Elizabeth Boyle (48 page)

She took a deep breath. “Because that is what he does. Adam, Webb is a spy. His father, Lord Dryden, is the head of a special division of the British Foreign Office.”

Adam took a deep breath, his chest rising and then slowly falling, the gravity of the situation washing over him, cooling some of his reckless bravado. “We could leave for London tomorrow. Make your excuses and we’ll be gone in the morning. We can’t stay
here
.”

Lily drew back and laughed as if he’d just made the most amazing jest. Laying her head back down on his chest, she whispered to him. “That would only make the situation worse. No, we need only convince them that we are engaged, happily engaged and nothing more.” She gazed up into his features and said aloud, “Oh, darling, you are so amusing, so droll. But of course you may kiss me. Though just once. You know your passion makes me senseless, makes me consider such unthinkable notions.”

Adam’s alarm faded in the light of this invitation and he obliged her request only too willingly, covering her mouth with his.

As his lips continued to caress hers, she wished that Adam’s kisses evoked in her something akin to the elusive fire that haunted her dreams.

A passion that would consume her.

Unwanted and unbidden, the image of Webb rose up in her mind, and for a moment she wondered what it would be like to be kissed by him. To have his arms entwined around her body, his lips pressing down on hers, his …

As if he suddenly sensed the change in her, a momentary melting in her resolve, Adam pressed his case further, trying to deepen his kiss, but his actions only brought her out of her own foolish musings.

She pulled back from him. “Go back to the house,” she whispered. “Leave me and I’ll take care of this.”

“Do you think that’s wise? Truly I could call him out. I’d only wing him a bit, but that ought to keep him off our trail.”

She shook her head at him. If anything, she needed to keep as much distance as she could between Adam and Webb.

“No. Remember, you promised—no duels. Please, Adam, go inside,” she said, her hands folded across her heart. Raising her voice, she said loudly enough for anyone else to hear, “If you dared such liberties again, I know for a fact I would swoon.”

He stood poised at the edge of the steps, his gaze pleading with her to allow him to handle the situation. She shook her head slightly at his silent request.

His features masked, hiding what she was sure was hurt, and he turned on one heel and strode toward the house, his footsteps grinding on the stones beneath his feet, their unspoken disagreement punctuated by the sound of a heavy oak door slamming shut as her fiancé sought his own peace behind Byrnewood’s stone walls.

Humming to herself, she leisurely strolled down the path back toward the house.

The stillness of the night was broken suddenly by solitary applause and then a man’s hearty laughter.

“Bravo, my lady,” Webb Dryden said, stepping out from behind a tree, blocking her path. “Such a beautiful display of passion and so well performed.”

Lily sidestepped him and continued on. “I don’t know what you are talking about.”

He fell in step beside her. “I mean that kiss. Why, for a moment one would almost believe it to be real.”

She came to a dead halt. “Aren’t you a little old for such puerile antics? I mean, really, spying at your age?”

He folded his arms across his chest. “You seem to have forgotten. That is what I do.”

Cocking her head to one side, Lily sniffed. “Spying on couples engaged in a private moment? The French have a word for men who prefer such one-sided pursuits. Would you care to hear it?”

He looked both scandalized and affronted. “No, I would not. What I want to know is what you think you were doing up there.”

Lily reached out and patted his arm. “I can see tonight must have been a great challenge for your skills in spying,
Mr. Dryden
. As you have already so expertly pointed out, I was kissing my fiancé.”

Smiling at him, she started down the path again, but he caught her by the elbow, holding her in place.

Lily took a deep breath and said nothing.

“I know you are up to something,
Mrs. Copeland
. You are no more engaged to that man than you are to me.”

He still hadn’t released her arm, his grip steady and sure.

She laughed at his assessment. “You can rest assured I’d rather be engaged to a baboon than to you. Why is it so difficult to believe I want to marry someone like Adam?”

It was Webb’s turn to laugh. “Oh, Adam, your passion leaves me senseless,” he mocked. “Did you really think anyone would believe such a pile of nonsensical rubbish?”

