confused her. Not humorous in any way. Just harsh. Critical.
Her stays and chemise and petticoat beneath were a little damp and she was pleased he did not insist she take them off too. She noticed after removing his boots he left his own trousers on, the wet fabric catching on the skin of her legs as they laid themselves down.
Together. Spooned. His back against her face. She could not help her hands wandering to the warmth.
‘Will the h…horses b…be s…safe?’
‘They will keep warm together if they have any sense.’
‘You h…have d…done this before? B…been caught in the s…snow, I mean?’ Lord, the clumsiness of her question made her stiffen. Of course he would have lain with a woman. Many women probably, with his fine face and his courage!
He did not seem to notice her faltering as he answered her question. ‘I fought in Europe in the Second Peninsular campaign and it often was colder there than in England. The men were not as soft as you are, though, when we lay down at night.’ A smile was audible in his voice.
A personal compliment! Bea left the edge of awkwardness alone and thought about other things: the sound of the horses nuzzling in, the snow outside, and a wind that howled through the rafters of the roof. All things to keep her mind off a growing realisation that the warmth was no longer concentrated solely in him.
To lie with a man in a snow-filled night, safe after adversity, a man who was neither sickly nor mean. A man with a man’s body, a man’s tastes, the smell of his skin woody and strong, his muscles even in the dimness defined and substantive.
So unlike Frankwell.
Years of celibacy suddenly weighed against opportunity; the widow Bassingstoke was presented with a fine handsome man and a night that would hold no questions.
The ghost of a smile played around her lips before sense reined it in. Of course she could not take advantage of the situation. She was a lady and a widow. Besides, already she thought his body had relaxed into sleep, the even cadence of his breath confirming it. To him she was nothing more than a warm skin to survive against. When the tip of her finger reached out to the ridge of his shoulder blade and traced the muscle in air, she wished that she might have been braver and truly touched him.
So unwise, another voice cautioned, the knowledge of her plainness leading only to a rejection that would be embarrassing to them both.
He came awake with a start. Where the hell was he? A leg lay across his stomach. A shapely leg by the feel of it, fully exposed almost up to the groin.
His groan took him by surprise, his manhood rising without any help from his mind.
Lord. Mrs Beatrice-Maude Bassingstoke had a sensuality about her that was elemental. He had not felt it before with his tiredness and his worry, but here with the first slam of awareness he was knocked for six. It lay in her smell and the breath of trust against his chest. It lingered in the hair uncoiled from the tight knot he had felt before finding sleep and which now curtained across him, thick and curly. The line of her breasts too was surprising. The thinness of her waist and of her arms was not mirrored here, her fat abundance of soft womanhood moulded against him, her nipples through thin lawn grazing his own with a surprising result.
God. His erection had grown again, filling the space of his trousers with warmth and promise. God, he muttered once more as she moved in sleep, this time all but crawling on top of him in her quest for warmth. His sex nudged at her thighs and he did not stop it, the very sensation tightly bound up in the forbiddenness of the situation.
A quandary he had no former experience of. A stranger who seduced him even in her sleep, the smell of her wafting beneath his nose. Flowers and woman.
And trust. A powerful aphrodisiac in a man who had forgotten the emotion, forgotten the very promise of intimate closeness!
He opened his eyes as widely as he could, trying to catch in them a reflection of light. Any light. But the darkness was complete, the snow and wind blocking moonbeams with the time, by his reckoning, being not much past the hour of two.
The witching hour. The hour he usually prowled the confines of his house away from the stares of others, darkness overcoming disability and all of the lights turned down.
Here, however, he did not wish to rise. Here he wanted to stay still, and just feel. The incline of her chest, the tremor in her hands as if a dream might have crept into her slumber, the feel of her hair wound around his fingers, clamping him to her.
His!
This thin and sensible lass, with her twenty-eight years and her widowhood.
Was it recent? Had her husband just died, the ring she wore a reminder of all the happy years she now would never enjoy? Were there children? Did she rule a domain of offspring and servants with her sense and sensibility? A woman at the centre of her world and with no need for any other? Certainly not for a man with fading sight and the quickening promise of complete blindness!
His arousal flagged slightly, but regained ground when her fingers clamped on his own, anchoring her to him. A ship in a storm, and any port welcomed.
He could not care. The rush of desire and need was unlike any he had ever experienced. He needed to take her, to possess her, to feel the softness of her flesh as he pushed inside to be lost in warmth.
He rocked slightly, guilt buried beneath want. And then he rocked again.
Chapter Three
She felt the bud of excitement, the near promise of something she had never known. Breathing in, she whispered a name.
‘Taris.’
His name.
The answering curse pulled her fully awake, his face close, the darkness of it lightened by the line of his teeth as he spoke.
‘Beatrice-Maude? Is there a name that you are called other than that? It is long, after all, and I thought—’
‘Bea.’ She broke into his words with a whisper. ‘My mother always called me Bea.’
‘Bea,’ he repeated, turning the name over on his tongue and she felt his breath against her face as he said it. So close, so very close. He held his hand across her waist when she tried to pull back.
‘Bea as in Bea-witching?’
His fingers trailed down her cheek, warm and real.
‘Or Bea as in Bea-utiful?’
She tensed, waiting for his laugh, but it did not come.
‘Hardly that, sir.’ She felt the heavy thrump of her heartbeat in her throat. Was he jesting with her? Was he a man who lied in order to receive what he wanted, who thought such untruthful inanities the desperate fodder expected by very plain women? She tried to turn from him to find a distance, the sheer necessity of emotional survival paramount.
‘What is it? What is wrong?’ A thread of some uncertainty in his voice was the only thing that held her in place. If she had heard condescension or falsity she would have stood, denying his suggestion of more, even knowing that she might never in her whole life be offered anything as remotely tempting.
Again.
‘I should rather honesty, sir.’
‘Sir?’ The word ended in a laugh. ‘Surely “sir” is too formal for the position we now find ourselves in?’ He did not take back his compliments and another bark of laughter left her dazed.
‘Are you a celibate widow, Mrs Beatrice-Maude Bassingstoke?’
She started to nod and then changed her mind, not sure of exactly what he alluded to.
‘Then I suppose there is another question I must ask of you. Are you a woman who would say nay to the chance of sharing more than just warmth together here in the midst