Stopping in the middle of the corridor, she lifted those damnable hypnotic eyes of hers. “I said as much.”

“Forgive me,” he murmured. “I find it hard to credit.”

“And why is that?” she demanded, her eyes glinting in challenge.

“Ladies of the _ton _ strike me as the _busy _ sort.” Too busy for friends like Julianne at any rate.

“I’m not too busy for Julianne,” she assured, adding in a softer voice, “nor am I like most ladies of the ton.”

“Oh? In what manner?”

Shaking her head, she muttered, “Never mind.”

“What?”

Her lips flattened into a line and she shook her head harder.

“I don’t remember you being so reticent, Jane.”

Her eyes widened and he felt certain it was his use of her name, the first time he had spoken it in many years. It felt good to say it, to hear himself say it. Bloody annoying, that.

“People change,” she murmured.

“That they do,” he agreed, finding himself staring overly long at her mouth again. At her. In so many ways, he felt he was seeing her for the first time.

Her eyes, neither brown nor green but a strange mixture, reminded him of a wooded glen that he had seen outside Macao. He recalled the sunlight reflecting off a nearby waterfall, gilding the rich browns and greens, and the peace that had filled him then.

Without stopping to think, he brushed his thumb over her lips, testing the softness, wondering if they had always felt like satin, wondering why he had never thought to find out before… and why he wanted to find out now.

He trailed a path down her throat to the wildly thrumming pulse beating against the almost translucent skin of her neck. He drew a lazy circle over the faint pattern of delicate blue veins there.

“What are you doing?” she whispered, inching away until the wall at her back stopped her from farther retreat.

He followed, closing in, pressing his hard length against her softer one.

Her curves settled against the hard lines of his body, melting against him like lava sinking into the sea. He bit back a groan at the sensation, longing to sink _all _ of himself into her soft heat.

Lowering his head, he pressed his mouth to her throat, where her neck met her shoulder…

driven, compelled by a feeling he could not name, a madness he could not shake. She need only say the word , give the slightest indication of surrenders, and he would take her. With no thought to propriety, to servants that lurked in shadows, he would lift her skirts and put an end to his torment.

Her breath shuddered through her, vibrating against his chest as he opened his mouth over her warm skin, savoring the sweetness of her flesh with the rasp of his tongue.

Lifting his mouth, he gazed into her astonished eyes.

A similar astonishment echoed through him, surpassed only by the desire hardening every line of his body.

His gaze dipped to her mouth again, to the pouty lips that obliterated the last of his logic.

Jane shook her head, fingers moving to lightly graze her neck, her skin moist and cool where he had kissed her.

Did he do this to every woman he encountered? Overwhelmed them with his magnetism until the only thought in a woman’s head was him? His hands on her body? His mouth on her skin? Did others fall victim so weakly? So stupidly? Thinking they were special?

Jealously seized her. For whom, she was not certain. Aurora? Absurd considering she only envied herself.

Mortification spread prickly hotly through her chest, rising up her throat to choke her. “I—I should go,” she managed to get out as she shoved past him, stumbling for the door.

He snatched hold of her wrist, his fingers a vise about her. His hot look burned with familiar intensity.

“Why so unfriendly, Jane? We were friends once, were we not?”

 Friends. Had he never realized that she wanted to be more? That _he _ had been more to her?

Everything, in fact. Her fists clenched. Rot him for not seeing, not knowing… for not loving her back.

His fingers tightened and pulled her close. Too close. He stared at her in that consuming way of his, his velvet brown eyes warming her blood. “Have you forgotten?” he demanded.

The mad urge to laugh bubbled up in her throat. Forgotten? Swallowing down the thickness in her throat, she replied, grateful for the brusque sound of her voice, “Of course not.”

“Good.” His touch gentled on her wrist, thumb moving in slow circles over the inside of her wrist. “Because I’ve thought of you.”

She snorted. “Have you?”

He smiled loosely and her belly fluttered. “We had fun together. When I thought of home, yours was the face I saw.” His smile faded as though bothered by the realization.

She said nothing, too incredulous to formulate a response. Never had she dreamed to linger in his thoughts. Madeline, yes. Her? Never.

“You’ve changed,” he continued. “You’re not the little girl frozen in my mind all these years.”

His eyes slid over her slowly, the seductive movement of his fingers on her wrist radiating heat up her arm.

“You’re different, too,” she retorted. “The days of stripping to our unmentionables to swim in the pond have long passed.”

Fire flared in his eyes. “Pity.”

Heat licked her cheeks and she dipped her gaze.

She had thought of him often during the numbing years of her marriage to Marcus. Wondered where he was, how he occupied himself, if he ever thought of her. She had reminisced on the cheerful days of their youth before Julianne’s accident. Before he dropped from an apple tree, his love for Madeline emblazoned across his face.

She had envisioned the future where they might meet again, imagined his varying reactions.

From mild enthusiasm to polite indifference. Yet in all the scenarios, he had never looked as he did now, with fire gleaming in his eyes. Fire for her.

The same fire—a ruthless voice inserted in her head—he had shown for Aurora.

