But when he came to lie beside her, all his anxieties seemed to vanish. She reached for him with the same openness and eagerness that she had before, trusting him utterly, needing him as much as he needed her. It humbled him completely. They lay skin against skin, without moving, and then she smiled, a smile that dazzled him, as she ran her hands over his body, and he felt alive beneath her touch in a way he had never experienced before.

“I had no idea,” she whispered, “no thought that it could be like this…”

Neither had he.

He felt her touch him, her fingers a tentative, gentle slide against the hardness of his erection, and he almost lost his mind.

“Yes,” he said roughly. “Alice…”

He rolled her beneath him and kissed her hard, possessive in his passion, forgetting to be gentle. Her response swept him far away.

“I love you,” she whispered, opening her eyes. They were a deep, drenched blue and there was so much warmth and tenderness in them that he felt a shock like a blow to the stomach. Something snapped within him then and he gathered her close, wanting to lose himself in her, knowing he could never be the same again.

She was already slick and ready for him as he slid deep inside her. He held himself still with her impaled beneath him.

“Marry me,” he said.

She gasped. “That’s not fair.”

He moved slightly, growing hotter and harder within her. “Since when have I been fair? Marry me. Accept me freely.”

Her body clenched about him and she gasped again. He thrust, unable to help himself. The tightness and the heat and the slippery sweetness of her pushed him beyond control.

Wait.

Dimly he remembered that he had wanted to wait, to spin out the experience, to give her time. He could not. The small, helpless cries of intense pleasure that Alice gave, the way that her body rippled around his as the intensity of her climax racked her, drove him on to a place he had never been, where the world dissolved into oblivion and he was free and at peace as never before.

“Yes,” Alice whispered, and he found himself hoping desperately, as he had never hoped before, that she meant yes she would marry him.

He turned so that she lay in his arms, her head against his shoulder. She was already drifting into sleep, her eyes closed and a small, very self-satisfied smile on her lips. He felt her body shift and accommodate itself to the shape of his as though she had been made especially to fit there. His heart felt as though it was about to burst.

“I love you,” he murmured, pressing his lips to the soft hollow beneath her ear, inhaling the sweet scent of her skin and feeling the warmth of her flood through him. The words felt strange on his lips. He felt afraid to say them in case they opened the gates to the old betrayals and he found that the past still had the power to hurt him. He would tell Alice about his father and all the secrets, he thought. Only that way would he finally be able to heal. She would be able to heal him. He knew it. She was so honest and so generous that she had already touched his soul.

“I love you,” he said again. It was easier this time even though he had never, ever said those words to a woman before Alice. Perhaps, he thought wryly, he had been more honest in the past than he had given himself credit for. Not that Alice seemed moved by what he had said. She did not stir in his arms but merely shifted closer to him, soft and rounded and exquisitely perfect. Miles reflected that it was probably a good job she had not heard him. He was not very good at this business of love and when he told her next time he wanted to make sure he did it properly, when she was awake and he sounded confident of his feelings. This was all so new to him.

He wanted to make love to her again but he supposed that he should let her sleep. It would be selfish to wake her. It was his fault, one way and another, that she was so tired.

He thought about it. Could he be that unselfish? He started to kiss her gently, his hands gliding softly over the curves and hollows of Alice’s body, worshipping the lovely yielding softness of her. She made a quiescent sound in her sleep and opened her lips to his and the desire flared inside him and he drew her back into his arms.

Yes, he had reformed. But not that much.

CHAPTER TWENTY

ALICE SAT TRYING TO READ the tea leaves and trying not to feel too impatient. In the week since Miles had gone to London to the Doctors’ Commons to fetch a special license, she had been cooped up in the house under strict orders from him not to venture abroad unless escorted by Nat Waterhouse or Dexter Anstruther. It had been intolerably boring. She hated to be so constrained.

