“Sutcliffe was peaceful. Predictable, stable, and safe.”

“You aren’t safe now? Should I be concerned?”

“Safe…” Alice huffed out a breath. “It’s hard to define what I mean by that. Relative to my time at Sutcliffe, my time since then has been a constant uproar.”

Uproar was not a good thing. Something cold trickled down Ethan’s spine, so he went on the offensive.

“You wanted a quiet rural post, and instead you find yourself dealing with an oversized, widowed social misfit, riding a comparably oversized horse, and a neighborhood full of titles suddenly expecting you to provide your charges—among whose number I might include myself—for socializing.”

If she left them… that cold sensation congealed into that familiar and unhappy acquaintance: dread.

“I feel as if,” Alice said slowly, “the mild breeze I’d used to sail along in my little boat has turned into a fickle gale, tossing me in all directions at once.”

“You’re knocked off your pins. It isn’t a pleasant sensation.”

“I thought you were going to say, ‘I’m knocked off my horse,’” Alice said softly. “And maybe that’s it. I feel a little of the same disorientation as I did then, when I was minding my girlish business one day and then literally knocked off my horse the next.”

Rage at her malefactors warred with the compulsion to take her in his arms.

“Your disorientation is understandable. The sensation will likely fade in time, as you gather more confidence in your changed circumstances.” But always, upset like this took too bloody much time to fade. Years and lifetimes.

“It isn’t…” Alice bit her lip and colored up furiously. “It isn’t just my circumstances.”

Ethan had to lean closer to catch her words, which had the effect of filling his awareness with lemon verbena. “I beg your pardon?”

“It isn’t just my circumstances,” Alice said a little more loudly. “I am knocked off my pins by… you.”

Silence, as Ethan studied Alice’s profile, from the compressed line of her lips, to the brilliant blush on her cheeks, to the quiet misery in her eyes.

“Alice?” His voice was carefully neutral. “Can you explain yourself?”

He gave her credit for turning to face him, despite the blush trying to swamp her dignity. “You are part of this gale-force wind, Ethan Grey. You…” When she might have risen and paced off to a safe distance, he laced his fingers around her wrist.

“Tell me,” he commanded softly. “Please.”

And because of that one entreating word, he knew she would.

“You touch me,” she said, dropping her gaze to her lap. “When I had such a bad breathing spell, you weren’t too fussy to offer comfort to a mere governess. At Belle Maison, on Argus, you put your arms around me, and I did not fall. Here, on the horse, you don’t let me fall, and then too…”

“Then?”

“You kissed me,” Alice said, her voice dropping again. And Ethan realized that she’d gone long years without a friend, but far longer years without a kiss.

“I kissed you,” Ethan said, “but you kissed me as well.” He was fiercely glad to recall this.

“And there is the problem.”

“Are you making too much of a single incident, Alice? You aren’t going to leave your post over some backward female notion of protecting my honor, are you?”

“It isn’t that one kiss. It’s that I want another.”

Thank God for all His mercies. “Does this have to be a problem?”

She was female, and she was Alice, so his question was rhetorical.

“Of course it’s a problem. You are my employer, and by all rights, if you’re kissing a decent woman, you ought to be doing so in the interest of finding a mother for your boys. You need not humor a lonely governess.”

“Good God.” Ethan shot to his feet and jammed his hands in his pockets. “Is that why you think I kissed you?”

“You’re kind, though you’re shy about it.” Alice rose as well, her chin coming up as her blush faded. “I know this about you, and I know as well that in the years I’ve been in service, I haven’t exactly had to fend off the advances of drooling hordes of fevered men.”

“I should hope not!” Ethan looked at her in consternation. “You wear those great ugly glasses that distort your lovely eyes, you scrape the most glorious hair on God’s earth back into an old woman’s snood, you dress as if in half mourning for your former life and in gowns that hide the most luscious…” He glared at her then reached for her with both hands, anchoring her by the upper arms and bringing her flush against him.

“I did not kiss you out of some condescending motive like pity, Alice. I kissed you because I had to, and I have to.”

He framed her jaw gently in his hands, angling her face toward his, and then brushed his lips across hers in a whisper-light warning caress. When she made a yearning sound, he joined their mouths and gathered her to him.

“Ah, God, Alice…” His sigh held longing, humor, and resignation to go with her name, and then got down to kissing her in earnest. One hand slid down her back, to press her tightly against his groin; the other drifted to her nape and buried itself under that scraped bun, and held her captive for his mouth.

He did not plunder, not exactly. He tasted and hinted and suggested, until Alice’s tongue was tangling with his, and her breathing was accelerating. Her hand found its way into his hair and, if anything, she was pressing her body eagerly to his.

Eagerly!

Which would lead them… Ethan withdrew his mouth and rested his chin on her crown. He wasn’t about to let her go, not when she rested against him nigh panting with the effects of a brief, fully clothed kiss.

“Dear Almighty God,” she whispered. “Dear Almighty, Everlasting God.”

“Amen.”

Alice raised her face from Ethan’s chest and regarded him curiously. “Are you laughing at me?”

“Good heavens, no.” Ethan stepped back, ignoring the shriek of disappointment echoing through his body. “I need to sit, Alice, and so do you.”

Though she at least wasn’t hiding her arousal.

