Jack’s stomach muscles clenched. He shook his head slowly and answered truthfully, “No. I didn’t see him.” What was it that made him so easy to recognize? The wig covered his hair and he hadn’t even been limping.

He watched as Kit glanced around again. What was her interest in Lord Hendon? Had she heard the descriptions and been tantalized? Jack hid a smirk. If that was so, it might make telling her the truth later much easier. Taking her arm, he drew her to her feet. “Come on. I’ve got Delia.”

They walked through the extensive shrubbery, Jack’s hand on Kit’s elbow. He didn’t release her hands-he didn’t fancy finding out what retribution she might visit on him if she had the chance.

Kit walked beside him, her insides in a most peculiar knot. The hold on her arm was proprietory, a feeling intensified by the fact that her hands were still tied. She didn’t bother asking to be untied. He’d do it if he wished, and she wasn’t going to give him the joy of refusing her.

Delia was tethered to a branch just beyond the last hedge. Jack walked Kit to the mare’s side, then, to her relief, stepped behind her and untied her hands.

Her relief was short-lived. He untied only one hand, then brought both in front of her and lashed them together again.

“What on earth…?” Kit’s incredulous protest hung in the dark.

“You can’t ride with your hands tied behind you.”

“I can’t ride with my hands tied, period.”

Jack’s lips quirked. “You didn’t think I was going to put you on Delia and let you loose, did you?”

Kit swallowed. She hadn’t thought that, no. But she wasn’t at all sure what he was going to do.

“If I did,” Jack continued, untying Delia’s reins, “you’d be back at the ball as fast as Delia can go.”

Kit could hardly deny that; she kept silent.

Jack pulled off his wig and stuffed it in the saddle pocket. “Up you go.” The mare’s reins in his hand, he lifted Kit up.

Kit swung her leg over and settled, then realized the stirrups had been lengthened. She stared at Jack. “We can’t both ride-she’ll never handle the weight.”

“She will. We won’t get above a canter, if that. Shift forward.”

For an instant, Kit stared mutinously at him, but when he planted his foot in the stirrup, she realized that if she didn’t do as he said, she’d be squashed. Slammed from behind-again. Even so, although she moved forward until the pommel pressed into her belly, it was a tight fit. Delia sidled but accepted them both. Jack, with his far greater weight, sank into the saddle seat proper and settled his feet in the stirrups. He lifted her, then resettled her against him, a more comfortable position but one every bit as unnerving as she’d feared.

Jack touched the mare’s sides and Delia set off. Kit was too fine a rider for him to risk letting her have her feet in the stirrups. Which meant he’d have to endure her curves, riding in front of him, moving against him with every stride the mare took.

Within minutes, his patience was under threat. His jaw ached, a dull echo of the far more potent ache throbbing in his loins. The rubbing rhythm of Kit’s firm bottom transformed mere arousal to rock-hard rigidity and reduced his resolution to almost nothing. Jack gritted his teeth harder; there was nothing else he could do. She was an itch he couldn’t yet scratch.

Which, for a confirmed rake, was an agonizingly painful predicament.

Chapter 15

In the dark, Kit blushed and wished her mask was still on. With every step Delia took, the rigid column of Jack’s manhood pressed into her back. No thought of teasing him entered her head. Instead, she fervently prayed he wouldn’t think of teasing her. In a fever of irritation at an opportunity lost-when would she get a chance to size up Lord Hendon again?-compounded by the inevitable effect of Jack so close and her consequent fear of what might transpire, Kit fidgeted, wriggled, and squirmed in a hopeless endeavor to move farther away from him.

“Damn it, woman, stay still!”

Jack’s growl was every bit as intimidating as the pressure in her back. Kit froze, but within seconds she was uncomfortable again. She had to get her mind off the physical plane. “Where are we going?” They were skirting Marchmont Hall in a northwesterly direction; they could be headed anywhere.

“Cranmer.”

“Oh.”

Jack frowned. Was that disappointment he heard in her husky voice? Perhaps he should change his plans and take her to the cottage instead. Was she ready to give over her games and take him on? The last question dampened his ardor. Despite her relative calm, he didn’t think she was particularly pleased at being removed from the ball. A few more nights would dim the memory sufficiently. Two nights, to be precise.

Kit tried to stay still, but her mind wouldn’t let go of the fascinating subject of Jack’s anatomy. She wondered if Lord Hendon was better equipped and wished the woman in the shrubbery had been more explicit. Her own experience in the matter was all but nonexistent. But the insistent pressure in the small of her back provoked the most intense speculation.

Luckily for her peace of mind, recollection of Lord Hendon, that unattained object of her daringly scandalous escapade, rekindled her ire. Her brilliantly conceived and faultlessly executed plan to gain firsthand knowledge of his elusive lordship was ending in ignominious retreat, before her quarry had even been sighted. The thought lowered Kit’s spirits dramatically. For a full mile, she sat engulfed in a mood perilously close to a petulant sulk.

Jack was taking her home. Gratitude was not the predominant emotion coursing through her veins. What right had he to interfere?

Abruptly, Kit sat bolt upright. No matter what rationale he gave, Jack had no right to meddle in her affairs. Yet here she was, being taken home like a wayward child who’d been caught watching the adults at play. And she’d let him! What was the matter with her? She’d never let anyone, even Spencer, treat her with such high-handedness.

“You really are an arrogant swine!” she exclaimed.

Jerked from salacious dreams, Jack didn’t trust his ears. “I beg your pardon?”

“You heard me. If you had any real concern for my welfare, you’d turn Delia around this instant and take me back to the ball. Only now it’s too late,” Kit ended lamely. “There won’t be enough time before the unmasking.”

