“But honourable? Always honourable?”
His mouth twisted into a grimace of a smile. “Oh yes, always honourable.”
“Then it must be accepted as the past.” She shrugged. “For the past cannot be changed, we can only hope for the future.”
Rufus felt something shift deep inside him, as if a key had just been turned to open a part of him that had been locked away.
“Anna,” he murmured gruffly as he moved to take her in his arms. “Beautiful, wise Anna.” He rested his cheek against the silkiness of her hair.
Anna had no idea what was happening. Did not fully understand what Rufus was saying. But she did understand that he was in need of warmth and understanding, possibly because of that visit to his family crypt, that she had not been mistaken in how alone he had seemed.
Her arms moved about his tapered waist as she rested her head against his chest, and she became instantly aware of the rapid beat of his heart.
They stood like that for some minutes. Long, delicious minutes, when Anna simply enjoyed holding and being held. A time out of time.
A time that surely could not last.
“Would you be ready to do the church flowers now, Miss Anna?”
Anna pulled sharply out of Rufus’s arms, her face blazing with colour as she turned to look at Mrs Faulkner, the baker’s wife. She had arrived to help arrange the flowers. As she did every Saturday...
Something Anna had completely forgotten in Rufus’s company.
“His Grace was sheltering from the rain, and I was keeping him company,” Anna announced brightly as the elderly lady looked at the duke suspiciously. Unlike some in the village, Mrs Faulkner was not a gossip, thankfully.
Anna quickly made the introductions before announcing that it really was time for the two of them to go into the church and see to the flowers.
Rufus eyed her with amusement as he took his leave. “A pleasure to have met you, Mrs Faulkner. We will meet again soon, I hope, Anna,” he added huskily.
Anna was too embarrassed to reciprocate, too mortified at being caught in the duke’s arms by Mrs Faulkner, to even be able to look at Rufus again before he turned and left them.
* * *
“Did you arrange this deliberately?”
Rufus looked at Anna as she sat to the left of him at the mahogany table in the smaller dining-room at Banbury Hall, her head bent as she looked down at the folded hands on her knees, the softness of her voice sounding hurt rather than imbued with her usual fire.
No doubt that was because of the presence of Rufus’s butler who, having served their meal, now stood in attendance near the door.
Rufus motioned for Watkins to leave them, waiting until the other man had closed the door behind himself before answering her. “I am responsible for calling upon your brother after our meeting at the church this morning, and also for issuing the invitation for you and your brother to dine here with me this evening,” Rufus acknowledged. “But I certainly had nothing to do with your brother being called away to tend to one of his flock the moment our dessert had been served, leaving the two of us alone here together.”
Although Rufus accepted that he was guilty of persuading the young parson to allow his sister to stay and finish her meal, after which Rufus had promised he would see she arrived home safely.
Anna looked so beautiful this evening, her gown a pale lemon, with matching slippers on her feet, her hair shining like burnished gold in the last of the evening’s sun streaming through the dining-room windows, her eyes a deep and sparkling blue in her beautiful heart-shaped face.
“You are a duke, sir,” she answered him waspishly as she finally raised her head to look at him, “and no doubt capable of arranging anything you please.”
Ah yes, and there was that sharp little tongue that could amuse and arouse him in equal measure.
“Are you angry with me because of this morning?”
Anna eyed him impatiently, knowing it was not Rufus she was annoyed with, but herself. This morning she had allowed herself to forget who she was for a few pleasurable moments of being held in his arms. A pleasure she had paid for by suffering numerous questions from Mrs Faulkner as they’d arranged the flowers together, the elderly woman at last accepting that Anna had merely been comforting the duke, who had been overcome with emotion after visiting his family crypt.
“You did not have to come here this evening, Anna,” Rufus spoke quietly. “You could have used any number of excuses not to accompany your brother.”
Anna knew that.
But that part of her, which was wilful as well as impetuous, the part of her that so longed for adventure and excitement, had refused to allow her to do so.
Because she had wanted to see Rufus again. To know if her legs would once again become weak just at the sight of him. If her body would become aroused just by being near him...
A single glance at Rufus in his evening clothes and Anna had known without a doubt that she did indeed feel all of those things towards Rufus.
Achingly.
Futilely.
She was a parson’s daughter, and Rufus Drake was a sophisticated London gentleman, not to mention a duke, and at least ten years older than she.
“Anna?” He frowned as he stood up to stand next to her chair, his eyes holding hers captive.
Her heart raced. “What are you doing?”
“I believe you are well aware of what I want, what I have wanted since the moment you arrived here this evening.” His eyes gleamed with desire. “What we both want.”
It was indeed a desire, a need, that Anna echoed. With all her heart.
She swallowed. “But we should not.”
“I must, Anna.”
He bent to swing her up into his arms and carried her over to a chaise in front of the window, laying her down upon it before joining her, the heat of his body pressed close against her own, a pleasure Anna had never thought to know with him again.
“You have no idea how much I have longed, hungered, to hold you in my arms, to be with you like this again, Anna,” he murmured throatily as his head lowered and his lips captured hers.
If his hunger was even half as much as her own was for him to hold her, and make love to her, then Anna did know.
It was as if the past six days had never been, as if they were simply continuing where they had left off that day by the pond, as Rufus’s hot, marauding tongue swept confidently between Anna’s parted lips, plundering, claiming, demanding that she respond in kind. A demand that Anna gave into willingly.
He gave a low groan of satisfaction as he felt the shy stroke of Anna’s tongue alongside his own, her hands moving up from his chest and over his shoulders before her fingers became entangled in the dark silky hair curling at his nape. He felt himself once again lost to satisfying his addiction to her unique taste.
He moaned as his lips moved to her cheek, the length of her throat, the creamy tops of her breasts. “I have hungered for this again since the day I met you, Anna. For the taste of you. For you,” he murmured urgently, knowing he spoke the truth, and that he had thought of little else, and no one else, since the two of them had first met six days ago.
“Rufus?”
“Yes, I am