And yet a man capable of protecting her wouldn’t be remiss. She had never considered that benefit to having a strong, virile man in her life. Perhaps he could give her stepfather the thrashing he deserved. Of course he had to care enough about her to do that, and nothing indicated Logan’s feelings for her ran that deeply.

Her gaze devoured the sight of Logan standing with his legs braced, looking so powerful, so strong, in the middle of the road. She filled her lungs with an exhilarated breath. It was a heady sight.

“We’ll be keeping these,” Logan announced, waving the confiscated pistol and motioning to Cleo with his other hand, indicating the knives she held.

“What are you going to do to us?” Ansel gasped.

“What should I do?” Logan straightened his arm, aiming directly for the man’s face. “What would you do?” Tension radiated from every inch of him.

Cleo reached out and rested a hand on Logan’s arm, squeezing the tightly corded muscle there gently, hoping to ease him. She whispered his name, drawing his attention. Logan’s gaze slid to her and the barely leashed anger there shook something deep inside her. “Don’t.”

Saving the life of the man who’d been ready and willing to end her life didn’t matter. Logan, however, mattered. She didn’t want him to dirty his hands this night. Not for her.

With the barest nod, Logan looked back at the unsavory pair on the ground. “Count yourself lucky I don’t leave you in pieces all over this road as you threatened to do to her.”

A shuddery breath spilled from her.

At those final words, his voice trembled slightly. From rage or emotion, she wasn’t certain, but he made his point.

With his face twisted in pain, Ansel muttered some bitter-sounding words of gratitude.

Dixon nodded anxiously, his stocky frame lifting Ansel with ease. “We’ll be going. Won’t bother you again, sir.”

Cleo watched as the pair disappeared into the trees.

Then Logan was there, sliding his hand along her cheek, pulling her to him. “Are you all right?”

She nodded, a lump forming in her throat. For some absurd reason, she felt the urge to weep. A hint of a sob broke free from her lips before she managed to swallow it back. With a deep breath, she reclaimed her composure and pulled away. “Forgive me. I’m rather emotional.”

She made out his crooked smile. “You’re entitled to that. A man just held a pistol to your head and threatened to kill you. Most females would weep under such circumstances.”

“I’m not most females,” she countered before she could consider her words. “I’m supposed to be stronger.”

“Who says so?”

She held his gaze for a moment, resisting the rejoinder: Me.

She’d always expected more from herself. The eldest of her mother’s children, she was responsible for keeping everything and everyone together—from shattering within the walls of her stepfather’s house.

She was still that. The responsible one who would save them all. She could show no weakness . . . allow no vulnerability in. Not then. Not now.

“It’s okay to feel fear.” Something flickered in his gaze—a shadow of some emotion she’d never seen from him. “God knows I did when I saw him put that pistol to your head. It took everything for me to stay my hand and wait for the moment when I could get a clean hit on him.”

He’d been afraid? For her?

Suddenly his hand on her face became everything, her entire world, where all sensation ended and began. He bowed his head until their foreheads touched. His breath mingled with hers until it felt as though they were one. She closed her eyes against the fanciful thought . . . tried to push it back to that place where she had long buried her dreams.

“We’d better get moving,” she suggested, stepping away from him.

His sigh floated on the air. “Very well.” He helped her remount, and she heaved her own sigh of relief to escape his touch—to be on their way. One step closer to putting this night behind.

Chapter Sixteen

The village was as still and silent as a tomb. They passed a vicarage at the far end of the lane. Not a single light flowed from its windows. A dog woke and barked as they approached the small inn. If it could be called that. It appeared little more than a house with a crooked shingle hanging outside. A candle glowed from an upstairs window and Cleo took comfort in that. Someone would answer their knock and treat them to a modicum of hospitality. Hopefully, at this late hour they would face few questions.

The door was flung open and a bedraggled woman stood there, a lacy old-fashioned cap askew on her head. A gray-streaked plait hung loose and unraveling over her well-padded shoulder.

She lifted her lantern high to better inspect them. “What can I do for you?”

“We need a room for the night, if you please.”

“Late, isn’t it?”

“Quite. And we’re very tired. We’d prefer a warm bed to the hard earth.” Logan flashed her a handsome grin. Cleo rolled her eyes, feeling certain that smile could get him most anything.

The woman looked them over anew, missing nothing. No doubt she was running the odds of them being murderers through her mind. Apparently satisfied with whatever she saw in them—or didn’t see—she flicked a hand toward her stable. “The lad is gone for the night. You’ll have to tend to your own mount. Our lodgings are small. I’ve only four bedchambers and all are taken save one. Fortunate for you. Your lady can follow me and I’ll see her settled whilst you tend to your mount.”

Cleo opened her mouth to object, but Logan sent her a swift shake of his head. “That would be much appreciated,” he said smoothly.

The inn mistress’s already ruddy cheeks deepened in color. “Yes, well, if you’re hungry I suppose I can light the stove and—”

“Please, don’t trouble yourself,” Cleo assured her.

