Lady Rosabella's Ruse - By Ann Lethbridge Page 0,41
heat flooded her face. ‘Wretch. This is no time for jokes.’
‘Well, I just thought I’d mention that once my clothes are off, I will be naked.’
Oh, right. ‘Wait a moment.’
She went into the drawing room and pulled the covers off a couple of chairs. She brought them back to the kitchen. ‘They might be a bit dusty, but you can use one as a towel and the other one as a robe.’ She grabbed the coal scuttle beside the hearth, and the lantern. ‘I’ll get the coal before we lose the last of our light.’ She ran down the stairs, trying not to imagine him removing his garments.
She shovelled coal into the bucket. He’d looked fine in his shirtsleeves this afternoon. Naked, he’d probably look like one of the many statues littering The Grange. ‘Really, Rosabella,’ she muttered, ‘have you no shame? Just because you pretend to be a widow, doesn’t mean you should think like one.’ She picked up the heavy scuttle and staggered back to the stairs.
A white apparition stood at the top. She gave a little squeak.
‘Give me the coal,’ the apparition said, running down to help.
When he entered the light cast by her lantern, he looked more like a mummy than a Greek god.
With a nervous giggle she handed him the bucket and went ahead up the stairs. ‘Thank you,’ she said when they reached the top. ‘That bucket was heavy.’
It didn’t look heavy in his hands; his naked arms were beautifully formed. So were his shoulders. She couldn’t take her eyes off their sculpted curves and the way they flexed as he set the bucket down on the hearth. Her fingers longed to touch the swell of flesh on his upper arm, to see if it was hard or soft. His forearms were huge and dusted with dark hair. By comparison her arms looked like twigs. He was…delicious.
Embarrassed, she turned away. ‘I should hang up my cloak to dry,’ she said, then pressed her lips together at the hoarse sound of her voice as if sand lined her throat. She swallowed hard.
‘Take off your shoes and stockings, too,’ he said. ‘Your feet must be as damp as mine.’
Her head jerked around.
He wasn’t looking at her, he was busy placing lumps of coal on the fire with tongs. There was nothing salacious in his voice, just plain practicality, but her heart was pounding like the hooves of a runaway horse.
When she didn’t answer, he turned his head to look at her. Firelight danced in his eyes and lit his full sensual mouth. Lips that had enslaved her body to his will.
He stood up, hands on hips. The fire outlined his shape. She could…oh, saints above, she could see the outline of his legs where he stood with them wide apart. She forced her gaze to move to his face, not to take stock of the way the sheet clung to his hips, or the bulge between his thighs. But even lifting her gaze wasn’t safe when she encountered his broad chest, or the wide shoulders emerging from the white fabric.
He glared at her. ‘Do you think I would take advantage of you?’
Her stomach did a little dance of hopeful glee. She took a quick breath to still it. ‘I— No, of course not.’
She grabbed her cloak from the chair where she had flung it when she came in and shook out its folds. ‘If we move the chair closer, we can use it as a drying horse.’
‘Good idea,’ he replied, though there was a bit of mockery in his voice. ‘It will make a good place to dry your stockings.’
He was right. Her feet were wet. In her anxiety to search, she really hadn’t noticed the physical discomfort, but now there was no hope to buoy her spirits, the damp was creeping into her bones. It was also creeping cold and chill into her heart, but there was nothing she could do about that. Nothing at all.
She went behind the chair and removed her footwear and then her stockings while he continued building the fire. She hung the stockings over the chair back and put her shoes on the hearth. He glanced around and nodded. ‘I’ll get another chair for my things.’ He dragged two more chairs forwards, making a semicircle around the hearth, and draped his clothes over them. ‘Hmm. Something is missing. Sit down beside the fire. I’ll be back in a moment.’ He picked up the lantern and disappeared.