Marrying Winterborne (The Ravenels #2) - Lisa Kleypas Page 0,60

she was coming down with a cold, until we realized she was practicing the Welsh alphabet.”

Ordinarily Rhys would have made some sarcastic retort, but he’d barely noticed the gibe. His chest had gone tight with pleasure.

“She doesn’t have to do that,” he muttered.

“Helen wants to please you,” Devon said. “It’s her nature. Which leads to something I want to make clear: Helen is like a younger sister to me. And although I’m obviously the last man alive who should lecture anyone about propriety, I expect you to behave like an altar boy with her for the next few days.”

Rhys gave him a surly glance. “I was an altar boy, and I can tell you that reports of their virtue are highly exaggerated.”

With a reluctant grin, Devon turned and headed back toward the main hall.

Rhys went to find Helen. Since it wouldn’t do to alarm her by running and leaping on her like a madman, he forced himself to walk at a measured pace. Exiting the back of the house through the conservatory, he crossed a section of neatly mown lawn.

A sinuous graveled path led past sweeps of winter-flowering shrubs, and ancient stone walls covered with climbing vines that twisted together like lace. The estate gardens were clean and spare, the frosted ground biding its time until spring came to soften it. A breeze scented of peat smoke and sedge reminded him of the vale where he had lived in early childhood until his family had moved to London. Not that Llanberris, with its stony ground and abundant tarns, was anything like these manicured surroundings. But there was a particular smell of a place with lakes and rain, and Hampshire had it.

As he approached the row of four glasshouses, he saw movement in the first one, a slim black-clad shape gliding past frosted panes. His heart jolted, and a flush heated his face despite the biting February air. He didn’t know what he expected, or why he was as nervous as a lad with his first sweetheart. Not long ago, he would have scoffed at the suggestion that an unworldly young woman, a girl, could reduce him to this state.

He used one knuckle to rap gently on a glass pane. Carefully he ascended a stone step, let himself into the building, and closed the door.

Rhys had never been inside the glasshouse before. Helen had described it to him in detail while he had stayed at Eversby Priory, but he’d been encumbered by crutches and a leg cast. He had regretted not being able to walk out to see it, having understood how important it was to her.

The indoor climate was moist, warm, loamy. It seemed a world away from England, a glass palace filled with brilliant color and exotic shapes. He was greeted with the pungency of potting soil and dense greenery, and thin sharp orchid perfumes, and a pervasive smell of vanilla. His wondering gaze traveled over row upon row of tall plants, tables of orchids in pots and jars, orchid vines growing over the walls and curling upward toward a glittering glass firmament.

A slender figure emerged from behind an inflorescence of snow-white blooms. Helen’s crystalline eyes caught the light, and her pretty lips rounded like a tea rose as she said his name in soundless bewilderment. She moved toward him, stumbling a little as she came around the table too fast. The hint of clumsiness, her obvious haste, electrified him. She had missed him. She had wanted him, too.

Reaching her in three swift strides, Rhys caught her up against him so tightly that her toes left the floor. Momentum turned them in a half-circle. Letting her back down, he dove his face into the warm fragrant skin of her neck and breathed her, absorbed her.

“Cariad,” he said huskily, “that was the first time I’ve ever seen you move with less than swanlike grace.”

She gave an unsteady laugh. “You surprised me.” Her warm, delicate hands came to the cold sides of his face. “You’re here,” she said, as if trying to make herself believe it.

Breathing unevenly, Rhys nuzzled her, amazed by the silkiness of her skin and hair, the tenderness of her flesh. Something like elation, only stronger, was pouring into his veins, intoxicating him. “I could eat you,” he muttered, pushing past her caressing hands to find her lips, feeling her mouth with his. Helen responded eagerly, her fingers sliding into his hair and shaping against his skull.

He murmured rough-soft endearments between kisses, while Helen clung to him. Her