He rubbed his hand across his chin, winced. ‘I apologise for the stubble.’ Then he bent to pick up his boots and pull them on. He even does that beautifully, Guin thought, watching Jared balance on first one foot, then the other.
‘We should get back.’ He held out his hand to help her up from the milking stool she was sitting on. ‘Walk behind me and stay close.’
He unbarred the door, checked outside, then led the way through the barn, across the yard, in through the back door and up the stairs. Guin found the key and handed it to him without a word, not sure what to say, wanting to touch him, even though he did not seem to want to touch her any more.
The delicious heat of desire was cooling into something very like dismay. Had she ruined the fragile relationship between them? Probably Jared despised her now for wantonly throwing herself at him for the second time. But he could have walked away. He could have stopped at a kiss on the lips, she told herself. He had a made a choice as much as she had.
He opened the bedchamber door for her, went inside, which made her catch her breath, then stepped out again after a rapid scan of the room. ‘I will see you at breakfast, Guinevere. Remember to lock the door.’
Would he kiss her? Apparently not. Jared held the door for her, th
en closed it as soon as she was through. She secured it and heard him move away from the other side. Her bed was wide and empty and soft. Cold.
‘What is the danger here?’ she had asked.
‘Us,’ Jared had answered.
Just what have you done? Jared’s conscience enquired acidly as he pulled off his boots again and set rapier and knife within reach. He left the door onto the parlour open. He could see Guinevere’s door from the bed, hear anything that happened. The instinct to lie across the threshold was a complete over-reaction.
He stripped naked and sponged himself down in the cold water from the ewer, grateful for the shock of the chill on overheated skin. He scrubbed away the sweat of exercise and the musk of their loving and winced at the rasp of stubble on his face. It had not occurred to him to shave before he began to exercise. Yet Guinevere had not complained, nor had she shrunk from him, even though it was obvious that such intimacies were new to her.
That selfish pig of a husband had clearly thought nothing of her pleasure, only his own. Had she even experienced an orgasm before? The warmth of the thought that he might have given her the first lasted only as long as it took him to get himself dry. He had no business making love to her. Leaving aside the fact that he was in no position to offer anything to a lady of breeding beside an affaire, Guinevere was not the kind of sophisticated, worldly widow who would flit happily from one short-lived liaison to another.
Jared pulled on his breeches again and lay down on top of the blankets, made himself relax. He could still smell the glorious scent of aroused woman. His hair, he supposed. In the morning he would stick his head under the pump in the yard, scrub it clean, braid his hair penitentially tight to remind himself that this was his first independent commission and he had already broken one of the major rules he had set himself – do not get emotionally involved with clients.
Guinevere seemed to like his hair loose… but not as much as he liked the thought of hers unbound, tumbling about her shoulders. Stop it, he snarled at his own imagination. Just… stop it.
‘What are you staring at, Faith?’
She had been standing at the window, Guin’s hairbrush in hand, for almost a minute.
‘Oh, I do beg your pardon, my lady. But look.’
Guin drew her dressing robe closed and went to the window. Jared. Of course, it had to be Jared. Not content with turning her sleep into a torrid succession of dreams he was now bending under the yard pump, stripped to the waist – again – while a stable boy laboured away sending the water sluicing over his head.
‘My goodness, now that’s what I call a proper man,’ Faith said. ‘Those muscles – you think he’s not got many, he’s so slim and so quick, but when he’s got his clothes off… I wonder what he’d look like if he took off his – ’
‘Faith!’
‘Sorry, my lady. But he’s a big man, for all that slenderness.’ She didn’t look remotely apologetic, nor did she stop looking. But then neither did Guin as Jared signalled to the boy to cease pumping and stepped away, straightening up and throwing back his head so the streaming wet hair fell down to his shoulders.
‘The green walking dress,’ Guin said decisively, turning back to the bed.
‘Not the mourning black that we put out last night, my lady?’
‘No.’
‘Oh, you are quite right, my lady. I can’t have checked it over properly yesterday,’ Faith said as she picked up the discarded gown. ‘Look, there’s dust on the skirt and the back is quite rumpled. I’m sorry, shall I find the other black walking dress?’
‘I do not think there is any need. Lord Northam would not be the slightest bit offended at the thought of me wearing colours.’
Augustus had expressed decided views on many things and Pretty women decked out like crows being a lot of nonsensical hypocrisy was one of them.
Breakfast was awkward, not because anything was said, not because Jared betrayed by so much as a glance that anything had happened last night, but because he appeared to be completely untouched by it. Guin had armoured herself against smouldering looks, fleeting touches, murmured words and having to deal with none of them left her feeling decidedly unsophisticated and naive. That kind of encounter was obviously nothing special to Mr Hunt.
Guin decided on bright conversation. ‘Have you stayed at the Bell before?’ she asked when they were settled in the carriage once more. ‘You seemed to know your way around very well yesterday.’
Jared turned his head from his silent contemplation of the high wooden palisade surrounding the Norman Cross prisoner of war camp to the right of the road. ‘I was in Stilton some years ago.’ He turned back to the view.