it in the atmosphere that strained between them.
Her gaze dropped to the pistol that she held in her hand, an old-fashioned duelling pistol just like her father’s. It felt too big and heavy, but she held it still and true in its aim at his heart and did not let it waver. Her eyes moved back to his face.
Linwood did not look at the pistol, not even when she pulled back the cock ready to fire or when she moved her finger to rest lightly against the trigger.
‘Linwood.’ She said his name loud and clear and began to walk towards him. ‘Linwood’, again, this time softer, the word almost a caress upon her lips. She walked until there was no more distance between them, until the muzzle of the pistol nosed within the lapels of his jacket to press against the clean white linen of the shirt that covered his heart. And it seemed as she stood there she could feel the beat of his heart vibrate all the way through the length of the pistol, feel the slow steady thud in her hand and her heart.
He whispered a word, one solitary word. ‘Venetia.’ And then he leaned forwards and took her mouth with his. And the kiss changed everything. He changed everything. The pistol was no more. He kissed her and she yielded to him, to the need that had been growing within her since the very first moment they had met. His hands were on her breasts, on her hips, stripping away the barriers between them. Touching her in a way no one else could. Caressing her, kissing her until Venetia could not fight it any longer, until they were naked together, until she was pushing him back flat on to the bed, until they were rolling together in a tumble of limbs and the heat between her thighs was a pulsing inferno of need. She splayed her legs, opening herself to him, needing him, wanting him, straining for what only he could give her.
‘Yes,’ she whispered. ‘Yes’, when all through the years she had said no. Linwood’s eyes, deep and dark and smouldering, stared into hers as he positioned himself between her thighs, the tip of him teasing against her, so tantalisingly close, the moment stretching to an eternity of longing.
‘Francis,’ she whispered his given name, her use of it finally admitting what they were to one another. ‘Francis!’ She cried it out loud, needing him, wanting him to take her and make her his.
She woke with a start, her heart pounding in a frenzy, her blood rushing wild and torrential. Her breath was ragged and fast and loud in the silent darkness of the bedchamber. The dream was still heavy and vivid upon her. It seemed so real, so very real that she craned her neck to stare around her, looking for the man from her dream. But the crack of silver moonlight showed nothing but her own bedchamber and a hearth on which the fire had long since died.
Her breath blew puffs of mist into the night-chilled air, but although beneath the heavy weight of the blankets and covers she was trembling it was not from cold. Quite the reverse. Her body was aflame and hungry with desire. As she shifted her nightdress rasped coarse against her swollen nipples. And between her thighs burned a need frightening in its strength. A throbbing. An ache. A yearning for the touch of a man with a handsome face, unsmiling, dangerous, with dark, dark eyes that spoke to her soul.
She touched where he would have, sliding a trembling hand between her legs, to the place that was slick and wet with desire. ‘Francis,’ she whispered as her finger touched, and her body’s response was swift and unexpected. She gasped aloud, her body arching and exploding with a shimmering sunburst of sensation that took her beyond the curtain-dimmed loneliness of her bedchamber, soaring high to a place she did not know.
Her heart was racing when she returned to her body. The haze of desire cleared, leaving her with a cold, clear realisation. She rolled onto her side and hugged her arms around her, feeling guilty and ashamed and more alone than ever, because the boundaries between pretence and reality were blurred, and of that which was happening between her and Linwood she no longer knew what was play-acting and what was not. The man she was coming to know was not the one she had expected to find. To