moment Saskia had lowered her mask he’d felt the stirring of desire. For a while he’d managed to suppress his awareness of how she affected him, but now his physical reaction to her intensified until it was almost painful. His body was making demands he could neither ignore nor satisfy.
Frustration with himself and the situation eroded his temper. Saskia, blithely oblivious of his edgy, unsettled state, was the cause of his difficulties—and she became the focus of his irritation.
‘How will you explain this to your lord?’ he demanded.
‘Explain what?’ Saskia looked up at him, a half-smile still lingering on her lips, confusion in her eyes.
Harry stared at her. Either she was a very good actress or she didn’t seem to find anything odd about being alone in the bedchamber with him. ‘If you don’t know, I must have been away from England longer than I realised,’ he said.
‘I hoped we won’t have to leave England.’ Her eyes clouded. ‘It would be better to finish it here.’
‘Finish what?’ Harry’s hunting instincts went on full alert at her unwary comment.
He saw her snatch a quick little breath, and the expression in her eyes suddenly became guarded, but she replied calmly, ‘Getting safely to my lord, of course.’
Her besotted, devoted lord, she’d called him earlier. Harry gritted his teeth and buttered a piece of bread to give himself time to overcome an unwelcome surge of jealousy towards a man whose existence he still doubted. He had no intention of becoming as besotted as her probably mythical lover.
‘Will we need to leave England to do that?’ he asked.
‘No, he’s in Plym—Portsmouth.’
Plymouth! She’d nearly said Plymouth! Portsmouth was in Hampshire, but Plymouth was in Devon, on the other side of the River Tamar from Cornwall. Saskia van Buren had come to London from Cornwall. If that was their true destination, it seemed more likely than ever that she was indeed Saskia. Even though Harry was exerting all his self-discipline to control the fiercely conflicting instincts and emotions raging within him, he felt a burst of satisfaction at unravelling her lies a little more.
‘If your lord is in Portsmouth, why may we have to leave England?’ he said, as if he hadn’t noticed her slip of the tongue.
She frowned. ‘Please don’t ask any more questions. We are going to Portsmouth, and it is your job to protect me.’
‘And once we reach Portsmouth, your lord—the one who is opposed to marriage—will take over the task of protecting you?’ Despite himself, Harry couldn’t hide the scepticism in his voice.
Saskia glared at him. ‘You insult me when you speak of him so disparagingly,’ she said.
Harry felt a stab of guilt at her charge. She’d been lying to him from the first, she might well be plotting against England and she seemed to be completely oblivious that she was directly responsible for his having the most painfully pleasurable, disturbing and frustrating meal of his life. Those learned men who claimed the mere sight of a woman’s uncovered hair could rouse a man to undisciplined lust obviously knew what they were talking about. He really shouldn’t care whether he offended her—but he did.
‘I did not insult you,’ he said brusquely. ‘From what you said earlier, it sounds as if you think you may need to leave England. Is that true?’
She hesitated. For several long moments they stared at each other across the width of the table. Harry was unwillingly fascinated by the swiftly changing emotions in her expression. She was trying to decide if she could trust him. The silence lengthened and the tension between them increased until he could almost hear it snapping in the air.
She looked away abruptly and drew in a quick breath. ‘I hope not,’ she said. ‘But if we need to leave you would not have to come with us—though you will be well rewarded if you do.’
‘We,’ she’d said. A deep instinct told Harry she’d spoken the truth. She really was on her way to join someone else. Had the widow taken a lover within months of her husband’s death? A core of ice formed within him at the possibility.
‘You would pay me to protect your lover as well as you?’ he said, his voice hardening.
‘You are a presumptuous, impertinent fellow!’ Saskia’s temper erupted without warning. ‘Eat your supper and mind your manners. We will leave at dawn.’
Her angry reaction—almost as if she’d been trying to hide her avoidance of the question by a burst of irritation—rekindled Harry’s doubts about the existence of a lover. And his disgust with himself for caring.
‘You are aware that in June it is light by four o’clock?’ he said.
‘Of course.’ The lady rubbed her elbow, almost as if she’d banged it against something, though Harry hadn’t noticed her doing any such thing. ‘At least I can sleep in a bed tonight,’ she muttered.
Harry’s eyes widened. If she hadn’t been sleeping in a bed, where had she been sleeping? And what had she been doing in her unorthodox resting place to hurt her arm?
Saskia wasn’t consciously aware she was rubbing her elbow, she was thinking about her journey to London from Cornwall. It had been a long and hazardous journey for an unaccompanied woman, even with the protection of the male clothing she’d worn. The summer weather had made it possible for her to sleep on the ground several nights rather than risk staying alone at an inn, but she hadn’t felt either comfortable or safe. The last night had been the worst. She’d been so tired she’d fallen heavily asleep in a small copse of trees, only to be woken by what, in her overtaxed state, had seemed to be the appalling cacophony of the dawn chorus. After her first moment of panic and confusion she’d felt as if every bird in England had taken roost above her head and was now bugling its lungs out within a few feet of her. As she’d flailed about, struggling to sit up, she’d cracked her elbow against a tree.
She was glad that tonight she could sleep safely in a proper bed—but she didn’t realise she’d spoken aloud until she saw Harry’s startled gaze flicker from her to the bed and back again.
Until that moment she hadn’t given a thought to the significance of their surroundings. She almost groaned as she suddenly understood what Harry had meant about the need to make awkward explanations to her lord. How could she have been so stupidly unaware of something so obvious? Especially when she was pretending to be the mistress of a devoted lover. Her cheeks burned with embarrassment at revealing herself to be so unworldly.
She knew why she hadn’t considered the implications of being alone with a man in a bedchamber. For more than four years of her marriage she had taught herself to think of her bed as a place only for sleep. Pieter had regained far more strength after the accident than any of them had initially expected. He’d even designed his own wheeled-chair that he could manoeuvre on flat surfaces—but making love was one aspect of their married life they’d never recovered. Saskia had learned not to torment herself with thoughts of what they’d lost. It was shocking—disorientating—to realise that her potential future in this regard had changed. She was a widow, not the wife of an intelligent, but physically incapacitated husband.
She stared at Harry. She’d known from her first glance at him that he was a virile, energetic man, but somehow she had distanced herself from that knowledge, seeing in his strength only a means to protect her and save Benjamin. Now she looked at him again—with the eyes of a woman whose vows of fidelity had died with her husband.
She saw the play of candlelight on the lean sinews of his forearms as he laid his knife down and picked up the tankard of ale. Simple, mundane actions—but suddenly she was very aware that she was looking at a man’s strong hands. A man whose whole body was just as strong and deft. His self-assurance, lean, handsome features and piercing gaze commanded attention, but she’d rarely met a man with less vanity about his masculine appeal. An edge of danger always lurked beneath his apparently nonchalant exterior. But though he must know