Page 114 of The Tempting of Thomas Carrick
Lucilla wasn’t sure whether Thomas’s leg was truly troubling him, or if his retreat signaled something else.
What else? was the question.
On learning that he’d retired, she dallied for just long enough to take tea—only waiting until then because she didn’t want to appear so needy before her family—then she excused herself and made for the stairs. She was walking briskly toward Thomas’s door, intending to go in and inquire about his health, when that lurking, uncertain part of her reached out and hauled on her reins.
She halted and stared at the door.
What was she doing?
He’d retreated—retired—and immediately she was running after him.
They were partners, yes, but what did that mean?
And regardless of what it might come to mean, what did it mean now? Tonight?
If his leg was troubling him, if he had exhausted himself riding down from Glasgow, she should leave him to recover; they had the rest of their lives to grow closer and spend their nights together—she shouldn’t be so needy as to demand even this one.
And if this was some sort of convoluted ploy?
She didn’t think it was—didn’t see him playing those sorts of games—yet he had made it plain what he thought of her manipulation. Would he, perhaps, stoop to using the same, just to see if he could? If she would respond to him tugging on her heartstrings?
Whether she believed that or not, that scenario, too, suggested that the last thing she should do was go to him.
She wanted to go to him, wanted to lose herself in his arms so they could find their way back to what they’d had; until they did that—at least that—the lurking unease inside her, a lack of confidence she’d never before known, wouldn’t leave her.
Life had been so much easier when she’d always been sure.
She sighed. She wasdithering. For a second, she closed her eyes, feeling that uncertainty still wrapped about her heart, seeping into her soul, then she opened her eyes and forced her feet away from his door.
She climbed the turret stairs. Eyes cast down, absorbed with her thoughts, she opened the door to her room, went in, turned, and shut the door, then swung back and took two steps into the room.
And noticed the unusual brightness of the lamplight. Slowing, she blinked, raised her head—and saw Thomas sprawled in her bed.
He didn’t appear to be wearing a stitch.
Her steps faltered; she nearly tripped over her toes before she halted.
Her eyes grew round, then rounder; her mouth dried.
He was lying against her pillows, his magnificent chest fully on display. One powerful arm was bent, that hand behind his head; his other arm lay invitingly relaxed on the sheets beside him.
Beyond her control, her gaze—which had been absorbed in tracing every last line of his powerful shoulders and upper chest—tracked down, over the hollow in the center of his chest—the one she loved to set her lips to—and down, over the muscled ridges of his abdomen to his narrow waist…the sheet was draped across his hips, but so low…as she looked, the sheet shifted.
She jerked her gaze back to his face. And registered how warm she’d grown. This was ridiculous. They’d been intimate how many times?
But she hadn’t seen him like this before—this naked, this exposed.
This much hers.
She understood the declaration. He’d said he was hers, and here he was, in her bed, with not so much as his sleeping trousers to shield him from her.
And he’d taken steps to ensure that she could see; he’d moved the lamps so they surrounded the bed and flooded the interior of the four-postered expanse with soft, golden light.
She looked, saw, and her mind blanked.
He was patently, blatantly, waiting for her.
“Ah…” And, yes, she was speechless. What could she possibly say—to this?
