Housemaid Heiress. Elizabeth Beacon

made me a pawn in their game. God knows they have been playing it all my life, and I thought Grandfather would win. He delighted in conundrums and his treasure hunts were famous all over Gloucestershire at one time. Playing games where you do not know the rules can be the very devil, Miss Smith.’

      ‘Perhaps we are all pawns in a much larger one?’

      ‘Maybe, but now I must go and perform the new role set out for me. Just as tomorrow you take up yours.’

      ‘And you consider my lot the easier of the two?’

      ‘You are too perceptive by far, but I would rather say it is the simpler. I have seen too much of hardship lately to dismiss yours as easy, and I shall adapt. Here we are at the crossroads already. Even you can hardly come to any harm between here and Nurse Turner’s cottage, so we will say goodbye. Being seen walking with me would do your reputation no good.’

      Thea felt a bitter smile tug at her lips, but managed to banish it. He had dismissed her with one shrug of his mighty shoulders. Instead of learning to love him, she could just as easily hate a man who could so casually say his goodbyes to her.

      Chapter Four

      ‘Goodbye, then, Major, and thank you for my new post. I did little enough to earn it.’

      ‘Goodbye, Hetty, and thank you. Would that I were a different man.’

      ‘Should you not say if I were not so humble, or so poor?’ she challenged, and let out a great shush of breath when she was clipped into a powerful embrace and kissed ruthlessly.

      ‘Say rather if I were a better, more worthy man,’ he told her in a dangerous undertone and despite all his warnings that they might be seen, he obviously enjoyed the experience and promptly did it again.

      Now she knew why she had never responded to the halfhearted overtures of Grandfather’s fortune hunters, she decided hazily, and if she had a shudder to spare it might go on Granby’s revolting embrace. As it was, she was too consumed by the explosion of heat that seemed to course back and forward between their greedy mouths. Of course she could not possibly have felt such intimacy with another man, she decided dazedly. He was the one designed to unlock the passionate nature she hadn’t known she had until that morning in the hut, and she was more than half inclined to wish it imprisoned again. This would come to nothing, despite the heated magic that bound her to him as if for life itself.

      If she had not loved its presence so deeply, she might have bitten his sensual mouth for awakening her to such need, such endless, unmet need, when she might easily have gone through life never knowing what passion was. He nibbled a line of infinitely gentle bites along her lower lip, then smoothed them away with his tongue, running it along her soft damp skin as if he loved the taste of her.

      She whimpered, and a stern part of her longed to think it was in protest against what he was doing, but what she really wanted was more; more of him; more of his kisses, just simply more. She moaned her approval as he once more deepened his kiss and this time opened his wicked, wonderful mouth on hers and probed her velvet warmth with his tongue. All the steel seeped out of her bones and she arched towards him ever more closely, binding her soft curves to hard muscles and strength without any menace but the one she wanted.

      For all her lofty resolutions that she would stay untouched for a lifetime in memory of a man who would soon forget her, she suddenly knew that she was wrong. To be loved and left by Major Ashfield of the 95th Rifles would warm those stark and lonely years that were all the future seemed to offer her now. She could never have his respectable attentions, so why not simply melt into his powerful embrace and save her regrets for after he was gone?

      Now he was trailing more urgent kisses down the exposed length of her throat, and when exactly had he exposed it? She felt fine tremors of heat shake her and knew they were both on the edge of being consumed. Could the fact that they were standing on a public highway where anyone might see them go hang? Could she ignore the last whisper of caution that warned against this? Could she throw away all the kindness Lady Lydia was offering her for one tumble with that lady’s handsome relative?

      Probably, she conceded, as his wondering hand trailed a line of fire down her backbone, but she could not do the same for him. Despite those bitter words that seemed to condemn him as a heartless philanderer, she knew her seduction would haunt him once he found out he was her only lover. The only one she would ever have, for how could other men follow ardent desire combined with such tenderness? Yet the thought that he would wake up one morning in his new life and remember what he had done, and feel it as a betrayal rather than a glory, was one she could not live with.

      Forcing her dazzled eyes open, she saw how his molten grey gaze dwelt on her disgracefully open gown, apparently fascinated by the rise and fall of her creamy breasts. She catalogued the flush of heated desire across his hard cheekbones and the wondering curve of his shapely mouth, that looked as if it remembered hers and wanted more. Then she drew back and shook her tousled head. His dark hair was disordered once more, by her wandering, wondering hands. I did that, she told herself in awe. I was his lover for just a brief, uncrowned reign of mere minutes. And now I am not.

      ‘No,’ she whispered when she could find enough breath even for that feeble objection. ‘I would not have you dishonour yourself, Major.’

      With an almost animal sound of denial and possession, he went to tug her back into his strong arms and cover her all-too-willing lips with kisses, so they could both forget her ‘no.’

      ‘Nor would I have you dishonour me,’ she added inexorably, scant inches from the ultimate temptation of surrender, and still he seemed ready to read actions rather than words.

      That earlier promise he made about honouring his obligations bit like acid into any lingering dream she was clinging to. ‘And I could not let you tarnish your name, Major Ashfield.’

      He stepped back from her as if she had slapped him and stood, chest heaving and looking as if he had just run a heat with the devil.

      ‘Tarnish?’ he rasped out. ‘How could I tarnish a name my father dragged through every patch of filth he could mire it with?’

      ‘By muddying your own along with his.’

      ‘Oh, preach me no such piety, Miss Smith. Just tell me no and mean it, then have done with me.’

      ‘I can’t,’ she whispered miserably and for just a few seconds felt useless, hateful tears salt her eyes.

      ‘At least that’s honest,’ he told her fiercely.

      ‘As am I,’ she informed him proudly, and for the first time in weeks truly meant it. She had been in danger of taking herself at the Winfordes’ valuation.

      ‘Then you cast your bait in dangerous waters, madam. You must be more careful what you catch.’

      Sending him a look of pure hatred, Thea decided she would never forgive him for what he had done today, then looked down her nose at him as if he was Sir Granby Winforde himself and stalked away without another word.

      ‘You had best do up your gown and tidy your hair if you don’t want to be run out of this village as well,’ his deep voice taunted behind her.

      Overcome by an irresistible impulse, she swung round and stuck her tongue out at him like a street urchin.

      ‘Goodbye to you too, my dear,’ he called cheerfully, then turned on his heel and strode away whistling, as if not a single kiss or caress of that steamy encounter had meant a thing to him.

      ‘I am not your dear!’ she yelled defiantly and stormed up the wooded bank and on to the Common, completely forgetful of her safety and the dictates of everyday good sense for once.

      ‘I hate you, Marcus Ashfield. I hate you every bit as much as you want me to, and I wish I could forget you as easily as you will me,’ she raged. ‘When you find a more deluded female to warm your bed, I hope she leads you a merry dance, then walks away as if she hasn’t a care in the world.’

      She calmed down at last and returned