A Measured Risk (5 page)

Yet she wore this unflattering pendant even after his death. It spoke, more than words, of her need to belong to someone.

He should walk away. Leave right this moment. The last thing he wanted was to be needed—by anyone. But her large, dark blue eyes, with their long, lush lashes, clung to his. She looked so…lost.

Damn.

He released the locket. “You’re running away.”

Her eyes widened and she flinched a little but then her expression closed off. She rolled one shoulder up, then dropped it. “Yes, I see how you would think that but you cannot understand. I loved horses. I spent most of my time growing up on the duke’s breeding farm.”

The duke? Wait, she was Saxby’s chit.
The Duke
. God, the way she’d said the word. As if her father were someone totally disconnected from her. Maybe even supernatural. The echo of her words produced a dangerous tugging on his sympathies.

Leave. Pat her on the head, offer some platitudes and leave. This isn’t your responsibility.

But he
liked
her. Over the past days, he’d learnt so much about her, just from watching her and the limited conversations her reserve around others had permitted. She was intelligent, bookish…far too bookish. Yet she was not a bluestocking bent on meddling in politics. She appeared to have a true love for the philosophers and history she studied. Certainly more love than she had for the company of other people. Such cool reserve, such cerebral focus, contrasted with her sensual appearance, and the fire that smouldered in her dark blue eyes, fascinated him.

And his life lately had been so deadly dull. He’d looked forward to the distraction of seducing her. But to risk this kind of complication, this kind of evoking of his emotions…? No, the distraction was definitely not worth that.

She spoke again. “Riding used to be one of my treasured joys. It is such a rare, solitary pleasure. It seems I should be able to overcome such a fear on my own…but so far I can’t.”

Beneath her soft tones, her desperation sounded like a sharp edge. It brought to mind memories of soldiers broken down by the horrors of battle. Men who had once been strong and had lost their faith in life and in themselves. The same had happened to her. His throat burnt. He wanted to take her into his arms and hold her, not with lust but with reassurance and comfort. This was fast becoming too deep, too murky.

Leave. This is your last chance. She needs someone too much.

Women of his class could prove more bother than they were worth in the end. Did he really want to open himself up to that kind of turmoil again? No, he did not.

Yet he couldn’t walk away. Couldn’t just leave the damn thing alone. He opened his mouth and damned himself. “You can’t overcome your fears because you are not in control of yourself. Not on the inside, where it matters.”

Her lush, wine-red mouth fell open and her eyes sparked with indignation. “That’s a terribly presumptuous thing for you to say.”

“Maybe if I’d made the observation without any evidence.”

Her black brows drew together tightly, creating a vertical line above the bridge of her small, straight nose. “What do you mean?”

“Earlier, alone here with me, a self-controlled woman would’ve either slapped my face and left—I would never have detained you—or she would have taken responsibility for what she wanted and submitted. But you couldn’t make a decision one way or the other because you were at war with yourself.”

Her gaze hardened to ice. He could have sworn the temperature in the chamber had dropped several degrees.

“Are you quite done?” Underneath her frosty tones, her voice shook.

Damnation, he wished he
could
be done. He’d find a card game or get half-dead drunk or find a less complex woman. Anything to pass the evening hours in a mind-numbed state. However, something about the sad shadows beneath her defiant sloe eyes demanded that he press on and face her with the truth.

“No, I am not done.” He gave her a steady stare, waiting until she dropped her eyes and bit her lip. “I should like to warn you not to toy with men in the future—at least not until you understand what you want from the encounter.”

Because some other bastard would have pressed the issue. Perhaps even have forced her.

She jerked her gaze back to his. “Now, wait just a moment…” She crossed her arms over her generous breasts, held herself rigid. “You followed me here, not the other way around.”

Her defiance seemed to crackle in the air between them. Why must his cock react by going hard as iron? He didn’t want this type of complex association in his life. He would tell the girl the truth—for her own good—then he would put her out of his mind. Out of his life.

“That’s your primary problem,” he said coolly. “You aren’t honest with yourself. You don’t understand yourself. And you don’t understand what you want from a man.”

Her whole body seemed to go straight and painfully stiff. Her jaw tensed. She held her hand up between them. “I don’t have to listen to this…this
tripe
. From a stranger, no less.”

She made to walk past him, her breast brushing his arm, soft and warm.

A muscle tightened in his jaw. No, she had opened this up. She’d listen to the end. He blocked her exit and grasped her firmly by the shoulders. She raised an open mouthed expression to him but her eyes went smoky and dark.

Dark with desire.

A sense of power surged through him. He craved to pull her closer, to crush her soft body against his until she pleaded for him never to release her.

“Please…let me go.” Her voice resonated with confusion, outrage and yearning all at once and her full bottom lip, lush and burgundy, quivered. Only by exercising the full extent of his self-control did he resist bending to taste her mouth again.

“No, you will listen. To be brave, you need inner strength. In order to have inner strength, you must understand yourself. The first thing you must understand is that, for a woman like you, there can be strength in submission. The strength you need to overcome your fears.”

She flashed him a sidelong look—the very kind that had first made him pause and take a second glance at the quiet, somewhat awkward widow. The very kind she had tormented him with ever since. Deep and direct, it gave a tantalising glimpse of her mysteries. It had been his first warning that she would be trouble. But the mystery of her had been too damned beguiling to resist.

