He waited outside a long time. Finally, he sighed. The sound’s sadness added a rich minor note to the lilting music in her heart. She heard him turn toward the bedroom.
One step. Two.
He appeared in the doorway. She watched him absorb the scene with one flicker of those extraordinary eyes.
Bright candles on shelf and chest and windowsill.
Bedclothes folded down so only the sheet awaited. White. Pristine. Provocative.
Beckoning.
The air was heavy with sensual jasmine perfume. She’d used it on her pulse points and anointed the bed linen with its evocative fragrance.
His eyes widened as they lit on her. She watched his long fingers curl at his sides as if he stopped himself reaching out. It was the reaction she’d prayed for. Although whether she begged help from God or the Devil, she couldn’t have said.
“What are you doing, Grace?” he asked hoarsely. He didn’t cross the threshold. His gaze darkened with accusation—and unwilling hunger. A tiny muscle beat an erratic tattoo in his cheek.
“I’m seducing you,” she said with deliberate steadiness.
His face settled into rigid lines. His face wasn’t all that was rigid. He’d hardened the moment he saw her. The loose fawn trousers clearly revealed his arousal pressing against the buttoned frontfall.
She shook her freshly washed hair away from her face. Her hair flowed around her, brushing warm and silky across bare skin. It gave off a sweet tinge of wood smoke, lingering from when she’d dried it in front of the fire. Never before had she taken her hair down for a man. The effect was amazingly erotic, oddly liberating.
A smile curved lips supple with red salve. She’d never worn paint before either. Another freedom.
“I told you this is impossible.” His face was ashen and he looked lost, bewildered, unhappy. “Why didn’t you say something at dinner?”
“Because you’d try and talk me out of it.” She burst into speech before her courage failed. “Your uncle will think he’s won when he learns you share my bed. Monks and Filey will believe I’ve taken the harlot’s path. I’ll have no reputation to salvage after this.” She swallowed, afraid of what awaited, afraid of what she threatened to become. “The world believes me your mistress. What benefit to us if it isn’t so?”
“You and I will know the truth.”
Her smile faded as she read the despair underlying his hostility. “Lord Sheene…”
“Christ, Grace. My name is Matthew. I’m lord of nothing in this hellhole. Least of all myself.”
He turned and leaned his forehead on the hand he fisted against the door.
“Matthew,” she said softly and noticed how the sound of his name on her lips leached tension from his tall form. Deep within, a coil of nerves loosened, turned liquid.
She took a shaky breath. She’d hoped that the setting and her patent availability would send caution flying. That he’d take one look and carry her away on a tide of passion.
She should have known better. He was so strong. He’d had to be to survive the last eleven years.
“Matthew,” she said again, purely for the pleasure of hearing it. She linked her nervous hands in front of her and struggled to dredge up the right words. “This estate is a world unto itself. You may never have the chance to bed another woman.”
No, that was wrong. She knew it even before his head whipped up and he blasted her with a ferocious golden glare. Yet again the captive, doomed hawk teased at the fringes of her mind. The haunting, tragic image bolstered her wavering determination.
“You do this out of pity?” he asked sharply.
Composure became more difficult every second. She repressed the urge to scramble to the armoire for a robe to cover her all-but-nudity. Straightening her shoulders, she forced herself to continue calmly. “Not pity.” Then the greatest risk of all. “I want you. I think you want me.”
His hunted expression didn’t lighten. “Yes, I want you. That doesn’t make this right.”
“Why?”
His jaw clenched. “This is cruel, Grace. And unworthy of you. Stop this spiteful game. I will not fall in with my uncle’s plans, whatever my own selfish cravings. I swore you’d suffer no harm. Making you my whore means I’m no better than my jailers.”
His a