The spring night closed around her, familiar yet, tonight, faintly exotic, spiced with the subtle thrill of impending adventure. She often walked in the evening; no one would miss her until morning, and she would be back long before then.
Her expectations of the coming hours wound her nerves tight, sent excitement sliding down her veins. Normally she walked simply to ease the energy pent up inside her; tonight, she turned out of the gate accepting that when she returned, she might well be exhausted.
She didn’t truly know what to expect, not specifically. She didn’t even know whether she would enjoy the exercise, but she wanted to find out.
With Jack Warnefleet, she could. With him she would finally learn about those aspects of herself, the sensual, elementally female aspects that she’d thought would remain forever untried, unbroached.
She’d parted from him when they’d reached the rectory; he’d gone to talk with James while she’d turned her attention to the numerous household matters awaiting her decree. Countless times over the ensuing hours, she’d asked herself whether she was mad, or if it was a case of her reckless, hedonistic streak, the one her stepmother so deplored, overcoming her good sense.
Viewing the question dispassionately, she rather thought the latter was indeed true. But what she couldn’t quite fathom was why, after all these years of quiet, even docile existence, it had taken Jack Warnefleet less than twenty-four hours to bring that long-buried part of her not just back to her surface, but back in full strength.
Back in mature strength; she felt the impulse to act, to seize and wrest from life what she wanted, far more powerfully than she had before, seven and more long years ago.
She crossed the stream at the stone bridge, then left the road. Climbing over a stile, she unerringly followed the path through the lower me
adow and up the gentle hill that commanded the upper reaches of the valley; built high on stilts, the folly sat within a small wood just below the crown. From the valley, the folly was all but invisible, but from the single room high in the canopies, the views were extensive, an arcadian panorama of quiet valley and distantly burbling stream, of woods and orchards and green pastures.
The folly belonged to the manor; it was on manor lands, but no one from there or anywhere else visited any longer. She’d discovered it within a month of coming to Avening, on one of her first nighttime walks. It had fallen into disrepair, so she’d claimed it as her place, something no one from either the manor or the rectory had thought odd, or had questioned. She’d spent her own money to have the shingles repaired and the leaks in the roof patched, the windows reset and the floor restored. Howlett had volunteered furniture from the manor’s attics. Connimore had taken to sending up two maids every few weeks to dust and sweep, while she had brought what comforts she wished—a rug, books, cushions, and more—from the rectory.
Passing into the cooler, denser shadows of the trees surrounding the folly, she looked ahead, senses sharpening, anticipation digging in its spurs.
He would have come via the other path, the one that led directly from the manor. Both paths cut through the trees to converge before the folly; as she stepped out from the shadows into the small clearing, she noted the door at the top of the wooden stairs was open, propped wide.
No candle glowed, no shadow stirred behind the wide windows of the room high above, but she was the only one who ever came this way; he was already there, waiting.
She climbed the stairs; they still creaked, an oddly comforting sound. The door at the top opened directly into the single room that was the folly; she went in, and, through the gloom, saw him. Waiting, as she’d supposed.
He was sitting in one of the cane armchairs, shoulders wide against the chair’s broad back, one booted ankle balanced on his knee, elbow on the chair arm, jaw resting on his fist, his eyes fixed on the doorway, on her.
The fine day had mellowed to a mild evening; he’d doffed his coat and opened his waistcoat. The white of his shirt drew what little light remained, drew her eye, held it.
Stationary, seated in such an elementally masculine pose, he exuded an even more powerful aura of harnessed strength, as if without the distraction of his fluid, graceful movements, the truth shone more clearly.
For a moment, she considered the picture he made, took note, then, reaching behind her, closed the door.
He watched her, unmoving, yet she sensed the tightening of the rein under which he held himself, sensed, too, his careful gauging of her. For this moment, the initiative was hers; wisdom urged her to grasp it.
Thanks to the wide windows that filled the folly’s front wall, framing the views, there was light enough to see by. Crossing to the dresser that stood along one wall, she let her shawl slide from her shoulders, caught it, folded it, and laid it down.
She walked past the wide daybed, set before the windows, its thick mattress draped with colorful throws, the cushions strewn upon it bright and inviting. One of the bank of windows was open; pushing it wide, she looked out, breathed in. The scents of the wood laced with apple blossom from the orchards slid through her.
“About this.” Her voice was even, steady. Turning, through the gloom she met his gaze. “Before we go further, I want to make one point clear.”
Seeing him sitting there, waiting for her, confident, arrogant even though he hid it well, she’d realized just how much of a danger he was—could be—to her, and what form that danger might take. He was the personification of a gentleman of her class; no matter she didn’t imagine he intended it, she wasn’t going to fall victim to one such. Not again. Never again.
“I want you to know—and to agree—that no matter what passes between us, what happens here or elsewhere, that this will be nothing more than a limited liaison.” Leaving the windows, she drifted, her gaze on him as she circled the room toward him. “Whatever else might come to be, this, between us, is only a temporary relationship, one that will last as long as we both wish, but that ultimately will fade and be no more.”
She halted beside the chair, looked down through the shadows into his eyes. “I want it understood that in even beginning this, we both recognize it will end, and with no repercussions. No obligation, no implied understanding, no expectations of anything.”
His eyes held hers. “The moment, and nothing more?”
“Precisely.” She held his gaze for two heartbeats longer. “That’s my price. Are you willing to meet it?”
He rose, in one fluid movement came to his feet a handbreadth away.
She suddenly found herself looking up, feeling slight.
Jack looked down into her face, acutely aware of the tug of desire, the compulsion she so easily evoked just by being in the same room, by being within arm’s reach. Her price was a rake’s dream; no repercussions guaranteed. A clean start, and a clean end; if asked to state his own preferred rules of engagement, he would have said the same.