The Regency Season: Scandalous Awakening. Elizabeth Beacon

now if he hadn’t made such a disastrous early marriage. A happy one, she decided gloomily.

      She snatched up the old cloak she kept in the flower room and stepped out into the winter sunshine to escape the house and her duties for a few precious moments. How unworthy of her to find the idea of Lord Farenze happily wed and content with his wife depressing, rather than wishing him better luck next time.

      ‘Dratted man,’ she muttered under her breath as she marched towards the Winter Garden. ‘Why does he have to disturb me so deeply?’ she asked the statue of some god among the frost-rimed box and the few brave winter flowers hiding their heads under frozen leaves this morning. ‘For years he pretends I don’t exist, now he’s back and I’m wasting time dreaming about him all over again.’

      The statue stared into the parkland as if silently slumbering winter trees made more sense than she did and Chloe suppressed a childish urge to kick him.

      ‘Men!’ she informed it, glad nobody could hear her. ‘You vex women with your ridiculous arguments, pretend logic and stupid longings, then you swat us aside like annoying insects and walk away. How the devil does the contrary great idiot expect me to carry on as if nothing happened now? Does he think we can act as if he never saw me sitting in that bed staring at him like a besotted schoolgirl or came to rescue me from my nightmares? Oh, I’m sorry, you’re a man, aren’t you? Or at least you would be if you were real. Then you’d huff and puff like the rest of them and drive us all mad before you stamped off to roam about the country shooting innocent animals or riding your poor horses into the ground until you felt better.’

      ‘He might do, if he wasn’t made of stone,’ Luke Winterley’s deep voice said from far too close for comfort and Chloe refused to turn round and blush at being caught talking to a piece of stone. ‘Otherwise you would probably be quite right, of course.’

      ‘You should still be asleep,’ she told him crossly.

      ‘Lucky I’m not then, for this would be the oddest dream I’ve ever had,’ he told her with a lazy grin.

      She wanted to walk into his arms and kiss him good morning so badly she had to swing away and march down the nearest path away from him to stop herself doing exactly that.

      ‘What are you doing?’ he asked, following and putting out a hand to prevent her walking straight into a sacking-shrouded potted plant the gardeners had wrapped up for winter.

      ‘I’m counting to a hundred,’ she told him between clenched teeth.

      ‘Isn’t it supposed to be ten?’

      ‘With you ten is never enough.’

      ‘Oh dear, that bad, am I?’

      ‘Worse,’ she bit out.

      She would not turn round at the warm rumble of his laughter; refused to feel warmed and soothed into good humour because she’d amused him at this saddest of times. Half of her might want to be in his arms so badly she could almost feel his warmth and strength wrapping her up again; more than half if she was honest, but dishonesty was safer.

      ‘Leave me be, my lord.’

      ‘No, you spend far too much time alone already,’ he said impatiently, as if it was her fault her role in his household demanded a certain aloofness of her.

      ‘And you shut yourself up in that northern fortress of yours years ago and did your best to pretend the rest of the world doesn’t exist, so you have no room to talk.’

      ‘We’re lone souls with much in common then, but I didn’t walk away from the danger we posed each other then in order to take advantage of you today.’

      ‘I’m sure you’re a man of infinite honour, my lord.’

      ‘No, but I fight my demons as best I can; something you should consider before you provoke me again, madam.’

      ‘I provoke you?’

      ‘Yes, you should have the sense to realise you’re always in acute danger when I’m about, Mrs Wheaton, yet you seem determined to court it.’

      ‘You’re the one with a large house, acres of garden and an entire estate to avoid me in. I don’t see how you can berate me for taking a brief walk within hailing distance of the house? In your shoes I could use my freedom to simply walk away.’

      ‘Marching about in front of the windows of a room you know I always work in when I’m at Farenze Lodge is not disturbing me then? Did I not give you fair warning this could happen if you teased me instead of avoiding me like the plague?,’ he rasped and tugged her into his arms as if she’d driven him to it.

      ‘Let me go, you barbarian,’ she snapped, but he lowered his head and met her eyes with a storm of fury and need in his that mirrored the argument raging between her heart and head and making her feel recklessly susceptible to his nearness.

      ‘Stop me,’ he demanded gruffly, so close she felt a warm whisper on her skin.

       Chapter Eight

      Chloe knew Lord Farenze would leave her alone if she breathed no or flinched away. Yet she couldn’t say it, or take that step back. His mouth on hers was gentle as a plea and she waited for him to remember he was kissing the housekeeper and retreat in horror. She had to breathe at last and he followed the winter air into her mouth as if he was starving for her. Heat flooded every inch of her body and mind as his lips and tongue explored her mouth in sensual wonder.

      Needs she had fought for so long clamoured and fidgeted to let a decade of frustration and loneliness go. She swayed into his arms and opened her mouth even as sensible Chloe whispered she was a fool. Somehow the slight shake in his touch freed some last curb on her conscience and she felt him test her narrow waist, banding her closer to the difference and heat of him, narrow flanked and broad shouldered as he was against her curves and unable to conceal how badly he wanted, no, needed her.

      Intrigued by such wild heat, despite the frigid January air and this saddest of days, she felt every pore and whisper come uniquely alive to him. Senses sharpened as if they’d slept since that last kiss so long ago. She wanted to strip off her tight tan gloves and feel this exceptional man under her naked touch. Doing her best to add the soft covering to her senses instead, she brushed a finger along his high cheekbone and wherever he felt the butterfly touch of fine leather on taut skin a flush of hard colour tracked her fingers. Shocked by her own boldness, she rose on tiptoe and rested her hands on his broad shoulders so she could watch him more closely, more intimately. For these few seconds outside time he was hers and she was his.

      His coat was frost chilly where they’d had no contact, yet where their bodies strove to meld no cold could reach them. They had an antidote to winter and who would guess so much heat was pent up between gruff Lord Farenze and his coolly composed housekeeper?

      He moved his hands up from her waist to cup a shamefully hot and responsive breast under her layers of winter disguise and the sweet novelty of his long-remembered touch, real again on her eager body, made her heart leap and her stomach fall into that familiar burning longing only he could stir in her. She gave a low moan as need ground at her insides like hot knives and heated her inner core with impossible promises.

      Shocked by her own need of him, she pulled back far enough to watch him and hotly unanswerable questions flashed into his grey gaze and echoed her own. He’d focused too much formidable attention on her at last, given too much away to snatch it back and pretend they were nothing to each other, hadn’t he? This was the real Luke Winterley, the passionate man behind Lord Farenze’s cold exterior and reclusive reputation. She felt too much for that man and she was opening her mouth to ask questions neither of them wanted to know when the return of the riding party sounded on the clear air and let Chloe’s real life back in with a sickening thump and a deep breath of icy January air. She tugged free of Lord Farenze’s arms and faced him with all she shouldn’t feel in her eyes.

      ‘I can’t,’