet.”
The fact that although he’d won the war—his private war waged against a powerful enemy who knew him not, and not for want of trying—that although he’d triumphed, he still had to skulk, plot and scheme to lay his hands on what was rightfully his because, despite all, he was still too fearful to face that enemy, and knew he never could, irked him to his soul.
Face setting, he gripped hard, heard her breath catch, strangle. “Do you understand?”
She nodded. Her “Yes” was breathless.
He held her there, poised between pleasure and pain, let the moment stretch. He could all but hear her pulse thundering, could easily sense her spiraling arousal.
Then he smiled into the dark, eased his grip, and patted her abused flesh. “Meet me here tomorrow night, and then…we’ll see.”
Chapter 7
The following afternoon, Gervase strode into the front hall of Treleaver Park. He nodded to Milsom, who appeared to greet him. “Miss Gascoigne?”
“In the office, my lord. Shall I announce you?”
“No need. I know the way.” With a nod, he headed down the corridor toward the estate office. As he walked, he polished the elements of his plan.
He knew better than to expect Madeline to invite him to further seduce her, especially not after that interlude in the arbor. With any conventional lady, their transparent compatibility would have resulted in encouragement, but Madeline would react by strengthening her defenses, rather than lowering her drawbridge.
Yet she was weakening, and now he had her measure. Her curiosity was a tangible force, powerful enough to override her reticence; once engaged, it became a potent weapon, all the more effective because it worked from within.
Her independence—her very unconventionality—was the other ace in his hand. Once she was compelled by her curiosity to experience something new, her independence ensured that considerations of “what was proper” or “how things were done” held little power to deflect her.
Her curiosity and her independence combined had led to that encounter in the arbor; now was the time to press her further, to storm the breach in her defenses.
The office door stood open; he paused in the doorway, lips curving as he took in the sight of her, seated behind the desk, head bent, open ledgers spread before her. Sunlight slanted through the windows behind her, lighting the corona of her hair, as always escaping its restraints to form a gilded fretwork about her face.
He was naturally soft-footed; she hadn’t heard his approach. What he could see of her expression said she was absorbed in her accounts. Swiftly rejigging his plan, he stepped into the room and shut the door.