“Time for what?” Jack was puzzled. If she hadn’t gone to the ball for a lark, what possible reason could she have?

“I wanted to meet someone-to see what he’s like-but you kidnapped me before I got the chance!”

The aggrieved note in Kit’s voice was genuine enough to touch a chord of sympathy. And awaken Jack’s curiosity.

“You were waiting for a man? Who?”

Beneath her breath, Kit swore. Damn! How had that slipped out?

Despite her surge of temper-assisted courage, Kit hadn’t lost her wits. “Never mind-no one you’d know.”

“Try me.”

Kit’s senses pricked. Jack’s deep voice was rapidly developing that tone of command she found particularly difficult to resist. “I assure you he’s someone with whom you’re definitely not on a first-name basis.”

Jack’s attention had focused dramatically. What man had Kit been waiting for and, more importantly, why? What reason could a woman of her ilk have for looking over a man incognito? The answer was so glaringly obvious that Jack wondered why he hadn’t thought of it the instant he’d laid eyes on her in the ballroom. Kit, more than twenty if experience was any guide, had recently returned from London, where doubtless her life had been rather fuller. Particularly with respect to male company. She had no lover at present-a fact he’d bet his entire estate on-and was on the lookout for a local candidate. Obviously, she had someone in mind. Someone other than himself.

Then her preoccupation in the shrubbery flooded his mind with a radiant light. “You were waiting for Lord Hendon.”

At the bald statement, Kit pulled a horrendous face. “What if I was? It’s no concern of yours.”

Hysterical laughter bubbled behind Jack’s lips; manfully, he swallowed it. Christ-this mission was descending into farce! Should he tell her? What if she didn’t believe him? A strong possibility, he had to admit, and one he couldn’t readily overcome.Convincing her might jeopardize his mission. Telling her might jeopardize his mission. Hell! He was going to have to convince her he was a better lover than his reputation made him out to be.

A sudden vision of what his fate might have been, if he hadn’t been previously acquainted with Kit and had remained at the ball, threatened his composure. Reappearing in North Norfolk as himself looked set to be even more dangerous than assuming the guise of a smugglers’ leader. The local ladies were stalking him with a venegance-on both sides of the blanket. He could have ended with Kit as his mistress and Lady Marchmont’s drab protégé as a wife!

Jack’s eyes narrowed. There was every possibility that scenario would still come to pass, but it would be on his terms, not theirs.

A disgusted snort brought his attention back to the slight figure before him. He felt the warmth radiating from her body, separated from his by a handbreadth. Only by exercising the most severe discipline had he resisted the temptation to pull her back against him, curving her body into his.

“Thanks to you, I’ll probably never get another chance!” Disgruntled, Kit shifted and immediately remembered what was pressing against her back. Her temper overcame her maidenly reticence. “Damn it! Can’t you stop that? Make it go away or something?”

She twisted about to try and get a look at the offending article. Jack’s hands clamped about her shoulders and forcibly restrained her.

There was a distinct edge to his words. “There is a way to make it go away. If you don’t sit still, you’ll be providing it.”

The raw desire in his voice petrified Kit into abject obedience. Inwardly, she railed. What was it about Jack that gave him this strange power over her? Not even the most ardent of London’s rakes had made her feel like mesmerized prey about to be devoured, inch by slow inch. Her skin was alive, nerve endings flickering in fevered anticipation. He was her predator; every time he threatened, she froze. As if immobility could protect her from his strike! Her instinctive response was so illogical, she’d have laughed if she could have eased the knots in her stomach long enough to do so.

Jack stared at the back of Kit’s wig, his frown only partly due to physical discomfort. He could hardly miss the effect his words had had-Kit sat as rigid as a poker, all her alluring warmth gone, an icily disapproving aura cloaking her slender frame. Inwardly, he swore. He wished she’d stop vacillating-first hot, then cold; steamy one minute, frigid the next. Every time he alluded to their inevitable intimacy, she pokered up. Maidenly virtue was certainly not the cause. Which left the irritating conclusion that her strange behavior was her idea of playing vixenish games.

Jack’s eyes narrowed. “A word of advice-if you wish to secure Lord Hendon as your protector”-what a joke-she was going to have him as her protector regardless-“you’d be better served by curbing your hoity ways, dropping your manipulative playacting and relying on your beaux yeux to take the trick.”

Kit’s jaw dropped.

It wasn’t the shock of why he thought she was interested in Lord Hendon that held her in raging silence-after her initial surprise that struck her as exquisitely funny. But that he had the nerve to suggest the effect he had on her was assumed, presumably to attract him, to suggest that she was manipulative, sent her temper into orbit. Her larynx seized; her ringers curled into claws. She’d seen manipulative females aplenty in London-tizzy, dim-witted women with more hair than wit. And she’d laughed over their theatrical and frequently transparent antics with her cousins. To be classed with their kind was the lowest form of insult.

“My manipulative propensities?” she inquired silkily, as soon as she’d regained control of her voice. Her tone would have sent Spencer for the brandy, but Jack had yet to experience her temper unleashed. “That, my good man, is certainly a case of the pot calling the kettle black.”

My good man? Jack’s scowl was as black as the night sky. “What the devil do you mean by that?” Had he said hoity? The damned woman ought to be on the stage. Now she was pulling rank on him like a bloody duchess!

To Kit’s ears, Jack’s growl was pure music. She was spoiling for an argument with him, infuriatingly arrogant oaf that he was. “I mean,” she said, enunciating carefully, “it hasn’t escaped my notice that anytime I’m in danger of winning a point, you wield that…that thing between your legs like a bloody sword of Damocles!”