Not to mention that broad, rounded arse…

“To submit is to be weak. Everyone knows that,” she said, her voice calmer now.

He loosened his hold, letting his fingertips caress her shoulders and watching the responsive shudder pass through her body. She was his to command—he had only to press his advantage. The knowing burnt through him like fire. His cock went so hard that it hurt. But he didn’t want the complications she would bring.

“On the face of it, yes, that is how it seems…but it is not the way it is.”

Her shoulders relaxed under his touch even as her mouth twisted in a sceptical moue. “Explain that to me, then.”

“It is something that cannot be explained in intellectual terms. It has to be experienced and felt at a deep level.”

“And you say I shall never overcome my fear of horses until I experience and feel this myself?”

“Yes, that’s exactly what I am saying. You will never overcome your fears and yourself unless you learn to surrender to the process of life.”

* * * *

Resentment burnt through Anne. Really, the man didn’t know when to stop. She drew herself up straight, squaring her shoulders. “I am not afraid of life—just horses.”

“You’re not really in control of your life. Your fear of life controls you. It did even before the accident.”

“What a preposterous thing to say. You don’t know me.”

“Yes, that’s the point, isn’t it? You have kept yourself hidden away here in the country, else I should have met you, pursued you, come to know you. Perhaps we would have been lovers.”

His arrogance made her mouth drop open. She quickly re-gathered her wits. “Where on earth do you get such a notion? I was a married woman.”

“Married, yes—but not happily.”

“Certainly not unhappily. I was Lady Cranfield and I managed this estate. People depended on me.”

“But you didn’t respect Cranfield and he didn’t understand you. You resented him for not trying.”

Her heart began to beat rapidly. It simply wasn’t true. Ruel did not know. She
had
to refute him. “Like most marriages of our class, we had our own lives. He preferred Mayfair and I preferred the country. But we understood this about each other and we respected each other. It was an amicable marriage.”

“Some truths are harder to face than others.”

Sympathy glinted in his eyes. If only he would not use such understanding tones, then she could hate him for saying such things. Because the things he was saying simply weren’t true. But how to make him understand?

“William was a dear person. I—”

He laughed softly. “As I said, your primary problem is that you are not honest with yourself. Nor do you trust yourself. In fact—”

Anger burnt in her throat. She threw up a hand between them. “Do you know?”

His eyes widened a fraction, then warmed with humour. Another, hotter wave of resentment smouldered through her.

“Know what?” he asked.

“I don’t think it’s possible for me to dislike you more than I already do. I don’t enjoy negative emotions, so would you please let me pass so I can leave before I begin to truly hate you?”

Chapter Three

Jon studied Anne’s sparkling, deep blue eyes. Her emotion seemed to spark between them, a seething mix of ire, frustrated sexuality and something he couldn’t quite place. He moved out of her way.

She seemed frozen, standing there glaring at him. He motioned past his body and towards the door. “You were in a hurry to leave, Lady Cranfield.”

She flushed. Her shoulders rose and fell. Then she swept by him in a rustle of silk skirts and crinkling, starched linen petticoats, leaving in her wake a scent of rose and lavender mingled with an under-note of something spicy and uniquely her.

The sensual aroma wafted over him like a caress. It sent a stab of renewed desire straight to his balls.

She walked towards the door, bearing herself with a calm dignity. He watched the subtle sway of her fetching arse moving beneath the dark purple silk. By damn, she was a prime article.

A vision burnt into his mind. Of her beneath him, her soft thighs pinned between his. Her honeyed body bared to his view and sweetly submissive. His heart raced and his hands trembled with the desire to feel her delicate wrists locked in his grip while he bound her with silk rope.

God.

The slam of study door brought him out of his fantasy.

He took a deep breath. Shaken, he walked over to the hearth and leant down to light a cheroot. Then he returned to sit at Richard’s massive mahogany desk, propped his boots on the polished desktop and willed the ritual of smoking to smooth his senses.

When he’d first come in here, he’d been anticipating an easy conquest, the start of a short, uncomplicated
affaire
.

How stupid and blind a man’s lust could make him. Well, he certainly saw things clearly now. What Lady Cranfield wanted from him—even if she was not entirely certain of it herself—wasn’t something he wanted to give. She didn’t simply want a brief
affaire
. She wanted his strength, his protection. She wanted not only someone to dominate her sexually but someone to hold her and cosset her when her fears and memories and dreams became too much.

She didn’t just want these things—she needed them.

He hooked a finger into his cravat and gave a sharp tug but he still couldn’t seem to get any breathing space.

Soulless bastard that he was, he might have still seduced her. Had her a few times until the novelty began to pall. Except that the sad, sincere shadows in her eyes had filled him with an uncharacteristic sense of protectiveness—an innate demand that he stand between her and all sources of hurt and danger.

Even himself.

He really had no business entangling himself in such an emotional liaison. When he returned to Mayfair in the spring, he would be making public his engagement to Lady Maria Waterbury, a baronet’s widow.

She was the most honest woman he knew. She had her own wealth and interests and he had no intention of interfering with that. She would never try to manipulate him or control their marriage. She wanted one thing from him and he from her. Legitimate children—and attractive ones at that. She was the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen…at least until recently.