Page 55 of His Betrothed
She caught a bowl before it crashed to the wooden floor.
He grinned. “Am I healing to your satisfaction?”
She nodded.
“Are you certain? Perhaps you should examine me again.”
“What is the purpose of such teasing?” she demanded, turned to facehim. Red stained her cheeks but she met his gaze coolly.
“Purpose?” he echoed, smiling as he limped forward. “Perhaps it merely gives me something to do. You keep yourself busy every moment of daylight, while I can only walk—and talk.”
She tilted her head to look up at him as he stopped before her. He had to admire the fact that she didn’t retreat.
“You do enough talking, that is true,” shesaid dryly. “But I don’t appreciate being used as a distraction.”
He pitched his voice lower. “But youaredistracting, even in those widow’s garments. Surely you have worn them long enough.”
Her face paled into an icy stillness. “My grief is not your concern, and I will not discuss it with you.”
For a moment he stared into her eyes, glimpsing the heartache before she shuttered her emotionsaway from him. He thought of what she’d borne in the last year with such obvious courage.
It made him uneasy.
Roselyn climbed up to her loft as quickly asshe could, and lay wide awake on her pallet. He’d said she was “distracting.”
She covered her ears with both hands and squeezed her eyes shut, but she could still hear Thornton moving about below. What could he be doing?
Reluctantly shelowered her hands and listened, finding herself barely breathing. It sounded like he was hopping about again, since the pounding of the wooden floor seemed to shake clear up to her loft. When she heard an occasional grunt of exertion, her curiosity became an itch beneath her skin.
Cautiously, she left the pallet and crept on her belly to the edge of the loft. She peered over only as much as sheneeded to, and saw that Thornton had blown the candle out. The room was dark with shadows, lit only by flickering firelight.
Then she saw him, and the breath seemed trapped in her lungs. He’d removed his shirt, and stood with the knee of his broken leg propped on a bench, holding his cane up like a sword. He wove and ducked and thrust, as if fighting an imaginary opponent. She could see the strainof his muscles, the perspiration on his back, and she felt as if the fire from the hearth had risen to engulf her. Occasionally he hopped away from the bench, and the vibration thatmoved through the loft made her feel dizzy and strange.
When he finally stopped training and began to wash himself from a basin of water, she told herself to go back to bed.
Yet she remained trapped at the edge ofthe loft, her wide eyes watching as he scrubbed his face and chest.
He grew unnaturally still, and his head lifted until he met her eyes. She wanted to retreat, but his gaze held hers, burning with a dark fierceness that enthralled her. An answering heat burst to life in her veins.
Without breaking their gaze, he slowly continued to wash himself, moistening the dark hair on his chest, leavingsoap trails that dripped down his well-muscled arms.
The heat inside her grew overpowering, then spread down between her thighs, until she felt restless, yearning, close to forgetting everything she’d worked so hard to become.
His mesmerizing eyes were alive with awareness of what he did to her—andthatfinally brought her to her senses. Without a word, she backed away and lay down on her pallet.For a few moments longer he washed, and then there was only silence—except for the rapid beating of her heart.
For two days an uneasy truce lay between them, but there was still an unnamable tension that seemed to be slowly enveloping her. Roselyn had no way to fight it, no way to stop this awareness of Spencer Thornton as a man, rather than as a monster from her past.
Whenever they weretogether she felt his gaze like an intimate touch, and shivers spread out across her skin. His deep voice could make her jump and clatter dishes together as she cursed her clumsiness. When he smiled, she remembered his mouth so close to hers, his body touching every part of her as they lay in the grass. His gentleness had surprised her, and she would never forget his touch.
He could be so charming,so amusing, that sometimes she almost wanted to laugh aloud, something she couldn’t remember doing since her daughter had died.
But she had every reason to be wary and distant—she could not forget the Spanish letter hidden in her shed, the possibility that he was a traitor to England.
He was dangerous to her in so many ways.
The day was hot and sultry, and a steady rain fell throughout theafternoon. Everything seemed wet, and her black gown clung to her uncomfortably. The laundry she’d done beforethe storm hung limply over the chairs and tables, refusing to dry.
Her nerves were frayed at being confined all day with Thornton, and he made it even worse by removing his shirt. His skin glistened with perspiration and renewed good health. When he wasn’t exercising with his cane, helounged before the bare hearth, watching her with hooded eyes.
