keep you anymore this afternoon. I’ll just continue to mark the boxes and we can get started in the morning.”
He expected her to flee, but she stood uncertainly, steepling her long fingers in front of her. “You do understand how difficult this is for me, don’t you?” she asked quietly.
“I think I do. The whole situation is nothing I’m accustomed to either. I expect we’ll find our way. I promise I will do nothing that you do not wish.” He reached his left hand out. “I’ll take that kiss now, if you still want to give it. To seal the deal.”
She hesitated, then placed her right hand in his. Took a step forward. Lifted her face. She did not close her eyes or look anything like a fish. Damn, but there were tears again, threatening to spill down her cheeks.
“No tears. I forbid them.”
“I-I can’t help it.”
Reyn felt a compulsion to touch his tongue to her skin, to taste the salt and sadness. She was a woman who had almost everything—a stunning stately home, occupation, a husband who loved her. But Reyn might be able to give her the one thing she didn’t have, and the burden upon him to do it with care was nearly overwhelming. He felt he owed her something, and wasn’t even sure why.
He didn’t think it was just the money the earl had already given him, or the comfort it had provided for his sister Ginny. Maris Kelby had pulled him into her orbit even while she tried to repel him.
She wasn’t any kind of siren. Reyn wasn’t swept away by her appearance, although she was attractive in her own quiet way, especially now that she was dressed properly. He’d like to remove that dress, loosen her hair from its prison of hairpins, but all that would come in time. It was much too soon, but it was time to kiss her. He dropped the charcoal from his right hand where it splintered on the floor, then wiped his hand on his breeches. He would try not to touch her with it, though he wasn’t sure that was possible.
Angling his mouth over hers, he gave the hand he still held a reassuring squeeze.
She squeezed back.
The kiss was velvet and lush moisture. Her tongue turned from tentative to determined, as though she was deconstructing the art of his kiss and making it her own. Gone was the uncertainty and the shyness and, he hoped, the tears. One couldn’t cry when one experienced a surge of lust so powerful it nearly rocked one off one’s feet, could one?
But perhaps he was alone in that surge, although he didn’t think so. Her breasts brushed against his chest as he brought her closer, and he could swear he felt her nipples harden against him. He could find out for sure, but he didn’t want to frighten her off, not when she was so languid in his arms, touching the back of his neck with those long white fingers. Reyn felt a shiver down his spine that had nothing to do with the chill of the room.
There were servants on the other side of the wall. But it wasn’t likely they were lounging about in their rooms in the afternoon. There was plenty of work to be done in a house that size . . . from before dawn to well after nightfall. And he could spend all that time in the coming days with Maris Kelby at the other end of the attic. Alone, undisturbed. Tangled before the fire, her ivory skin sheened in sunlight and dew.
Hang the boxes and the ledgers and the pens. The only things Reyn wanted to discover and catalogue were the secrets of Maris’s body.
She made a slight noise—a satisfied sound so quiet he could barely hear it, but he felt it inside him. She was unraveling and quite frankly, Reyn had very little to do with it. He felt so witless he had forgotten to use his tried-and-true seduction methods and his kiss was just as eager and unpracticed as a schoolboy’s. She tasted so damn good and felt even better, her height perfect for his, touching him in all the right places. He fisted his charcoal-stained hand on the small of her back and held her close, mentally stripping them both so they were skin to skin . . . in his mind, at least. Her nipples would be brown against her creamy skin, the color of cocoa. Small? Large? He didn’t