And arousal itself was a relief for Ethan. He’d begun to conclude his capacity for unbridled passion had prematurely aged. In almost two decades of sexual experience, he couldn’t once recall being so physically enthusiastic about a woman so quickly. He’d learned caution at a high price, but with Alice…

“I’ll go,” Alice said quietly, and Ethan realized she was sitting a few inches from him on the bench, primly not touching. To blazing hell with that. He threaded his fingers through hers and drew her wrist to his lips, because nobody was going anywhere just yet.

“Back to the house? Or you’ll sail your little skiff right out of my life, out of the boys’ lives, and find another bucolic retreat where you can once again impersonate a forty-nine-year-old spinster?”

“You can’t allow an immoral influence around your children,” Alice said with soft insistence. “I can’t allow it.”

“Well, that’s all right, then.” Ethan reached out his free hand and drew it down Alice’s hairline. Her bun should have been in shambles, but it was like her today, well anchored in the proprieties. “If we’re to remove all pernicious influences from their lives, then I’ll merely accompany you, and they’ll be free of both our wicked selves.”

“You’re not wicked.”

“But you, who were the kissed, not the kisser, are somehow Satan’s imp?” He looped his arm across her shoulders and scooted to tuck himself against her. She wasn’t going to bolt off to her lesson plans until they’d come to some understandings, and—given her endless determination—that meant it could be a long evening.

“You are a man,” Alice said, a hint of exasperation in her voice.

“You noticed. How fortunate. I was at risk of forgetting it myself.”

Alice scowled at him. “You were not. You’re among the most masculine people I’ve met.”

“Because you’re a governess, sweetheart. You don’t exactly consort with the dragoons and the grenadiers.”

“I have brothers, Ethan Grey.” She was getting her dander up, which relieved Ethan no end. That meek, defeated version of Alice Portman made him want to howl and break things for her. “And my brothers have acquaintances, and I’ve been in your brother’s household, and Mr. Belmont’s, and Baron Sutcliffe’s. No governess goes into service without a keen wariness regarding a man’s animal urges.”

“And you are prepared to tell me about these urges? Say on, Alice. I’m all ears. My own urges haven’t been in evidence since shortly after Joshua was conceived, so you likely know more about my urges than I do.”

Her brows went up as the meaning of his words sank in.

“Hushed your scolding with that one, didn’t I?” Ethan muttered, surprised that Alice remained sitting snug against him, making no move to withdraw her hand from his. “Well, it’s the truth, my dear. I married unwisely, and life hadn’t exactly handed me the instincts of a libertine before that. The realization that my wife was a bad choice rather killed my appetite, and in the general sense, not just for her.”

“But Joshua…”

“Is five years old. It has been a long, long six years.” During which, he silently added, he’d heard a constant string of tales regarding his brother Nick’s prowess in the bedrooms of London’s demimonde, each more impressive than the last.

Alice’s gaze became concerned. “Are you sure he’s your son?”

Now who was prying confidences from whom? And yet, Ethan wanted the truth between them.

“He is my son in every way that counts.” Ethan dipped his face against Alice’s hair as he spoke, needing the comfort of lemon verbena and Alice. “My wife might have known a different truth, but I have never regarded it as relevant.”

“Why are you telling me?”

Ethan raised his face and spoke slowly. “Could it be I trust you would never do anything to hurt a child?” And perhaps, his conscience added, he was damned sick of carrying this alone? Wondering if the boy might somehow find out and turn on the only parent he’d known?

Taking his brother with him…

“You love him,” Alice said staunchly. “Joshua would be devastated to think you aren’t his papa. What was wrong with your wife?”

“Marriage was wrong with her,” Ethan said tiredly, even as Alice’s immediate defense of him warmed his heart. “Marriage to me was wrong for her, anyway. And when I would not oblige her intimately, she had an affair. She was angered by my neglect of her and fought back with the only weapon she felt she had. My lack of expertise with the fairer sex was such that I could not see the corner I drove her into.”

“Oh, Ethan.” Alice did lean into him then, bringing her hand up to the back of his head and holding him as much as he was holding her. “You deserved so much better.”

“I am beginning to think perhaps I do.” He wanted better, and that was a start. “But I suspect you do not mean what you say.”

“You think I’d lie to you?” Alice drew back and resumed her frowning. He was coming to adore that starchy, prim expression on her face, because it was such a pleasure to relieve her of it.

“I think you do not divine the direction of my thoughts, Alice Portman,” Ethan replied, and in his chest, he felt his heart begin to beat with a slow, palpable throbbing. He was going to lay himself open to intimate rejection, and he knew it. He chose to do it, though, because wanting and not having was better—far, far better—than never wanting anything at all.

“So elucidate your thoughts for me,” Alice said while her fingers tightened around his.

He could prevaricate and hint and complicate what was simple and precious. His regard for Alice would allow none of that.

“I want you,” Ethan said. “I want your body under mine, overcome with desire. I want to share intimate pleasure with you, to drive you to incoherence with longing and satisfaction.” He wanted that desperately. “I want the taste and scent of you filling my senses, the texture of every inch of your skin burned into my memory. I want to hear you cry my name in the dark, Alice Portman.”

Before she could formulate a scathing set down, Ethan charged forth, determined she should hear him out.

“I know, Alice, you will not countenance marriage, and I suspect this relates to having been mistreated in your past. I do not account myself any sort of bargain as a husband, in any case, and would not offend you by presenting myself as a candidate for your hand. But I can offer you pleasure and joy and… friendship, or some version of it.”

“You are propositioning me.” She sounded astounded rather than offended.