He felt his face harden. “He wasn’t intending
to offer succor—if he had, he wouldn’t have left as he did.” He glanced from the wrecked phaeton to where the carriage had pulled up. “And you’re right on the other score, too—the carriage driver deliberately ran the phaeton off the road.”
That was what she’d been wanting to hear, yet he was instantly aware of the shiver that slithered through her, even though she turned away to hide it. Before he’d thought, he’d taken a step toward her. Self-preservation reared its head and halted him; he knew better than to touch, to reach for her and draw her into his arms…but he wanted to.
The realization made him inwardly frown. He’d never met a female more prickly and independent than Boadicea, more likely to spurn any comfort he might offer, because to offer meant he’d seen her weakness…wryly, he realized he understood her perfectly, he just hadn’t previously met a female who thought that way.
“Come.” He had to stop himself from taking her elbow, converting the instinctive movement into a wave down the road. “I’ll walk you back to the rectory.”
She hesitated, then started walking. After a moment, her head rose. “You don’t need to. I’m hardly likely to get lost.”
“Nevertheless.” He signaled to the waiting stable lads; they saw and headed for the phaeton. “Aside from all else, I should call on James and let him know I’m back.”
“I’ll be certain to tell him.”
“It wouldn’t be the same.”
He waited, but she made no further protest. A dark flash of her eyes when they reached the gap in the hedge and she led him through told him she knew he would trump any argument she made.
Such a small victory, yet it still tasted sweet.
Beyond the gap, the field rolled down to a dip, then the land gently rose to the knoll on which the old oak tree stood. Once past the hedge, Clarice looked around. Eventually she spied her hat hanging from the branches of a tree along the hedge line; without comment, she detoured to fetch it.
Warnefleet followed, also without comment.
Clarice tramped through the long grass, supremely conscious that her senses remained focused a few feet behind her, on the large, lean, athletic body, broad-shouldered and sleekly muscled, trailing her. In her mind’s eye, she could readily conjure not just his face, all hard angles and planes with that edge of ruthlessness peculiar to certain males of her own class, not just his body, long limbs strong, every movement both graceful and controlled, but even more telling—more evocative, more exciting—the aura that clung like a cloak about him, redolent of danger, exotic, illicit, and unnervingly tempting. Even more unsettling, and more puzzling, was a feeling that he saw her—the real her—clearly, yet found nothing in the sight to send him running.
None of that, however, explained her physical response, the sudden tension that gripped her, that tightened her nerves, the anticipation that stretched them—and left them taut when he didn’t touch her.
For her, susceptibility of that sort was unprecedented; she’d heard of such affliction, seen other ladies fall victim, but not her. Never her.
Such a reaction was definitely not her style.
Then again, he wasn’t the usual run of arrogant male. Not that she was fool enough to think him unarrogant, simply that she’d not met his like before.
Reaching the tree, she stopped and stared up at her hat. It dangled above her head, swinging gently in the breeze. She stretched up, but it was out of her reach. She jumped, but missed; she stretched as far as she could…and was still an inch short.
From over her head, a hand appeared and plucked the hat from the branch.
Her breath caught; she hadn’t known he was so close.
She whirled. Her boots tangled in the long grass, and she fell.
Directly into him.
He caught her, steadied her breast to chest against him.
Her lungs seized; she looked up on a strangled gasp.
Mortification should have slain her, except there was no room for it in her mind. Sensation welled and swamped her, trapped her wits in a web of new experience, of novel feelings.
She’d been held in men’s arms before, but it had never been like this. Never had the chest against which her breasts were pressed been so hard, never had the arm around her been so steely. Never had large hands held her so gently, or so securely. Never had her senses sighed, as if she’d found heaven.
Never had her pulse sped up, never had her skin shot with heat.
She stared into his eyes, green and gold melded into a true hazel, framed by long lashes and heavy lids, and sensed…strength. A strength as powerful as her own, not simply a strength of muscle and bone, but of mind and determination. A strength not only on the physical plane, but manifest in other ways, in other arenas….
The direction of her thoughts shocked her.