Page 57 of Irresistible
“You can if you want. Can you make it back to the house on your own?” He glanced toward her.
“No, I’ll stay. I’m not going to lose my nerve over a sexual display.” She stuck her chin out.
“You’re no shy wallflower.”
“No, not a shy one. But I’ve been a wallflower for six years, which was precisely who I wanted to be.”
He wasn’t sure he believed her, not knowing that she’d once planned to marry. Until her parents had intervened. “That’s really all you wanted? To be left alone?”
Her gaze met his. “I don’t expect you to understand. You have always been in command of your own life with the ability to do as you please.”
“Not entirely,” he said drily, looking back to the Chesmores. “Now I’m the heir—my future is suddenly laid out before me. And it is not at all what I planned.” The familiar foreboding twisted his gut.
Gil stood and helped Mary up. He plucked the blanket from the sand, and she folded it while he grabbed the lantern. They soon made their way back to the path, hand in hand.
Dougal crouched down, pulling Jess with him. He put his finger to his lips.
Her eyes were wide and alert, narrowing slightly when they heard the Chesmores walking nearby. Mary’s laughter floated on the night air. Dougal peered around Jess and the rock and watched them ascend the path. He kept his sight on them until the light from the lantern disappeared.
“They’re gone,” he said quietly, rising and pulling Jess with him. “This wasn’t a clandestine delivery of information.”
The number eleven was once again etched between her brows. She’d been very good at not doing that. “They came to the beach in the middle of the night to do…that? They’re absolutely brazen.”
“Unlike anyone I’ve ever met.” Dougal exhaled. “Shall we return to the house?”
“Is there something else we should do?” She looked up at him expectantly for a moment, then her nostrils flared, and her eyes rounded the barest amount. “I didn’t mean to imply—” She snapped her mouth closed. “Yes, let us return to the house.”
He was going to offer her his arm, but she’d already turned and was stalking toward the path. Hurrying to catch up, he said, “I didn’t think you were implying that.”
She didn’t respond.
He had to imagine this excursion tonight had left an impact on her. It was one thing to witness others’ passion and another thing entirely to do so in the presence of someone else. Particularly someone to whom you were attracted.
Did he think she was as drawn to him as he was to her? He doubted he’d ever find out. If what he suspected was true, their mission was soon to come to a rather unsatisfying end.
“You don’t have to go so fast,” he called after her, careful not to raise his voice too loud.
“I’m eager to get back to the code. I was on the verge of something. I should have just stayed to work on it.”
He heard the edge to her tone. Was it disappointment or some other emotion?
Dammit, why did he care? If he was content to hide and ignore his own feelings, why should he be curious about anyone else’s?
They were quiet until they reached the chamber. Jess turned to him and held out her hand.
He suffered a moment’s confusion before he realized why—her work was in his waistcoat. Removing the parchment, he acknowledged that the trip to the beach, rather what they’d viewed on the beach, had upset his equilibrium. And possibly hers. He’d witnessed a great many things in his work for the Foreign Office, but watching two people copulate was a new experience.
She took the papers to the desk and laid them out once more. Sitting, she immediately began writing.
Dougal went to look over her shoulder. “What are you doing?”
“Thinking. Shh.” She kept her focus on the work in front of her.
Going back to the poem, she wrote two more lines from the third stanza. She underlined the letters she’d been missing. That left a few letters that were not in any of the lines she wrote down.
Dougal thought he was fairly intelligent, but she began to move very quickly, and he was already lost. She rewrote the four lines from the poem and numbered each letter, her hand gliding the quill across the parchment. Pulling one of the letters toward her, she bit her lip. On a fresh piece of parchment, she began to write single letters, looking from the four lines to the coded missive and recording a letter. She did this over and over until words began to take shape. She had it.
Triumph flowed through him, along with anticipation for what she would find. He went to pour two glasses of brandy and brought them to the table where he sat down to wait.
