Thorne braced himself. That word shook the ground beneath him. He could have sworn the hillside rolled and swayed.
More. What did it mean to her, that word? Certainly something different from the visions his own mind supplied. He saw the two of them, tangled in the heather and the rucked-up muslin of her skirts. This was why he sought out experienced women who shared his definition of “more”—and had no qualms about telling him exactly when and where and how often they’d like it.
But Miss Taylor was a lady, no matter how she denied it. She was innocent, young, given to foolish dreaming. He cringed to imagine what “more” meant in her mind. Sweet words? Courting? A vinegar jar had more sweetness in it than he did. His experience with courting had been limited to courting danger.
That wrongheaded kiss had been just one more example.
Stupid, stupid. His own mother had said it best. Your head’s as thick as it is ugly, boy. You never will learn.
“You can’t just walk away from me,” she said. “Not after a kiss like that. We need to talk.”
Brilliant. This was worse than sweetness, more fraught with danger than courting. She wanted talking.
Why couldn’t a woman let an action speak for itself? If he’d wanted to use words, he would have used them.
“We have nothing to discuss,” he said.
“Oh, I beg to differ.”
Thorne stared at her, considering. He’d spent the better part of a decade on campaign with the British infantry. He knew when his best option was retreat.
He turned and whistled for the dog. The pup bounded to his side. Thorne was pleased. He’d been divided as to whether to leave him with the breeder so long, but the extra weeks of training seemed to have paid off.
He walked toward the place where he’d left the horse grazing, near a wooden stile that served as the only gap in the field’s waist-high stone border.
Miss Taylor followed him. “Corporal Thorne . . .”
He vaulted the stile, putting the fence between them. “We need to get back to Spindle Cove. You’ve missed lessons with the Youngfield sisters this evening. They’ll be wondering where you are.”
“You know my schedule of lessons?” Her voice carried an interested lilt.
He cursed under his breath. “Not all of them. Just the irritating ones.”
“Oh. The irritating ones.”
He tossed the pup a scrap of rabbit hide from his pocket, then began checking over the horse’s tack.
She placed both hands on the evenly mortared top of the stone fence and boosted herself to sit atop it. “So my lessons and your drinking sessions just happen to coincide. At the same times and on the same days, to the point that you know my schedule. By heart.”
For God’s sake. What heart?
He shook his head. “Don’t tell yourself some sentimental story of how I’ve been pining for you. You’re a fetching enough woman, and I’m a man with eyes. I’ve noticed. That’s all.”
She gathered her skirts in one hand, lifted her legs, and swung them to his side of the fence. “And yet you’ve never said a word.”
With her sitting on the stone wall, they were almost equal in height. She crooked one finger and swept a curling lock of hair behind her ear—in that graceful, unthinking way women had of pushing men to the brink of desperation.
“I’m not a smoothly spoken man. If I put my wants into words, I’d have you blushing so hard your frock would turn a deeper shade of pink.”
There. That ought to scare her off.
She colored slightly. But she didn’t back down.
“Do you know what I think?” she said. “I think that maybe—just maybe—all your stern, forbidding behavior is some strange, male form of modesty. A way to deflect notice. I’m almost ashamed to say it worked on me for the better part of a year, but—”
“Really, Miss Taylor—”
She met his gaze. “But I’m paying close attention now.”
Damn. So she was.
He’d been avoiding precisely this for a year now—the possibility that she’d someday catch sight of him in church or the tavern, hold that glance a beat longer than usual, and then . . . remember everything. He couldn’t let that happen. If Miss Kate Taylor, as she existed now, were ever connected with the den of squalor and sin that had served as her cradle, it could destroy everything for her. Her reputation, her livelihood, her happiness.
So he’d stayed away. Not an easy task, when the village was so small and this girl—who wasn’t a girl anymore, but an alluring woman—had her toes in every corner of it.
And then today . . .
A year’s worth of avoidance and intimidation, all shot to hell in one afternoon, thank to that wrongheaded, stupid, goddamned glorious kiss.
“Look at me.”