"What the hell. It'll only take a few minutes."
"Michael." She jerked back, stunned, when she saw the intention in his eyes. "Michael, I will not be—"
Dragged to the floor, kissed into mindless submission, driven to bone-splitting climax.
"Oh, God." She fisted her hands on the rug and let herself be ravished.
It took more than a few minutes, so that Laura found herself sneaking like a thief into her own house. If she could just get upstairs, she thought, easing open a side door and creeping into the parlor. Into her room.
Her children would be waking for school any minute. Her children. Wincing, carrying her shoes, she tiptoed into the hall. Was she out of her mind? How could she possibly explain herself if—
"Miss Laura!"
If the worst happened, Laura thought fatalistically and turned to face a shocked Ann Sullivan.
"Annie. I was just, ah, out… early. Walking."
Very slowly, Ann continued down the stairs. She had been widowed for more than twenty-five years, but she knew the look of a woman who'd spent the night in a man's arms.
"You're wearing a man's shirt," she said stiffly. "And there's hay in your hair."
"Ah." Clearing her throat, Laura reached up and plucked out a bent shaft. "Yes, that's true. I was… out, as I said, and…"
"You've never been able to lie your way out of an open door." Ann stopped at the base of the stairs, facing down her quarry very much like a mother about to lecture a reckless child. With a mixture of amusement and apprehension, Laura recognized the signs.
"Annie—"
"You've been down at the stables rolling around in the hay with that sharp-eyed, womanizing Michael Fury."
"Yes, I've been down at the stables," Laura said shrugging on her cloak of dignity. "Yes, I've been with Michael. And I'm a grown woman."
"With the sense of a peanut. What were you thinking of?" Ann continued, poking out a finger. "A woman like you wrestling in a hayloft with the likes of him."
Because where she loved, she had patience, Laura's voice was calm. "I imagine you know very well what I was thinking of. Whatever you think of him, or of my sense, the fact remains that I'm thirty years old, Annie. He wanted me. I wanted him. And in all of my life—all of it—no one has ever, ever made me feel the way he did."
"A moment's pleasure for—"
"A moment's pleasure." Laura nodded. If that was all it amounted to, she swore she would go to her grave grateful. "I was married ten years and never knew what it was like to be pleasured or, I hope, to pleasure a man like that. And I'm sorry you disapprove."
Ann's face pokered up. "It's not my place to disapprove."
"Oh, don't give me that dignified-housekeeper-to-mistress routine, Annie. It's years too late." With a sigh, she laid a hand over the rigid one with which Ann gripped the newel post. "I know how much you care. I know that everything you say you say out of concern and love, but even that can't change the way I feel. Or what I need."
"And you think you need Michael Fury?"
"No. I know I do. I haven't decided what to do about it, or where I want to go from here, but I do know that I fully intend to have a great many moments of pleasure."
"Whatever the cost?"
"Yes. For once in my life, the hell with the cost. I need to shower." She started up the stairs, paused, turned. "I don't want you going down there badgering Michael over this, Annie. That is not your place, or anyone else's."
Ann inclined her head, kept it lowered until she heard Laura close the door to her room. Perhaps it wasn't her place to speak to Michael Fury. But she knew her duty, and she would do it.
Without hesitation, she walked down the hall and into the library. The call to France wouldn't take long. Then they would see, she thought, brooding out the window. They would see.
"I'd like to speak with Mr. or Mrs. Templeton, if you please. It's Ann Sullivan, the housekeeper of Templeton House."
"In the stables. In the hay. All night?" In the second-floor kitchen of Pretenses, Kate swiveled on the stool and gaped. The ten-minute afternoon break was a great deal more interesting than she'd expected. "You?"