“Perhaps,” she admitted.

He stopped directly before her. “If that’s the case, I won’t have you cavorting with him in the manner I just witnessed.”

She crossed her arms across her chest angrily. “Why should it matter so much to you? Our marriage will scarcely be real.”

His gaze dropped to her mouth. “It will be real enough.”

“For a time.” She gave the barest nod of agreement.

He lifted a hand and ran a finger over the plump line of her mouth. So soft. “It will be enough. You’ll have no doubt that you’ve been wedded . . . and bedded by me.”

She slapped his hand away and stepped back. “Is that your definition of a real marriage? Marriage involves more than the act of consummation.”

“View it however you like. After we part ways, when you return here . . . or anywhere, you’ll still be mine, and I’ll not be made a cuckold.” He flexed one hand into a fist at his side and wondered at the stark surge of possession burning through him.

Standing this close, he saw her lips quiver. She lifted her chin, staring down—if possible—the slim column of her nose at him. “I’ll not shame you. You need not fear that. I will behave with utmost decorum. I wouldn’t dream of behaving in a less than circumspect fashion.”

“Well.” He cocked his head. A dangerous churning started in his gut. “It wouldn’t be the first time if you did.”

She gasped.

He blinked hard, angry with himself. What had possessed him to fling out that unkind remark? So she’d fallen from grace. He was no saint himself. Unlike the rest of Society, he was not one to hold ladies to impossible moral standards.

Was he so jealous of her indiscretion with Ian? If it hadn’t happened, he wouldn’t even have been standing here with her now. He wouldn’t even have known her.

She edged back a step, clearly on the verge of flight, and he didn’t blame her.

Her gaze swept over him like he was something foul she found beneath her slipper. “Let us be clear now. At every encounter, must I account for my past? Is it something for which you will forever condemn me?”

Bloody hell. “Linnie,” he started.

“No. No.” She held up a hand, her slim fingers splayed wide in the air. “Please. You are correct, after all. I can make no claims to decorum. None that you should believe, at any rate. I’m merely the silly, stupid girl your cousin ruined before he left for the war. And you”—she looked him up and down—”are the honorable kinsman sacrificing himself on the altar of matrimony.” Her blue eyes glowed brightly. “How very proud you must be.”

“I did not say that—”

“No, but you meant it.” Her voice shook, rippling through him like a cold wind. “It’s only the truth.” Clenching her shawl tightly around her shoulders, she swung a wide circle around him, striding past with fiery dignity.

He stopped her with a hand on her arm.

He couldn’t help it; he couldn’t let her go. This stranger he would wed.

He felt he should know her, understand her for all that Ian had shared about her. And yet he did not. He didn’t know the first thing about this creature with wit and courage and fire in her eyes and an expressive face that carried its own unique history. He didn’t know her. Yet. But he intended to.

She glared at his hand on her arm and back to his face, her firm, narrow little chin jutting at an obstinate angle. He burned to grasp it in his hand, pull her to him and sample her mouth, see if her lips tasted as soft as they felt.

“You have more to add?” she fairly hissed. “I think we’ve said entirely enough for one night. Perhaps we can begin again on the morrow with fresh insults.”

His lips twisted. God, she was a spitfire.

Even beneath the wool sleeve of her gown he felt the humming pulse of her warm flesh. She affected him. He thought back to the eager servant girl at the inn. Perhaps he should have taken her up on her offer. Because at this moment, this close, with his hand on Linnie, he wanted her with a blood-pumping intensity. The kind of intensity that forced him to act. Seize and claim her now.

He tugged her closer. She came, tumbling against his chest. He hardened instantly at the soft press of her br**sts through her hideous gown. Her head tilted back to watch him, her brilliant gaze softly questioning. He studied the length of her long lashes, inky cobwebs framing the vivid blue of her eyes. He would see them even in the deep of dark. In his bed. He would see her eyes even as their bodies rocked together, locked in passion.

Aroused, shaken, he dropped his hand from her arm as if burned.

Wide-eyed, she stared at him.

“Go,” he snarled. “Just go, Linnie—”

“Stop!” Her chest lifted with a giant breath. “Don’t call me that. I’m Evie.” Her tongue darted out to moisten her lips. “No one calls me Linnie.” She looked away from his eyes abruptly, adding in a softer voice, “Not anymore.”

He nodded jerkily. He’d heard the others call her Evie and thought it just another nickname for Evelyn. He hadn’t realized she now preferred it exclusively.

“Evie,” he said, tasting it on his tongue, savoring it.

It suited her. Linnie belonged to a little girl. He scanned her slender length, the br**sts she hid beneath the rag she called a dress. Evie was a woman. All tempting woman.

“Evie,” he repeated, brushing a stray strand off her cheek and tucking it behind her ear.

Her eyes gleamed in the night, uncertain as they moved from his eyes to his mouth. Tension still hummed on the air, volatile and crackling. A cinder waiting to catch fire. Her gaze flickered with some emotion before dropping half-mast.

He dipped his head, holding his mouth above hers, sighing her name against her lips. “Evie.” He liked that he could call her something Ian never had. Linnie was Ian’s. Evie would be his.

“Yes.”

