He let the words trail away as he drew her fully against him.

Her hands sliding up, over his shoulders, she blinked at him. “What?”

His lips curved. He lowered his head. “I would have ignored your hurdles anyway.”

He took her mouth, felt her give it, and herself—felt her sink against him. For long moments, he simply savored her, and her implicit surrender. Yet the isolation of the clearing was not why they were here. Nevertheless, capturing her senses, focusing them, and her, on all that would be between them, on the ultimate intimacy that would soon exist before he broached his immediate objective, wasn’t a bad idea.

Eventually, he drew back; when he lifted his head, she opened her eyes, searched his. “Why did you choose here?”

He might be able to addle her senses, but her wits were clearly more resilient. Releasing her, he took her hand, drew her to walk with him toward the stone. “When we came here last time…” He waited until she lifted her gaze to his, until he could capture her eyes. “As we rode into the clearing, I was baiting you.” He saw that she remembered, was remembering. “I wanted a reaction, but the reaction I got was not one I can interpret, even now.”

Looking ahead, she halted; he halted, too, but didn’t release her hand. He shifted to face her. “We were discussing the life of an ambassador’s wife, namely your own, and the duties you or any such lady had to perform.”

Her features set. Without looking at him, she tugged her hand; he tightened his grip. “You warned me of every ambassador’s need for a suitable helpmate—I mentioned that the same held true for government ministers.” Relentlessly he continued, “I then pointed out that Camden had been a master ambassador.”

Her fingers twitched in his, but she refused to look at him; her expression was stony, her chin ominously set. “I brought you here to ask you what about that upset you. And why.”

For a long moment, she remained utterly still, statuelike but for the pulse he could see thudding at the base of her throat. She was upset again, but in a different way… or the same way compounded by something more.

Finally, she drew in a deep breath, fleetingly glanced at him, but didn’t meet his eyes. “I…” Again she breathed deeply, lifted her head and fixed her gaze on the trees. “Camden married me because he saw in me the perfect hostess—the ultimate ambassadorial helpmate.”

Her voice was flat, without inflection; denied her eyes, any chance of reading her feelings, he was left guessing, trying to follow her direction. “Camden was a career diplomat, a very experienced and canny one by the time he married you.” He paused, then added, “He was right.”

“I know.”

The words were so tight with emotion they quavered. She wouldn’t look at him; he pressed her hand. “Caro…” When she didn’t respond, he quietly said, “I can’t see if you won’t show me.”

“I don’t want you to see!” She tried to fling her hands in the air— found her fingers locked in his and tugged. “Oh, for goodness sake! Let me go. I can hardly run away from you, can I?”

The fact she recognized that made him ease his grip. Wrapping her arms about her, she paced, looking down, circling the stone. Agitation shimmered about her, yet her steps were definite; her expression, what he glimpsed of it, suggested she was wrestling, but with what he was still at a loss to guess.

Eventually she spoke, but didn’t slow her pacing. “Why do you need to know?”

“Because I don’t want to hurt you again.” He hadn’t even needed to think to reply.

His words made her pause; she glanced fleetingly at him, then resumed her pacing—from one side of the stone to the other, leaving the chest-high monument between them.

After another fraught pause, she spoke, her words low but clear, “I was young—very young. Only seventeen. Camden was fifty-eight. Think about that.” She paced on. “Think about how a fifty-eight-year-old man, a very worldly, experienced, still handsome and devastatingly charming but ruthless fifty-eight-year-old man convinces a seventeen-year-old girl, one who hadn’t even had a Season, to marry him. It was so easy for him to make me believe in something that simply wasn’t there.”

It hit him. Not like a blow but with the keen edge of a knife. He suddenly found himself bleeding from a place he hadn’t even known could be cut. “Oh, Caro.”

“No!” She rounded on him, silver eyes ablaze. “Don’t you dare feel sorry for me! I just didn’t know—” Abruptly, she waved her hands and turned away. Dragged in a huge breath and straightened, lifted her head. “Anyway, it’s all in the past.”

He wanted to tell her that past hurts properly buried didn’t slice at one in the here and now. But he couldn’t find the words, any she would accept.

