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Within minutes, Bronwyn busied herself gathering some of the chunks of wood that might have been left behind or fallen off the half-rotted beams in the ceiling—she fervently hoped no more would come tumbling down upon their heads—and stacking them into a small pile, along with dry leaves and small twigs. Moving mostly by touch and the faint moonlight from the narrow cutouts above, it was slow going, though her eyes were growing used to the darkness.
She stumbled upon a few pine cones strewn near the entrance of the folly and nearly whooped with joy. They were the best kind of kindling. Lastly, she removed the knife from her boot and found a flat stone that she struck the knife down. Her hands were trembling so badly, however, that she could barely manage a spark after a few tries.
“Let me,” Thornbury said, taking both from her. He replaced the stone and her knife with a box from his pocket that contained safety matches, and it wasn’t long before the small pile caught fire.
She shot him a baleful glare. “You had those in your pockets all along?”
“I wasn’t sure they were dry.” He grinned, his teeth shining in the firelight. “And I wanted to see what you could do. Quite intrepid of you, I must say.”
“Wonderful,” she replied drily at his tone. “I have earned the everlasting admiration of the great Duke of Thornbury. However shall I cope with the weight of all that shining esteem?”
“What did you say about sarcasm again? That it was the lowest form of wit?”
“Touché, sir.” She sat cross-legged in front of the small blaze, as close as she dared, and reveled in the delightful, if scant, heat. “How cunning of you to use my own words against me. I didn’t think you were paying that much attention.”
“I always pay attention.”
The way he said it made her pause, but then he started to remove his waistcoat and then untucked his shirt, making her frown.
“What are you doing?”
“Trust me, you should do the same. I know the heat feels good, but your clothes will dry much more quickly off your body, and you won’t catch a rotten, dangerous chill in the meantime.”
“Surely you don’t expect me to undress in front of you?” she asked, her cheeks flaming. Bronwyn had no reason to be mortified, especially when the dratted man had beeninsideher, but for some reason the idea of undressing seemed much more intimate than their impassioned interlude in the wood had been. Then, they had mostly been dressed, with the exception of one or two key areas. He opened his mouth and she lifted a hand. “Don’t say whatever it is you’re thinking.”
“How do you know what I was about to say?”
She huffed. “You have that look on your face, and your lip is curling in the corner the way it does when you find something amusing and no one else does.”
That blasted lip curled even more into something that almost resembled a smirk. Good Lord, was that adimple? The shallow never-used indent in his cheek vanished almost as quickly as it had appeared, making her question whether it had been the flickering flames and not her besotted mind trying to trick her into thinking that he might be, indeed, human. And besides, he did not need any more armor against failing female wits.
A dimple on such an undeserving man would be the last sodding straw!
“That tiny fire is not enough to get you dry whilst covered in layers of wet clothing. You’ll catch your death,” he explained as he kicked off his shoes and unrolled his stockings before shucking off his shirt.
Bronwyn’s breath snagged in her throat as a brain-melting expanse of firelit muscled skin was unveiled. She’d known he wasn’t a man of excess, apart from the occasional glass of whisky, and she’d seen that lithe, powerful body in action against those men in the square, but nothing…nothinghad prepared her for the sight of him without a shirt.
He wasn’t perfect, that sinewy body marred by faded scars that traversed his skin like a pattern of ragged lace. Old wounds and newer ones, some deep, and some like the scratch on his neck that was now only a dark line of dried blood, painted his body. But scars were the marks of a warrior, and Thornbury wore his without shame. With pride.
Her eyes devoured the ridges upon ridges of lean muscle stacking from his wide shoulders to a corrugated abdomen and narrow hips. A spattering of bronze hair dusted those sculpted pectorals, a thicker line trailing from his navel to his waistband. Traitorously, her eyes dipped to the bulge at his crotch, widened, and darted away. Dear Lord, he wasn’t even erect and it was heart-palpitatingly prominent.
Of course, it’s big, you twit, he nearly split you in two.
Her thighs quivered at the memory, and she bit her lip as her core went molten. Thankfully, the duke hadn’t noticed her drooling over his person when he turned to drape the articles of clothing over the half-crumbled wall behind him. Her mouth practically fell open as he kicked off his trousers, leaving him standing in transparent knee-length linen smallclothes that left little to the imagination.
Of course his back had to be as powerfully built as the front, the flex of muscles bracketing the deep channel of his spine catching her attention anew. And those buttocks… She’d dug her fingers into those hard globes, but her hands hadn’t done the reality a lick of justice. Were all men hiding such lush posteriors beneath their tailcoats? She looked away as he turned, but now she couldn’t unsee the damn, entirely too luscious thing.
Forcing her eyes anywhere but on him, Bronwyn belatedly glanced over the inside of the folly, which had probably been divided into four or five rooms at one point, not to mention the upper levels that led to the tower. “What do you think is up there?”
“Not sure. The stairs have fallen in. Probably just a bird or two, I imagine.” One brow raised, he stared pointedly at her. “Don’t dawdle. Your turn.”
“Fine.” She breathed out. “Face the other way.”
***
Valentine thought she would put up more of a fight. What they were doing was truly scandalous in the eyes of British society…especially for an unmarried couple. But they weren’t in England and this was a matter of actual survival. If the chill took root in her lungs, she could become quite ill, and they had already avoided being grabbed and gutted. It made no sense to give in to something completely within their control for the sake of propriety. Not on his watch.
The rustle of clothing reached his ears.
