But here, at this moment, with this girl in her oversized dress and bed-hanging shawl, looking like a child who had raided her grandmother’s wardrobe to play dress-up, walking along a hall where frost rimed the windows and crept like silvery lichen along the ceiling as their breath made little shrouds in the air, in this strange fairy-tale land of predawn glitter and soft, frosted sheen, Cecily’s assumption of familiarity felt warm and companionable and . . . right.

Perhaps he needn’t avoid her after all. Perhaps they really could just be friends . . .

But then he glanced at her, just a glance, and noted the way the angled light limned her full lower lip, the elegant line of her nose, the glossy sheen of her rich dark locks, and the small shadowed vale just visible above where she’d tucked the velvet material into her bodice and realized, no, they could not just be friends.

“Am I presumptuous?” she asked, not looking the least abashed. “I’m sorry.”

“Not at all,” he said easily. “I am just appalled that my predictability is so blatant you can foretell what traits my descendants will inherit.”

“You are kind, Robin,” she said, studying him.

Her words made him uneasy. He was a rake and a ne’er-do-well. And a pauper. She must know that.

He drew her back to his side and they proceeded at a leisurely pace, as if they were strolling in St. James Park during the height of the season, not a frozen corridor in a ruined castle in the dead of winter.

“You might well be correct about my presumed offspring,” he said. “If future Comtes de Rocheforte were to be found lounging about the castle. But I doubt they will be.”

“How so?” she asked. “The older gentleman gave me to understand that you will inherit Finovair.”

“The older gentleman? Oh. You mean Taran. Hardly a gentleman, though definitely older. And yes, my mother having been so shortsighted as to have given birth to me prematurely, and thus two weeks before Byron’s mother bore him, Taran has deemed me next in line to have this great pile foisted upon.”

He spoke with a great show of amused indifference. “But even I at my most persuasive—and I can be most persuasive”—he angled an amused glance at her, and was rewarded with a faint blush—“even I would be hard-pressed to talk any lady into living here, let alone raising her children in such a place.”

“Why?” She stopped and looked up at him, by all appearances sincerely confused.

Why? His gaze swept down the length of ruined gallery. A vine had crept through a crack in one of the windows and hung bare and twisted as a witch’s finger from the ceiling, pointing accusingly at a broken chair tipping woozily against a water-stained wall. She was being disingenuous. She had to be.

“The latest fashions,” he said with supreme insouciance, “eschew blue lips. Or so I am told. And I refuse to have an unfashionable wife.”

She burst into laughter and he could not help but notice that her lips were, indeed, touched with a violet hue. Wordlessly, he shrugged out of his jacket and, without asking permission, draped it over her shoulders.

She backed away a step as he performed this unasked-for service, clearly startled by the liberties he’d taken. He took the opportunity for even more, tucking the collar around her neck and gently teasing a tress of hair free from under his jacket. Then he smoothed it along her shoulder, smiling down at her as he slowly followed her retreat, step by step. Her shoulders bumped into the wall behind her.

“My pardon, Lady Cecily,” he said, coming to his senses. “I am simply doing my part to see that Scotland stays au courant with London. Your lips were turning blue, m’dear.”

He didn’t mean to do anything more. But her golden eyes trapped him in time, and all he was aware of was the beating of his heart, the sound of his own labored breathing, and then, amazingly, impossibly, she leaned forward, tipping her head back, her eyelids slipping shut, and her lips pursed in a delicious invitation.

A kiss. Something to remember her by. What harm a kiss?

He could no more have declined that wordless offer than he could refuse to breathe. He lowered his head and carefully, gently pressed his lips to hers.







Chapter 22

Desire exploded at the instant of contact, shooting like lightning through Robin. He stepped closer, keeping his hands knotted in fists at his sides, wanting more but certain that if he reached for her, she would bolt.

More kisses. That was all he sought. It was hardly anything, nothing at all, really, just . . . everything.

She made some lovely, half-surprised, half-ravished sound, a sigh and gasp all at once, and reached up, steadying herself with a hand flattened against his chest.

He edged closer still, his legs entangling in her heavy skirts, but trying not to startle her. In an effort to restrain himself, he braced his forearm on the wall above her head, angling his own to better access the perfect ripeness of her lips, to flick his tongue along the sweet seam until—mercy!—her mouth opened and her tongue found his own.

He groaned, surrendering to the pleasure of her untutored exploration. For long, glorious moments he kissed her until he felt her hand creep up his chest and she linked her arms around his neck, her fingers sifting through his hair. In reply, his body turned rock-hard. Only a few inches separated her from becoming manifestly aware of his state of arousal. He wanted to kiss her, not shock her. His jaw tightening with frustration, he stepped back, releasing her mouth.

She blinked, startled by his sudden desertion. He looked away, taking a deep, steadying breath. His emotions were chaotic and unfamiliar, an uncomfortable mix of desire and the desire to protect. She shouldn’t be here with him. This was a mistake. A foolish, masochistic indulgence.

“Good heavens, you are adroit at this seduction thing, aren’t you?” she whispered breathlessly.

“You didn’t know? Of course I am. My dear, I am the Prince of Rakes.” He glanced back at her sardonically, the once amusing sobriquet coming like a curse to his lips.

Her arms slipped from around his shoulders. He looked down at her, prepared to offer an arrogant curl of the lip, but the sight of her ruined the attempt. She looked puzzled and somber, her cheeks flushed, her eyes bright and unnervingly candid.

“Of course you are,” she said. “I mean, I had heard that. You do have a far-ranging reputation. But one hears so much about so many people, and then when one meets the individual, one realizes that rumors have simply exaggerated what is, in fact, not all that extraordinary.”

He laughed, startled out of his dark mood. She confounded him, robbed him of his intent, his sangfroid, his reputation. She stripped away all his preconceptions about young ladies, leaving him without a clue to guide him. She fascinated and mystified him. What was she doing? What was she about?

“I see,” he said. “Rather a letdown, am I?”

“Oh no! Not at all. You quite exceed expectations,” she hastened to reassure him with such artlessness, such solicitous concern for his rakish reputation, that he could not help but laugh again. “I have never been kissed so . . . so convincingly.”

“Now ’tis you who are kind, Lady Cecily,” he said, though something about her use of the word “convincingly” nettled him. She thought he’d been playing a role. In truth, he had never before been so lost in a simple kiss and it annoyed him that she did not realize it.

“But then, perhaps you should ask Miss Marilla’s opinion,” she said. “She may have a different judgment.”

He started and stared, stunned she had alluded to the kiss she’d witnessed. A little ember glowed in the depths of her amber-colored eyes. Jealousy?

Then she smiled at him with such dazzling unaffectedness that his breath caught in his throat and he lifted his hand to touch her, but she’d already turned away and started down the gallery. He hastened to her side, once more offering his arm. She took it with a nonchalance that startled him, coming so close on the heels of their heated kiss. At least, he thought in growing consternation, he’d considered it heated . . .

“Truth be told,” she continued as if there had been no break in the conversation, “I don’t know many rakes.”

“I should hope not,” he said, once again caught off-balance by the turn of the conversation. She should be blushing or berating him for taking advantage of her, or perhaps enticing him to try his luck again, responses he was used to and expected. She should not be acting as if the preceding moments hadn’t happened, as if their kiss were insignificant. It was significant to him!