At this, Lily’s pride ruffled. She jerked her arm free of his grasp and took a step back from him. “Just because most of your romantic interludes begin with a vulgar exchange of coins, don’t blame me if you can’t recognize true love,” she said, her finger prodding the hard wall of his chest, sending him back two steps.

“True love? Not likely,” he scoffed, closing the space between them. “You might recall,
Mrs. Copeland
, I have seen you in love. I know how your adoring gaze follows a man. How your only thoughts are to be with him. If you truly loved that walking fashion plate, he wouldn’t be shivering in his solitary bed right now, with his feet tucked up to a warming pan and the covers pulled up to his chin.” He pressed closer. “I know what it means for you to be in love with a man. And to what lengths you’ll go to be with him.”

You detestable, arrogant beast
, she wanted to say, but she didn’t trust her mouth to open and not say a whole lot more.

Towering over her, his eyes glittered with wolfish glee as his words implied what he obviously thought.

Five years, ten years, twenty years, it won’t matter, Lily. No matter the time, I’ll always be the one man you truly love.

Worst of all, she suspected her errant thoughts might be right.

She shook her head and pushed away the unthinkable idea. Loving Webb Dryden was akin to courting the plague, insidious and fatal, and the best way to deal with it was to wall up her heart and fortify her resolve. “You really are quite insufferable,” she said. “I don’t have the vaguest notion what you mean.”

“Oh yes you do, Lily. You can’t expect me to believe that kiss up there—” he jerked his thumb toward the temple, “—was anything but your miserable attempt to hide whatever it is you don’t want me or your family to find out.”

He was getting dangerously close to the truth—the truth about the past and the present—neither of which Lily had any intention of discussing.

“I love Adam and I intend to marry him.”

His eyebrows rose in an arrogant response.

“I’m not fifteen anymore, Webb. I am a woman grown, and I won’t squander my affections on rakes and bounders anymore. I want a steady, reliable man. A husband I can trust.” Oh, there was a ring of truth to her words, for unlike anything else she’d said to him, these words were from her heart.

Yes, she’d fallen in love with Webb long ago, and when he’d broken her heart, she’d allowed Thomas Copeland, so like Webb in his charm and masculine confidence, to step into that shattered place, only to pile on his own measure of grief.

“I want a man like Adam in my life,” she whispered, hoping he didn’t hear the bitter pain in her words.

“I don’t believe you, Lily.”

“Please, Webb. Leave me alone. This is no longer a game.”

He held her at arm’s length. She wondered what he saw as his gaze traveled up and down her. The awkward girl of fifteen he’d scorned, or a woman grown? Unwilling to allow him to hurt her again with his mockery, she glanced away.

But when she looked up she saw the real reason Webb Dryden was so dangerous to her plans.

For in his dark blue eyes smoldered a passionate appreciation. He was seeing her anew under the stars and in the crisp cool night air. And Lily knew enough about men to know that he liked what he’d found.

His hands moved under her heavy cloak, and his warm fingers stroked her bare arms.

“Your Adam might dare to hold you like this,” he said, drawing her into his embrace, one arm wrapped indecently around her waist and tugging her hips up against his. His other hand twined beneath her lace cap and into her hair, gently drawing her head back. His lips moved to within a whisper of hers. “But does he know that you like to be kissed right here.” With that his lips brushed against the sensitive spot behind her ear.

How could he have known? “Let go of me,” she said weakly, as his lips continued their teasing exploration of her neck, trailing down the bare column of her throat.

Even as she said it, she didn’t want him to release her. Her body seemed to be melding to the heat of his legs, while his touch scorched through the fabric of her gown and teased her senses with the promise of even hotter passion.

Suddenly her childhood dream of Webb sweeping her into his arms and demanding a kiss was coming true.

“Lily,” he whispered, “a fiancé should make you feel like this.”

Her mouth parted as she started to protest, but then Lily discovered it was difficult to let go of dreams so long held. They overpowered her common sense in their need to be answered.