Right now she merely wanted to fall into a bed and lose herself in sleep . . . where she didn’t have to contemplate what was becoming the longest night of her life.

And she especially wouldn’t have to ponder the wondrous and confusing feelings the man beside her stirred inside her heart.

As Logan headed off for the stable, the proprietress led her inside, past a small parlor with a dying fire and up the creaking stairs. A man with wild, sleep-mussed hair peeped out from a room as they walked down the narrow corridor.

“Back to bed with you, sir. Just another guest arriving.”

With a grunted mutter, the man disappeared inside his room.

“My name is Mrs. Cantrell,” she declared as she opened the door to a small gabled room—obviously located at the corner of the house—that smelled of lye.

Entering the room, Cleo rotated in a small circle, surveying where she and Logan would spend the night together. Her gaze drifted to the bed and away. It didn’t look big enough for one person. It couldn’t possibly fit two. At least not comfortably. Heat swamped her face. Not that she was concerned with it holding two bodies. She certainly wouldn’t be sharing the bed with him. Logan might insist they share this room, but she would not share a bed with him.

Her chest tightened almost painfully and she quickly distracted herself by facing Mrs. Cantrell. “Thank you, Mrs. Cantrell. We won’t be needing anything else.”

Mrs. Cantrell looked unimpressed with this assurance. At this late hour, Cleo supposed that could be understood. “Good night to you then.”

Setting the lamp on top of the bureau, she left the room, closing the door behind her with a click.

Cleo studied the room anew, her gaze scanning the way the yellow gold lamplight flickered over the walls. A screen stood along one side of the room. She thought about stepping behind it and changing clothes before Logan returned, but then she recalled she’d left her valise with the horse.

She ducked her head beneath the sloping ceiling as she approached the window and peered out.

The moonlit night stared back, silent and still to her wandering gaze. Not even a breeze disturbed the leaves in the trees. She saw no sign of Logan. The stable was a hulking shadow.

The sound of the door opening behind her brought her whirling around. Logan ducked his head as he entered. Standing inside the small room with its low ceiling only reinforced just how very large he was.

He extended the valise for her to take.

When she didn’t move to take it, he gave the barest shrug and set it near the bed.

She was being foolish, she knew. Too afraid to approach him . . . as if he might accost her. In reality, the person she most feared was herself—and the totally unprecedented way she reacted to him. Around him, she no longer knew herself.

She stared from the valise to him. Suddenly the idea of changing into the same nightgown she’d worn earlier—when he had very nearly seduced her—struck her as a very bad plan.

He sat in a chair and began removing his boots. “Aren’t you going to change?” He motioned to her valise.

With a reluctant nod, she took her valise and moved behind the screen. She undressed, draping her clothes over the screen with slow, measured movements.

Inhaling a deep breath, she acknowledged that she still couldn’t bring herself to strip down to nothing and put that nightgown back on again. Wearing her petticoat and chemise, she stepped around the screen.

Her throat constricted. He was waiting.

He sat upon the bed, his legs stretched out before him with his ankles crossed. And his chest was bare. She gulped. She knew he was no small man, but the muscles there . . . it was just too much. She closed her eyes in a slow, anguished blink. He was the epitome of everything she denied herself. Youth, beauty, virility. If heaven had sent him here to test her, she was on a direct path to failure.

“What are you doing?”

He glanced at the bed. “Hoping to get some sleep.”

Sleep? She eyed him suspiciously. “There?” She motioned toward him upon the bed.

“It is a bed.”

“And you mean to occupy it? With me?”

“Was there another alternative? It’s the only room left. And the hard floor is hardly appealing. Did you wish me to sleep in the stable?”

Cleo stared at him in silence.

He studied her for a moment and then nodded precisely two times. “Apparently you do.” His mouth twisted wryly.

She gestured to him, the bed, herself. “This is hardly appropriate.”

“You’re still concerned with what’s seemly?” His look turned incredulous. “After everything that’s happened? We’ve been alone together for hours now. We were caught in a compromising situation by several witnesses.”

She shook her head, resisting the childish urge to cover her ears. “You don’t understand,” she muttered.

“Then explain it to me.”

She looked at him starkly, wishing she could. She wasn’t about to fall into bed with him simply because her reputation was in tatters and it didn’t matter anymore. That didn’t make it acceptable.

She crossed her arms over her chest and forced her gaze away from him—all that bronze flesh that looked smooth yet she knew was hard and firm beneath her fingers.

She heard his sigh before he asked, “Are you going to sleep in that?”

She nodded, unable to explain her reason for not putting that nightgown on again—that she was afraid it would carry her back to that moment when she was on the verge of giving herself uninhibitedly to him.

“Get into bed, Cleo.”

Her skin prickled at this command. “Don’t tell me what to do.”

“Do you intend to sleep on the floor then? Because I’m not. Don’t think I’ll play the gallant gentleman and take the floor so you can have the bed.”

“I would never mistake you for gallant,” she retorted even as she wondered why she continued to flay him with her barbed tongue. But she knew why.