Page 47 of Four Promises to Love

Anyone could find us. I am supposed to be gathering impressions. Instead, I am lost in Owen’s kiss⁠—

Coming to her senses, she dropped her hand, but he caught it.

“Otherwise, I would have you here,” he said in a gravelly voice. “I would lay you down on this bed of petals, Finn, and make love to you. I wouldn’t stop until you screamed my name in pleasure.”

Her heart and her pussy fluttered as he brushed his mouth over her lace-covered knuckles.

“Then I would start over again.”

The heated promise in his eyes stopped her breath.

“I shall be back in four days,” he said. “Wait for me?”

She breathed the answer in her heart. “Yes.”

Fourteen

That evening, James, Ethan, and Grantley insisted upon taking Owen out for supper before his departure for London. They went to Chuddums’s most popular dining establishment, the Briarbush Inn. As usual, it was packed elbow to elbow with locals and visitors. Owen and his group were greeted not by Mr. Thornton, the genial proprietor, but by his notoriously volatile wife.

“Gents,” Mrs. Thornton said.

She was a pug-nosed lady, with ginger-colored hair that threatened to explode from her cap. Her temper matched her hair, and having felt its lash, Owen returned her greeting with a guarded nod.

“Good evening to you, ma’am,” Ethan said politely. “Where is Mr. Thornton?”

“He’s visiting that no-good brother of his in Reading,” she said sourly. “Leaving me to tend the kitchen and the front of the house.”

Grantley donned a charming smile. “If our usual table is available, we would be most obliged.”

Her grunt conveyed that she wasn’t impressed by his title or rakish charisma. When she led the group through the crowded room, waiters and patrons dodged out of her path. As they passed the stone hearth where a pot of cider steamed, they were hailed by Wally and his cronies, who were downing tankards at a nearby table.

“If it isn’t the Harringtons! And Lord Ethan himself,” Wally exclaimed. “Just the fellow I was hoping to see.”

“A pleasure,” Ethan said. “Was there something specific I could assist with?”

Owen caught his brother’s wariness. Ethan liked Wally—everyone did—but the nonagenarian was known to prattle on. Grantley, who’d been held captive by one of Wally’s village “tours,” was eyeing an escape route.

“As a matter of fact.” Wally pushed up his spectacles, his dark eyes magnified by the thick lenses. “I have a question.”

“Yes, sir?”

“Is it true that you hired Madame Seraphina to break the curse of Bloody Thom?”

Christ, news travels faster than a bloody locomotive.

Trading looks with his brothers, Owen understood that they would stick to their plan to be discreet about the séance business. For one thing, the other men remained skeptical about Finn—and, truthfully, he couldn’t blame them. She and her assistants were definitely dodgy. He did not know what they were up to…but they were up to something.

For some unfathomable reason, however, he was beginning to trust her. Not every word she said—perhaps not even half of what she said. Yet he saw the bonds between her and her assistants and knew she was capable of loyalty. Her shady tendencies struck him as mechanisms of survival rather than flaws of character. And he believed her claim that she meant his kin no harm.

Then there was the passion that burned between them—no one could fake that, not even the talented little minx. He’d never felt anything like it. If desire were a garden, then what bloomed between him and Finn was like the damask roses: heady, with a shape of its own, and strangely…timeless.

Ethan was frowning. “I wouldn’t put it quite that way, no.”

“But Madame Seraphina did visit Bottoms House?” Wally asked eagerly. “Does she plan to conduct a séance there?”

“Our wives have taken a liking to her.” James sidestepped the issue in a way that Owen could only admire. “They invited her for tea.”

“Did Madame Seraphina sense the presence of Thomas Mulligan or Rosa⁠—”