Mariah masked her uneasiness as she fell into step beside him as he began to walk back in the direction of the lake, very much afraid that Darian Hunter was indeed a man who always meant what he said as well as kept all of his promises.
Afraid?
Oh, yes, Mariah was very much afraid, in spite of everything that had happened between them since they first met, that she desired Darian Hunter as much as he now claimed to desire her.
That she desired to know Darian in a way she had never desired any other man.
*
‘Do try to smile, Darian, rather than scowl and glower in that dark and disapproving way,’ Mariah advised lightly later that afternoon, viewing his reflection in the mirror after he had entered her bedchamber through the door adjoining their two rooms, after only the briefest of knocks. His appearance was elegantly foreboding in a black superfine, grey waistcoat and pantaloons. ‘Else, once we arrive downstairs for tea, the other guests will think that the two of us have argued.’ She looked at her own reflection in the mirror to give her already perfectly styled hair another pat, rather than continue to look at Darian’s more disturbing reflection.
Everything about this man disturbed her.
The way he looked.
Her undeniable response to his touch.
The desire she was finding it more and more difficult to deny or control.
And the fact that she had confided so much of her past to him earlier today.
That breach in the barrier she had kept so firmly about her emotions for so many years disturbed Mariah most of all, so much so that she had spent the past four hours, since they parted downstairs after returning from their walk, attempting to shore up or replace that barrier.
Only to have taken but a single glance at Darian’s reflection in the mirror as he strode forcefully into her bedchamber just now to know that those efforts, determined as they might have been, had been a complete waste of her time.
What was it about this man in particular that affected her so? Oh, he was handsome enough. Forceful enough. But he was far from the first handsome or forceful man to have expressed a desire to bed her. Desire she had found absolutely no difficulty in rejecting in the past.
No doubt because she had not felt a return of that desire for any of those other men.
The same desire that had so shaken and disturbed her earlier, to a degree that she had confided more of her past to this man than she had ever wished anyone to know.
The very same desire that made her feel so vulnerable whenever she was in his presence.
‘I have absolutely no interest in what they do or do not think,’ Darian answered her impatiently now, the scowl still dark upon his brow as he stepped further into the room.
Mariah turned slowly, a slight frown creasing her ow
n brow now. ‘Has something happened?’
Darian stared at her incredulously.
Had something happened?
As far as Darian’s life was concerned, Mariah Beecham had happened.
So much so that just one look at her, when he entered her bedchamber just seconds ago and saw how beautiful she looked in an afternoon gown of the palest turquoise, her breasts a creamy and tempting swell, the very low and curved neckline of that gown revealing the tops of her nipples as being a deep rose, and he was forced to endure a hard and painful throb inside his pantaloons yet again.
At the same time he felt a ridiculous desire to cover up those beautiful breasts, so that no other man could look at or see any part of them. Or become aroused and tempted by looking at them, as he undoubtedly was.
A ridiculous reaction, when Mariah’s coolness towards him this morning, once they had left the temple, and then completed their walk about the lake together in complete silence, had spoken only too clearly not only of her need to put a physical distance between them, but also of a return of that emotional one.
Darian had lingered in the hallway to have that promised word with Benson while Mariah went up the stairs alone. By the time he arrived up the stairs, the door to Mariah’s bedchamber, and the door adjoining their two rooms, had both been firmly closed. He had known instinctively that Mariah meant them as a barrier between the two of them. One he crossed at his peril.
Because she had revealed too much about herself to him this morning? Because he now knew things about her life, her marriage to Carlisle, that perhaps no one else did?
Darian did not believe that Mariah was the type of woman who would confide her deepest, darkest secrets easily. To anyone. And he knew from personal experience that Mariah’s role as an agent for the Crown would also make it difficult for her to have close friends, male or female, for fear they might discover her secret.
The murderous rage Darian had felt earlier today, towards Martin Beecham, had not abated in the slightest in the hours that had passed since Darian and Mariah had parted so stiffly. Her husband had been an out-and-out bastard who had raped and terrified a young and inexperienced girl for the sole purpose of forcing his child and marriage on her, trampling all of the young girl’s romantic dreams into the dust beneath his own greedy need for the bride’s portion of her father’s money.