Page 11 of How the Earl Entices

Asleep like this, quiet and still, he seemed almost harmless. She reached to touch his face, to delicately trace her fingertips along the soft curve of each brow, carefully skirting the cut at the edge of the left one.

Good God, what had he been through? To be this badly beaten, so exhausted and weak that he’d collapsed…Why?

“Ah, but youarea Carlisle. Bare-knuckled fights are your family’s forte, from what I understand.”

So were their handsome looks. This one, even battered and bruised, owned that trait in spades.

With a faint smile, she traced her fingertip along his jaw. She couldn’t stop touching him. No matter how slight the connection, he was still a link to her old life and to the woman she’d once been. A young woman who’d once had so much promise, shining like a diamond—

A lie.That wasn’t why she couldn’t tear her hands away from his body or her eyes away from his sandy blond curls and sculpted face.

She couldn’t stop because she simply enjoyed it too much.

Twelve years since she last saw him…Ross had just entered the army after finishing at Oxford. He’d been so dashing in his red uniform, with sparkling blue eyes and a commanding presence that claimed the attention of every room he entered. Now, age had mellowed his brashness, but he was still handsome. The years had been good to him, maturing him into a man in his prime, and not one bit of the lanky young man she remembered remained beneath the strength he exuded, even while asleep.

Her hand trailed down to his chest. Dear God, it had been so long since she’d touched a man! Even so innocently as this. How could she have forgotten the warmth of male skin, the steely firmness of muscles beneath soft flesh? Or the delicious solidity of him, a feeling so tantalizing that even now she ached from remembering the pleasures of joined bodies, of welcoming a man’s hardness inside her softness—

She squeezed her eyes shut against the stinging that suddenly sprung up in them. She’d forgotten because the loneliness had consumed her.

At first, she’d mourned David’s memory. Then her full attention had been on Ethan, a tiny babe who needed her undivided devotion. There had been no time to consider her own selfish needs as a woman. The years stretched on after that, filled with busy days and long nights. Of course, there had been offers of intimacy from the sailors at the docks and the men in the village. A few had even been bold enough to propose marriage. But she knew better than to let any of them into her life, and certainly not into her heart. The risk was simply too great.

“You’re the first man who’s been in my bed since my husband died. Just my luck that you would be a Carlisle.” She was unable to keep her lips from twisting in amused irony. “And unconscious.”

He slept on, replying with a faint snore.

Chapter 4

Ross opened his eyes.

A blinding pain gripped his forehead and temples so hard that he winced and squeezed his eyes shut. He sucked in a deep breath and waited for the throbbing to subside before attempting to slowly open them again as he struggled to sort through the fog dulling his mind and to remember where he was. And how he’d gotten here.

He lifted his arm to scour a hand over his face—

His arm jerked to a stop. Ropes tightened at his wrists, keeping his hands fastened to the side rail of the bed frame. He couldn’t move them. Or his legs, with his ankles tied to the footboard.Christ.With gritted teeth, he yanked his arms to break through the thin rope.

“There’s no point in struggling,” a soft voice assured him. “You’ve been tied up.”

“Obviously.” His eyes narrowed on the expertly knotted ropes, before turning to the woman sitting in the rocking chair in the corner, who’d most likely done the tying. The same woman whose cottage he’d forced his way into last night, seeking shelter. He remembered that much, if not clearly. “Is this really necessary?”

“I think so.” She didn’t move to stand, her feet remaining tucked beneath her as if she’d spent the entire night right there, keeping guard. “I used sailors’ knots, too, so the more you struggle, the tighter the ropes become.”

“Of course you did,” he muttered as he stole another glance at the knots, then lay still. Although, if truth be told, he wasn’t feeling up to struggling, despite the sleep he’d finally gotten after days on the run. And apparently, he’d been asleep long enough that a glance at the window told him it was morning and that the storm had spent itself. Despite still being shuttered, gray light shined dimly around the window’s edges, and rain now fell over the cottage in a steady drizzle instead of the driving hurricane gale of last night.

“I also took the liberty of sewing up your wounds and applying salve to the cuts.” She mentioned that as casually as if she were a hostess chatting over tea instead of the woman who had turned the tables on him and gone from captive to captor. Complete with slipknots that would have made Horatio Nelson proud.

“Why bother, if you’re going to send for the authorities to have me arrested?” To think he’d survived flinging himself into the ice-cold Channel to escape the French, only to end up caught by a widow—his brother Kit would have a grand laugh over this, if his situation weren’t so deadly. After all, if a wisp of a woman could capture him, how little would it take for one of the Frenchmen to slit his throat if they found him?

“I’m not turning you over. I’m holding you to your word that you’ll leave without harming me.” Her eyes flickered as she added, “The word of a gentleman must be worth something.”

“No gentleman I’ve ever known,” he muttered, only half facetiously. “So untie me, and I’ll be on my way.”

“Oh, I don’t think so. Not yet anyway.” She nodded toward the window. “You arrived under the cover of darkness. That’s the same way you’ll leave.”

Interesting…if not for the fierce pounding in his head that had him desperate to close his eyes again and fall back into sleep’s sweet oblivion. She wanted to keep him from being seen. Good. At least they agreed on that. “So we’re to wait until sundown before you release me?”

“Before I place a pocket knife in your hand,” she explained calmly, as if discussing nothing more distressing than the weather. “Then I’ll leave and let you cut yourself free. The rope is loose enough for you to maneuver the blade beneath and fairly thin. You should have yourself out in no more than twenty minutes, and by then I’ll be safely away.”

So that he couldn’t change his mind and do her harm after all. “Very clever.”