“I’m not usually so sensitive about it, but this business with you and Elizabeth…” Her voice faded; she took in another breath, still looking away, into the trees. “So now you know. Are you happy?”

“No.” He stirred, stepped around the stone and closed the gap between them. “But at least I understand.”

She glanced over her shoulder as he slid his hands around her waist. Frowned at him. “I can’t see why you need to.”

He drew her around, closed his arms, and bent his head. “I know.”

But you will.

He heard the words in his mind as he set his lips to hers. Not hungrily, but temptingly, coaxingly. She followed, not at first with her usual tempestuous yearning, but yet she went with him. It was a slower, more considered, more deliberate progression into the flames; step by step he led, and she followed.

Until they were burning. Until the heat of their mouths, the pressure of body against body, was no longer enough, not for either of them.

Caught in the moment, wrapped in its promise, needing the heat of it to drive away the past’s chill, Caro resented even the moment he took to step back, shrug out of his coat, flick it out on the ground in the shade beneath a huge oak. When he reached for her and drew her down, she went eagerly, wanting, needing the contact, the wordless assurance that came with his kisses, with each increasingly bold caress.

As usual, he didn’t ask permission to open her bodice, strip away her chemise, and lay her breasts bare—he simply did. Then he feasted, pressing delight upon sensual delight upon her, until she was gasping, skin taut and tight, fevered and burning.

He didn’t ask, but simply reached for her skirt, tugged the front up between them and slid his hand beneath. His searching fingers found her knee, circled it, then traced upward, lingeringly caressing the inner faces of her thighs until the muscles flickered, until she shifted, pressed closer, wordlessly demanding…

She knew what she wanted, but when he touched her curls she nearly expired. Not just with delight, but anticipation. He boldly nudged her thighs apart, stroked through her curls, traced her soft flesh in a languid exploration that left her heated, slick, and throbbing. Then his touch firmed.

He released the breast he’d been tauntingly suckling; lifting his head, from under heavy lids he held her gaze as he slid one finger deep inside her.

Awareness gripped her, excruciatingly acute. She lost her breath, lost touch with her wits; every sense she possessed locked on that assured penetration, on the steady invasion as he pushed deeper, then reached deeper still.

Before she could catch her breath, he stroked, firmly, deliberately. Then he bent his head and covered her lips, kissed her as if she were a houri he owned.

She kissed him back as if she were, avid, greedy—demanding, commanding, even deliberately taunting. He responded in kind. Their mouths melded, tongues tangling as between her thighs he worked his hand, stroked, and drove her mindless.

Gripping his shoulders, she held him to the kiss, suddenly desperate on so many counts. Desperate for him to keep kissing her so he wouldn’t see, wouldn’t have a chance to see—so she wouldn’t have a chance to give herself away by revealing how novel, how indescribably exciting yet glitteringly, fascinatingly new the sensations he was pressing on her were.

Desperate that he wouldn’t stop.

Desperate to reach some sensual pinnacle, to shatter the tension growing and coiling and building within her.

She felt like screaming.

Even through the kiss, she sensed him swear, then between her thighs, his hand shifted.

She tried to pull back to protest; he refused to let her, followed her, holding her trapped in the kiss—then a second finger pressed in alongside the first, suddenly, startlingly, escalating the pressure. The tension racked up another notch; she could feel her body tightening against his.

He held her down, then his hand shifted again; his thumb touched her, stroked, searched, then settled—pressed in time with the stroking of his fingers.

She fractured like crystal in bright sunlight, shards of white-hot pleasure streaking through her, sharp, slicing, abruptly releasing the tension, letting it flow into a golden pool. The pool glowed, throbbed; its heat sank into her, pulsed beneath her skin, in her fingertips, in her heart.

The wonder held her, cradled her, ripped from the world for the very first time, afloat on the ecstasy of her senses.

Slowly, she returned—to the physical world, to comprehension. To the knowledge of what physical delight was, to some inkling of what she’d missed all these years—to a deeper knowledge of what she’d been waiting for, and what he’d brought her.

He’d raised his head; he’d been watching her and still was.

She smiled, slowly, lazily stretched, sensually sated for the first time in her life. Glorying in it.