Webb’s lips captured hers and not only answered her fantasies, but gave them a grounding in reality that even she could never have imagined.

Fierce and hard, his mouth descended upon hers. She couldn’t stop herself from opening up to him, answering him with her own strangled need, which had been bottled up and sealed away for so long.

And even as her secret passion clamored at this unthinkable awakening, Lily realized she knew exactly how to stop Webb Dryden from undermining her plans.

He was, after all, still only a man.

W
ebb suspected there was witchery afoot in Byrnewood’s gardens, or perhaps the full moon rising in the distance cast a different light on Lily. Suddenly she was no longer a sallow-faced, dreary widow.

When she’d tilted her head and looked up at him with her soulful green eyes, he’d forgotten how to breathe. To further still his heart, a stray lock of blonde hair had fallen out from beneath her black lace cap, the tendril curling around her cheek, the soft, enticing color glowing in the meager light.

He told himself later he’d only meant to brush back the wayward strand, but then it had become more. That wary, innocent gaze of hers had asked for him to kiss her, to teach her a lesson about what went on between a man and woman, not that nonsense she’d been play-acting with her gallant blade of a fiancé.

But before he knew it, Lily’s soft lips, innocent and reticent at first, enticed him, then trapped him into a sensuous melting kiss.

Her body, no longer narrow, as he had remembered, suddenly seemed to blossom beneath his hands into a curving bounty of feminine charms—hips that swayed, brushing up against him and teasing him into believing that the two of them weren’t standing in a garden but were lying naked atop a fabulous bed.

Before he realized what was happening or could pull together the wherewithal to break away from this enchanting armful, he found his senses not only being taught a trick or two, but trussed up and trounced as she left him considering unspeakable notions.

Ideas that all involved undressing and seducing Lily.

What the hell was he thinking?

Seduce Lily?

Even as he tried to comprehend the unbelievable notion and to reconcile his imagination to what he knew to be true, she released him from her erotic spell and drew back from his grasp.

A movement akin to being dashed with a bucket of cold, hard reality.

For there before him stood the same, plain little widow whom he’d first met on the path, her rigid stance having replaced that of the supple courtesan who’d wielded her spell on him just moments before.

Then it hit him, as much as it unnerved him—Lily had moved away first. And from the conquering gleam dancing in her bright green eyes and her delicate shrug of disinterest, he knew he’d been found wanting.

“You have a lot to learn about women, Mr. Dryden,” she said, her head held high. “I would have thought a man of your
experience
would have mastered a thing or two in his travels.” She sighed, the sound echoing a sense of unspeakable disappointment across the lawn.

The lady turned and started down the path. A couple of steps away, she paused and thrust her final and most humiliating parry over her shoulder. “You might consider asking Adam his secret if you think to sway me with just your kiss.” With a smug toss of her head, she continued toward the house.

He swallowed his pride and started after her, limping slightly on his injured leg.

She’d gotten to him in more ways than one. But he’d be damned if he’d let some slip of a girl get the best of him, he thought, glancing again at the mocking sway of her hips as she tromped up the path.

He might well have to admit that he’d blundered this so far, but he knew his patience would reward him if only he could find the right tact.

The right inroad. A way to make this haughty little miss falter in place.

He fell in step beside her. “So are you enjoying your visit to England?” he asked, as if they were enjoying nothing more than a simple, companionable stroll in the gardens.

She glanced over at him, her gaze rolling skyward in feigned exasperation, as if he were no more than an insistent child pleading for a new toy.

Webb intended to see that she learned the true meaning of the word
persistence
.

“I’m so glad to hear it,” he said with great enthusiasm. “And I too am finding Byrnewood as intriguing as the last time I was here,” he commented, answering as if she had politely inquired as to his own health and welfare.

Suddenly she halted her double-time march. “Why are you limping?”

“I was hurt recently.”

She swallowed, a frown on her lips. “Was there anyone to take care of you?”

“I got by.”

Her mouth pursed, as if she wanted to ask the details but knew better. “You should take better care of yourself.”