“There’s you,” she repeated. “And you can scarcely bear to share the same air I breathe. I tried to be friendly, when you first arrived in Spindle Cove. That didn’t go over well.”
“Miss Taylor—”
“And it’s not that you’re uninterested in women. I know you’ve had others.”
He blinked, and the small motion made her uneasy in her skin. Amazing. His blink had the same effect as another man pounding his palm with his fist.
“Well, it’s common knowledge,” she said, quietly grinding her toe in the dirt. Digging for courage. “In the village, your…arrangements…are the subject of far too much speculation. Even if I don’t want to hear about them, I do.”
He rose to his feet and began walking toward the road. His massive shoulders were squared, his heavy paces measured. There he went again, walking away. She’d had enough of this. She was tired of shrugging off his rejections, dismissing the wounded feelings with a good-natured laugh.
“Don’t you see?” She rose and waded through the heather, hurrying to catch the border of his long, monumental shadow. “This is exactly what I mean. If I smile in your direction, you turn the other way. If I find a seat toward your end of the room, you decide you’d rather stand. Do I make you itch, Corporal Thorne? Does the scent of my dusting powder make you sneeze? Or is there something in my demeanor that you find loathsome or terrifying?”
“Don’t be absurd.”
“Then admit it. You avoid me.”
“Very well.” He drew to a stop. “I avoid you.”
“Now tell me why.”
He turned to face her, and his ice-blue eyes burned into hers. But he didn’t say a word.
Kate’s breath left her lungs in a sigh, and her shoulders fell. “Come along,” she coaxed. “Say it. It’s all right. After all these years, I think it would be a mercy to hear someone speak the truth. Just be honest.”
In an impulsive move, she reached for his hand and brought it to her face, touching his fingertips to her birthmark. He tried to pull back, but she wouldn’t let him escape. If she had to live with this mark every day, he could bear to touch it just this once.
She stepped closer, pressing her pigment-stained temple to his palm. His hand was cool.
She said, “This is the reason. Isn’t it? The reason you don’t take an interest. The reason no men take an interest.”
“Miss Taylor, I—” His jaw tensed. “No. It isn’t like that.”
“Then what is it?”
No reply.
Her face burned. She wanted to beat at his chest, crack him open. “What is it? For God’s sake, what is it about me you find so intolerable? So wretchedly unbearable you can’t even stand to be in the same room?”
He muttered an oath. “Stop provoking me. You won’t like the answer.”
“I want to hear it anyhow.”
He plunged one hand into her hair, startling a gasp from her lips. Strong fingers curled to cup the back of her head. His eyes searched her face, and every nerve ending in her body crackled with tension. The sinking sun threw a last flare of red-orange light between them, setting the moment ablaze.
“It’s this.”
With a flex of his arm, he pulled her into a kiss.
Want more? Click here to preorder A Lady by Midnight.
The Spindle Cove Series
A Night to Surrender
Once Upon a Winter’s Eve
A Week to be Wicked
A Lady by Midnight (August 28, 2012) Any Duchess Will Do (2013)
The Stud Club Trilogy
One Dance with a Duke
Twice Tempted by a Rogue
Three Nights with a Scoundrel
The Wanton Dairymaid Trilogy
Goddess of the Hunt
Surrender of a Siren
A Lady of Persuasion
The Legend of the Werestag
The Runaway Countess
“Naughty in Nottinghamshire,” Book 1
From Samhain Publishing
Her heart longs for justice, but her body clamors for sin.
Once the darling of high society, Mazie Chetwyn knows firsthand how quickly the rich and powerful turn their backs on the less fortunate. Orphaned, penniless and determined to defy their ruthless whims, she joins forces with a local highwayman who steals from the rich to give to the poor.
Then the pawn broker snitches, and Mazie is captured by the Lord Lieutenant of Nottinghamshire. A man who is far too handsome, far too observant…and surely as corrupt as his father once was.
Sensible, rule-driven Trent Carthwick, twelfth Earl of Radford, is certain the threat of the gallows will prompt the villagers’ beloved Angel of Kindness to reveal the highwayman’s identity. But his bewitching captive volunteers nothing—except a sultry, bewildering kiss.
And so the games begin. Trent feints, Mazie parries. He threatens, she pretends nonchalance. He cajoles, she rebuffs. Thwarted at every turn, Trent probes deep into her one vulnerability—her past. There he finds the leverage he needs and a searing truth that challenges all he believes about right and wrong.
From Chapter One:
SHE HAD BUT ONE CHANCE. She must play it out to perfection.