She missed Miles dreadfully. She had had no idea that she would feel so bereft. Before he had left on the morning after her sojourn in the Fortune’s Folly jail, he had held her tightly and told her he would be back soon, and she felt sure that he loved her. She had felt it in his hands as he held her and seen it in his eyes. The lovemaking they had shared the night before had bound them close. Dazed and dazzled by it, she had drifted through the first few days of Miles’s absence as though in a dream, but gradually reality had intruded and now she felt on edge and anxious. Lydia had still not been found, Tom Fortune was still at large and there was an air of tension about Fortune’s Folly. Each day Mrs. Lister would return from her trips into the village, bringing the most astonishing scurrilous gossip, and each day Alice was obliged to sit quietly at home whilst the rain poured down outside and she mangled another piece of embroidery and tried not to snap at the servants. In a vain effort to settle her nerves she made endless pots of jam from the stores she had laid down the previous summer. They would be eating plum conserve until Christmas at this rate.

The scandal of her seduction and subsequent night in jail had swiftly been superseded by another piece of tittle-tattle so delectable that the Fortune’s Folly gossips had been overcome with excitement. Lord Armitage had jilted Mary Wheeler and her fortune of fifty thousand pounds and had disappeared off to London with Louisa Caton. Mary was said to be heartbroken. Then, before that on dit had been passed around the whole village, Celia Vickery had been caught with Frank Gaines in the library at Drum Castle, writing novels. This was a piece of news so shocking that even the most hardened scandalmongers whispered it under their breath. Lady Celia had been an author of adventure stories for boys for several years. Mr. Gaines had allegedly found out and had been assisting her with her plots.

The Dowager Lady Vickery had been in a terrible state for several days.

“How could Celia possibly have written such things?” she had bemoaned. “Adventure stories for boys? It is most inappropriate, especially as she is a girl!”

“She said that she was inspired by Robinson Crusoe,” Alice said. Privately she thought that Lady Vickery should be grateful that her daughter had so successfully subsidized their household budget.

Lady Vickery looked scandalized. “Inspired or not, she is utterly compromised. Whatever will Miles say when he returns to discover that his sister is betrothed to Mr. Gaines?”

“I imagine that he will wish them happy,” Alice said. “Dear ma’am, it might not be what you wished for your daughter, but can you not see how much pleasure they derive from each other’s company? He is so very proud of her.”

Lady Vickery’s expression softened slightly. “I suppose he is. But adventure stories? Utterly shocking.”

It was interesting, Alice thought, that Lady Vickery was conveniently able to erase the entire scandalous memory of her son’s former mistress accosting him in the Pump Rooms, the subsequent seduction of her future daughter-in-law and her incarceration in jail, simply because she thought that Alice was rich and would save them from the poverty. Frank Gaines, in contrast, was considered a poor match for Celia because he was a lawyer with little money and no social standing. Alice liked Lady Vickery but she doubted that they would ever see eye to eye on such matters as rank and consequence.

The wind hurled another barrage of rain at the windows and Alice sighed. Was that a tree she could see in the tea leaves or a tower? Was it hope or disappointment? She could not be sure. Actually it looked like a large splodge of nothing in particular. She thought Mrs. Lister probably made the whole tea-leaf-reading thing up as she went along.

There was a knock at the door, and Marigold entered with a letter on a little silver tray. The silver tray had been one of Mrs. Lister’s innovations. She had wanted to employ a butler to carry it, but Alice had insisted that their household was so small that they did not need one. Mrs. Lister had grumbled but complied. The tray was a compromise since Alice thought it simple enough to carry a letter in one’s hand but Mrs. Lister thought it a necessary sign of rank.

“A letter for you, miss,” Marigold said superfluously.

Alice took the note and unfolded it. It looked as though it had been dashed off in haste. Alice, I need your help. Meet me at Fortune Windmill. Come quickly. Lydia.

Alice’s heart started to race. It was Nat who was acting as nursemaid for her today and just at the moment he was out at the wood pile helping Jim chop the logs. Alice did not want to deceive Nat but equally she did not want to tell him about Lydia’s note. He and Dexter would go marching up to the windmill to arrest Tom, and Lydia would know that Alice had betrayed her confidence. She looked once again at the note. The writing was definitely Lydia’s and the undertone of desperation was quite clear. This could be no trick. Her friend would never play her false like that.