Confused, she wiggled free of his hold. This time he did not stop her as she stepped past him.

“I shall call on Julianne again,” she promised.

He stared at her for a long moment, his eyes fierce and glowing. His fingertips rubbed together idly at his side, almost as if he still caressed her.

“She would like that very much,” he replied at last, the muscle feathering along his square jaw belying the mildness of his response.

She glanced away, staring at the cuticles of her neatly trimmed nails.

Nodding, she murmured, “You care for your sister a great deal.” Perhaps too much, she silently added. Before she could think better of it, she added, “I understand you’re looking for a bride.”

“Do you now?” He stepped nearer, an encroaching wall of heat. “What precisely did my sister tell you?”

Her mind thought back to all Julianne had told her, recalling the slump to her shoulders as she had confessed her brother’s intention to wed… and his sole criteria in selecting a wife.

“She said you’re marrying because of her. To see that she is protected.” Jane hesitated at sight of his scowl. “Admirable of you, to be certain… but such a sacrifice weighs heavily on your sister.”

He stepped back, crossing his arms over his chest, all warmth gone from his eyes as he bit out,

“You know nothing of what you speak.”

“Oh? Then you’re not venturing to Vauxhall tonight to take measure of a potential bride?”

“Julianne speaks too freely.”

“Your sister has no wish to be the reason for your marrying anyone. It’s unfair to place such a burden on her—”

“You presume too much,” he ground out, “to think your opinion matters here.”

Stung, she swallowed back the sudden lump in her throat. “Perhaps I spoke out of turn, but I’m only thinking of your sister.”

 Not myself. Not the knot of discomfort in my belly at the thought of you marrying.

“You mentioned needing to be off, my lady,” Seth said, cold, implacable, a man cut from stone, the thrilling intimacy of moments ago gone. “Do not let me keep you a moment more.” He sketched a quick bow.

She watched his rigid back stride away before she moved down the corridor to the entrance hall.

A footman appeared with her cloak, bonnet, and reticule. Accepting her things, she forced herself to walk steadily outside. Inhaling the crisp air, she blinked several times to quell the moisture that gathered in her eyes, reminding herself that she had survived years without Seth’s affections.

The lack did not matter now. She would not revert to childhood, would not long for what could never be.

And when news reached her that the Earl of St. Claire had married, she would not feel a thing, would not feel that same stab in the region of her heart that she had felt the day in the orchard when she realized Seth would never love her.

It was not until she sat safe in her carriage that she allowed the tears to fall.

Chapter 11

Jane braced herself upon entering the Guthrie townhouse. Holding her breath, she stood in the foyer and listened with her head cocked. Blessed silence. No walls crashing down. No frenzied servants. No girlish screams reaching her ears.

She expelled her breath, feeling some of the tension ebb from her neck. No doubt she would face unpleasantness for leaving her nieces with Anna and daring to partake in a fragment of the social niceties that had once filled her days, but she was glad for the respite and would not regret her time with Seth.

However impossible their flirtation, his attentions, his mouth on her neck, the way his gaze burned through her, would be something she clung to in the years ahead.

A throat cleared behind her and the tension returned, streaking through her shoulders.

Turning, she eyed the butler. A stone-faced sentry, Barclay wore his usual mask of civility. His stare impassive, he intoned, “Mr. Billings awaits you in his study, my lady.” She tugged free her gloves, despising the way her hands shook at the mention of Desmond.

 _His _ study. Even the butler considered Desmond lord and master now. Forget that she was the viscountess. Forget that Matthew was the true viscount. One widow lacking a jointure and a boy halfway across the country did not command respect.

Jane twisted her gloves in her hands, her mind racing, searching for a way to delay, if not avoid the meeting altogether.

As though reading her mind, Barclay added, “Mr. Billings said I was to direct you there at once.

Personally.”

Jane dropped her gloves on the hall table and smoothed moist palms over her skirts. “Is Mrs.

Billings at home?”

“No, my lady.”

She inhaled thinly through her nostrils. With their last encounter fresh in her head, she had no wish to see him alone. True, he did not know she had been the woman he accosted at Madame Fleur’s, but she knew. And her skin still crawled at the memory.

“Would you send for Anna?”

“Mr. Billings sent Anna on an errand, my lady.”

She narrowed her gaze on the butler. Errand indeed. Since when did Desmond use Anna for errands? The wretch clearly wanted her to himself.

Squaring her shoulders, she advanced to the study, determined to present a brave front. In broad daylight, in a house full of servants, he would surely behave himself.

Stopping before the tall double doors she rapped twice, waiting for his command to enter, trying not to fidget.

“Come in.”

Sucking in a breath, she entered the room, noticing as she did that it smelled of leather and cigars—the smell she still associated with Marcus over a year later.

Desmond reclined in her late husband’s chair, feet propped up on the mahogany desk, one of his brother’s imported cigars clamped between his teeth.

“Jane, m’dear, I was beginning to worry.”

Spine rigid as a slat of wood, she eased into the chair across from the desk, not fooled by his display of solicitousness. “I left word of my whereabouts.”