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“I should return home. I have guests.”
Guests. The word hit him like a small stone from a slingshot. He was supposed to be one of those guests, but instead, here he was acting like a groom. And he’d overheard her reaction to his absenteeism as well. Watching her lawn bowl for a short minute had revealed that she was not happy with him. Him, as a duke, that is. She clearly didn’t like a liar. Neither did he. Yet here he was. The stablehand. A lie. But for the first time since he’d known her—both as the duke and as a groom—she didn’t seem irritated with him.
Perhaps the crisis with Blackmare had drained all the fury out of her.
The two took a moment in the water, and he watched as she carefully washed her arms. Afterward, he expected her to want to clean more of herself, but instead she walked back up the bank.
“You don’t want to wash up more?” He stepped toward her causing her to retreat. Into the trunk of a tree.
“I don’t mind being a little dirty.”
That confession was a shock to his system on too many levels to register.
“You don’t mind?” His feet moved closer to her until they were toe to toe. Not as smooshed together as they had been in the stall—which his body craved—but still rather close. Close enough that should a leaf decide that the path it wanted to take to the ground lay between their bodies it might not be able to fall safely to its destination.
“I don’t mind,” she whispered as he locked his eyes on her lips. And then her eyes dipped to his lips. And then her hand reached up to his lapel. And then those fingers closed around said lapel and pulled him closer. No leaves, no matter how determined, would find passage between their bodies now. “At all.”
And she lifted her other hand to the back of his neck and pulled him down to close what little space was left between their mouths.
Warm and soft, but urgent, her lips moved over his. Searching. Gentle but for a moment and then demanding.
He opened his mouth to meet her request and heard her sigh into him with her entire body. As if she had been holding onto some rope tied all around her and only now had stepped free of its binding.
As atrocious as her aim was in lawn bowling, her soft moan punctured through his chest, making its way accurately close to his heart. The woman in his arms was beautiful. Tender. Compassionate. He could feel her body opening up to him, and all he wanted to do was respond in kind.
Her kisses were delicious, and he could have explored her all day, but when her arms locked around his ears and her body fought for purchase on his hips, he knew he needed to stop this.
She didn’t even know who he really was, and he had a strong feeling that she was going to be a whole lot of emotions other than happy to discover the truth.
The truth.
A weight settled in his stomach as he pulled back.
“Verity…I…”
She held her eyelids closed for a beat, rolled her lips inward, and then snapped her eyes open.
“Thank you for that.”
Despite her erected fortress of invulnerability, he could see a flicker of hurt in her face.
“I—”
“I have guests.”
And with that, she marched off.
Chapter 7
Ash
“Ash? Is that you? What the hell are you doing here with the horses? And dressed like that?” Soren called out followed by a bark of laughter. “You know the house party is in the house, don’t you? I mean, I know you’re a rogue. You like to do things your own way, but this is a bit excessive. Even for you.”
“He’s the smart one among us. Found a way to escape the women.” Rafe slid his hand along the wooden stall, then patted one of the mares. “Probably the safest place on the whole estate, I’d wager.”
“You’d think so, wouldn’t you? But the horses have been restless.” Ash unloaded an account of recent events on his old friends. “One of them just foaled weeks earlier than expected in the field. Grice said she must have eaten a toxic plant of some kind to trigger labor. Poor thing didn’t know what hit her, and she nearly rejected her foal altogether. I had to tell Verity to take her gown off the baby so that mother wouldn’t confuse the scents—”
“Verity?” Soren interjected.