He breathed in her gaspy reply, his gaze devouring her face, every curve and hollowed line. “Call me Spencer.”

“Spencer,” she whispered, her stare back on his mouth.

He nodded, liking the soft roll of his name on her lips.

“Evie,” he tasted her name again. “I’m going to kiss you now.” He let his meaning hang, hover, sink deep.

Her eyes flared wide, but she didn’t move as he lowered his head. He brushed his lips to hers, tasted gently the hint of warm sherry on her lips. Her lips moved tentatively, almost like a beginner. Or at least someone very rusty.

Blood pounded in his veins. He shuddered, hard-pressed to keep his desire under control.

She leaned into him, gave herself up, and he snapped. Slipping a hand around the back of her neck and an arm around her waist, he hauled her off her feet.

With a firm grip on the back of her neck, he angled her for his mouth, groaning against her soft lips, forcing them apart for his invading tongue.

Soft skin filled his palm. Silky tendrils brushed the back of his hand as he held her close, deepening the kiss, hungry, starving for more. He dragged his mouth down her throat, licking and gently biting at the wildly thrumming pulse in her neck.

Her moan swung into a gasp.

As if the sound frightened her, she lurched her face away. Too soon, it ended.

Reluctantly, he released her, let her slide down the length of him.

Like a woman drunk, she staggered back from the circle of his arms, pressing one shaking hand against her lips. Lips he still tasted on his own.

His hands opened and curled at his sides, aching to haul her back, to clutch her close, to feel the slim, giving length of her against him again.

Her wide eyes looked strangely wounded as she gazed upon him. “This is too soon. I’m still adjusting to the notion of marrying you . . . of, of—”

“Sharing my bed,” he finished with a snap. Would she prefer he be someone else? He inhaled, his chest lifting. “I told you my expectations. This should come as no surprise.”

She shook her head. Sun-kissed tendrils escaped the confines of her simple coiffure, framing her face and making her look young and fresh. Utterly desirable. “We’re not even married yet.”

He couldn’t help himself. He tossed his head back and laughed. The harsh sound filled the garden, echoing all around. A kiss before marriage scandalized her? When she had done so much more before? With Ian?

Her eyes flashed with outrage, understanding the meaning behind his laughter.

Even in the gloom, he detected the burning rise of color in her narrow face. She made a sound, a low, animal-like noise in the back of her throat. This time he saw her hand coming—but unlike the last time, he caught it in his grasp. He flexed his hand over her slim fingers. So fine that the slightest pressure would crush them.

She whimpered and tried to pull free.

“You struck me once,” he bit out. “Don’t make it a habit.”

She tugged harder, color unevenly staining her cheeks. She possessed mettle, he’d give her that.

“Then don’t make it a habit of treating me like a whore.”

“Very well.” He inclined his head ever so slightly, unable to deny that charge.

For whatever reason, she provoked him into flinging her past at her time and time again. Bewildering, that. He didn’t condemn her; he was certainly no paragon of morality. On the contrary, he came from a long line of scoundrels. To be fair, he had to count himself among their ranks a time or two. Before the war, he’d almost been as wild and unrepentant as the rest of the men in his family, all in the hope to fit in among them.

And yet her past with Ian plagued him. Drove him to fling angry words. He sighed, not particularly liking himself just then.

He dropped her hand. “Go,” he commanded.

She didn’t move.

“Go,” he barked.

Like a startled hare, she bolted, leaving him in the garden. He stood alone for several moments, dragging a hand through his hair. Tomorrow he would depart for Northumberland, to the one place that always felt like home. They would stay the night there before moving on to Scotland.

The prospect should have settled peacefully in his chest. During the war, he had dreamed of returning to Ashton Grange. When his mother took him there as a boy . . . those had been good days. He hoped to reclaim a measure of that again.

Only now he would possess a wife. Evie.

He rubbed a palm against his thigh. He heard a door shut in the distance and knew she was gone. For now. Soon she would have nowhere to run. Soon she would be his.

Chapter 12

Evie looked up and stared through the parted curtains as if waking from a dream. “What is this place?”

“Ashton Grange. The estate came to me through my mother.” Spencer swayed slightly on the squabs as the carriage turned onto the drive. “It’s the only thing I’ve left of her aside from a few rusty memories.” He shook his head. The barest scowl crossed his handsome face.

She found herself staring at his well-formed mouth. Felt her own mouth part, her lips tingle and loosen on an inaudible sigh with the memory of their kiss.

She’d thought of little else throughout their journey north. She couldn’t have imagined how much it would stir her. How much she would ache to feel his lips on hers again.

She closed her eyes in a long-suffering blink. Millie’s voice filled her ears, her explicit descriptions dancing through her head. Heat swamped her, creeping up from her too-tight chest, to her neck, her face . . .

She saw herself n**ed with Spencer, their bare limbs tangled, their hot mouths kissing, dragging . . . everywhere. To all the intimate places she now knew—courtesy of Millie—could be touched, kissed, loved.

Cheeks burning, her breath fell faster. Embarrassed that Spencer might detect his mortifying effect on her, she quickly turned her attention back out the window just as they stopped before the sprawling country house.

His voice slid across the closed confines of the carriage, brushing her skin like a feather’s stroke. “We’ll stay the night here.”