Bennett moaned loudly. “Oh God, I can’t take it. You’ve joined forces with Caroline?”
“Yes, I have. Leave if you don’t like it. You will either help or you will take yourself off.”
“You, my lad, have no say about anything.” Bennett’s hangover was receding as his anger rose. “Her damned aunt did this to me and now Caroline will follow in her footsteps. I’ve been cheated out of Scrilady Hall and all its rents. I don’t even get a pence from any of the tin mines. It isn’t fair. I was cheated. I won’t have it. Just maybe what happened to Aunt Eleanor will happen to Caroline. Yes, that sounds just exactly right. I wouldn’t mind seeing the little cheat who acts like a bloody saint on that cliff edge.”
Owen, to his later disbelief and pride, leaned over Bennett Penrose, grabbed him by his loosely tied cravat, hauled him to his shaky feet, and planted his fist into his mouth. Bennett went limply to the floor. “If you speak like that again, I will throw you through the window. The bay window in the drawing room at the front of the hall.”
Bennett didn’t move, but he did manage to say through his sore mouth, “You will be sorry for that, you mangy little bastard.”
“I’m not a bastard. Just ask my father. No, perhaps you’d best not. He’s not particularly pleased with me at the moment. Indeed, I doubt he’ll ever be pleased with me again. I’ve told you what’s going to happen and now I must return to Mount Hawke. Oh dear, my father. It’s all rather too much.”
Owen made his way, shaking his head, past Mrs. Trebaw, out the quite lovely front door of Scrilady Hall.
“You are moving in, Mr. Ffalkes?”
Owen gave her a distracted nod. “Yes, probably tomorrow.”
“And that horrid man who is your father?”
“Oh no, just I will be coming.”
“And Miss Caroline?”
“She’s still in bed; my father struck her on the head, but she’ll probably be home shortly.”
“It
isn’t good, sir, and you tell her that. Mount Hawke is a man’s residence. No women have been allowed there forever and ever. She’s there with no chaperon and she’s a young lady. You speak to her, Mr. Ffalkes, yes, you speak to her and bring her home, else she’ll be quite ruined. To a Nightingale man, ruining a lady doesn’t mean anything, you tell her that.”
“North isn’t like that, Mrs. Trebaw.”
She harrumphed. “That remains to be seen. But I doubt it. He’s still a Nightingale man and they’ve all been alike forever and ever.”
“I will tell her what you’ve said, but she will do just as she pleases; she always does.”
“So did her aunt Eleanor,” Mrs. Trebaw said, and sighed. “Do your best. Tell her the Nightingale men aren’t to be trusted. Black-hearted devils, every last one of them. You wouldn’t believe what the current viscount’s father and grandfather did, but that’s not important right now. Poor little girl.” She shook her head and walked back into Scrilady Hall.
He didn’t mean to do it, he really didn’t, but she was lying there sleeping, looking so soft and inviting, that he simply didn’t think, just sat down on the bed beside her, leaned down, and began kissing her. She had the softest mouth, he thought, just lightly running his tongue over her lips. So very soft and warm and…
Her mouth opened and North knew he had to stop, he simply had to while he could. Nightingale men were passionate, impatient, and a female couldn’t stop them even if she wanted to once their lust was stirred, as his was right now with naught but a few kisses from a sleeping girl. Except now she wasn’t asleep, her lips were parted, and she was kissing him back and it was beyond anything he could have imagined, beyond what he ever wanted to imagine, and thus refused to.
“No,” he said into her warm mouth, and with the greatest effort imaginable, he pulled himself back. He just stared down at her, his eyes nearly black in his hunger, his hands fisting, then opening, again and again at his sides, to keep them off her.
“No,” he said again, and he rose, stepping back from the bed where she was lying on her back, her breasts heaving slightly—from what? he wondered—and she was looking at him, and it was a wonderful look she was looking.
“That was nice, North,” she said, and smiled at him. “I’m glad I woke up in time to kiss you back.” She ran her fingertips over her lips and he just stared at those fingers and her lips and thought he’d die.
“You have the greenest eyes,” he said, not meaning to but doing it nonetheless. “I thought they were kind of a gray-green, but that’s not true. They’re green, not hazel, but pure green. It’s a nice color, like that hawthorn scrub that grows over near St. Erth.”
“Thank you. Perhaps you could take me there and show me this scrub grass. Perhaps you could kiss me again, North. Perhaps my eyes will change color again.”
He wasn’t stupid. He took another step back. “No. Forgive me for attacking you and you were asleep, thus unable to say yea or nay.”
“Yea.”
“Be quiet, Caroline. You’re still half asleep and don’t know what you’re saying.”
“But I do know what I’m feeling and it’s very nice. No one has ever kissed me before, North, just you. I never thought a man would stick his tongue into a woman’s mouth. Is it the thing to do? Do all men do it?”