Seven Wicked Nights (Turner #1.5)

“What do you think, Hob?” She seemed oblivious to Northword’s stare and his memories.

“Well and good, Miss Temple.” The man’s Exmoor accent was as thick as ever, but, as it happened, Northword had not unlearned how to listen to that accent and make sense of it. “Well and good.”

The smudge yielded to him. He held her chin a moment longer than he ought to have. He knew, now, how to conduct an affair—never outside his marriage, he’d kept those vows. “There. As tidy as I can make you.”

“Thank you.” She pulled off her other glove and shoved it in her pocket with the first one and made an even bigger lump to spoil the line of her gown. They did not have between them the safety imposed by the formality of titles. She’d always been Portia to him, never Miss Temple. He’d always been Crispin to her. It was only the direction of her letters that styled him according to his title.

Crispin. There were nights when he lay awake remembering the sound of his name on her lips as she came to pleasure. His body came alive at those moments.

“Will the lavender be all right there?” She pointed at the plants in question. Again, she was talking to Hob. “Or do you think it will be in too much shade? Too late now, of course.”

“It’ll be years before the tree’s big enough for that.” Of course he said avore not before. Remarkable, really, how easily one slid into understanding that accent. Hob leaned a forearm on the shovel. “Thee and me’ll be long gone by then.”

With the toe of her boot, she knocked away a clod of dirt. A smile flashed on her face, and Northword thought of the kind of sex that made lovers laugh. “Perhaps one day relations of mine will stand by this tree.” She used both arms to describe a tree of immense size.

While she did that, his eye was drawn, inexorably, to her bosom, and he felt an absolute dog for it. She remained lush in her curves, more than a good many women, less than others. They’d be as good together as ever. Better. He knew it down to his marrow, that thrill of animal attraction.

She lowered her arms. “They’ll curse whoever planted the tree so close to the lavender.”

“Surely,” he said from the safety of his London drawl, “they’ll wonder what bumblehead planted the lavender so close to the tree.”

Portia laughed, and his heart eased, to be followed immediately by guilt at his reaction. Just once, when he and his wife lay beside each other, her hand on his chest in a moment of perilous intimacy, she’d asked him whether he had ever loved someone else. His denial hadn’t come quickly enough. She never asked again.

“I hope you’re right.” She tapped the ground again with her boot. The view of her ankle damn near brought him low. Was he not a better man than this? Well. No. He wasn’t. She crossed her arms underneath her bosom, and the flesh above her neckline shifted in the most beguiling manner. “Done, then, Hob? Well planted?”

“Aye.” Hob came forward with his bucket and, after a glance at him—was that suspicion in the man’s eyes?—slowly poured the contents around the base of the rowan tree destined to be gigantic in a future that would not include him.

“I should like to know what this tree will look like in a hundred years.” She eyed the tree, but shot him a sideways look, a smile on her lips. “Don’t you?”

He shoved his hands in his pockets. “Strong and tall, I should think.”

“Yes. Yes, my rowan tree will be strong and tall.”

Quite deliberately, he closed his eyes and imagined a hundred-year-old tree, thick trunk, branches spreading over the house and shading this corner of the garden. In a hundred years, the world would be a vastly different place, and yet, there would be this tree, which Portia, the sublimely sexual creature inhabiting his senses, had planted with her own hands in honor of her upcoming marriage. She wanted, she’d told him, to know she’d left something of herself behind at Doyle’s Grange. As if she could help doing that.

When he opened his eyes, the first thing he saw was not Portia, but an auburn-haired woman with a delicious mouth and a ripe figure. He saw a woman with a lover’s mouth and hands. He blinked and forced himself to see her as Portia, his friend. Sister of his friend and a woman he’d allowed no claim to a difference in gender.

In the main, he failed.

Hob backed away from the rowan tree and sent a dark look in his direction. “Don’t worry, Miss, if the sapling looks ill for a bit. Root shock, you know.” He nodded sagely but, to Northword’s eye, his look was tainted with distrust. Hob knew men weren’t to be trusted. “Give her time. Don’t overwater.”

“I shan’t, then.”

“I’ll watch over the tree, Miss. Even after thee’s away.”

“I know you will.” She focused on Hob. He, Northword, might as well not be anywhere near. “Thank you. That would be a great comfort.”