“Yes, I am flattered. And so you see I find it remarkably interesting that you promised the lady you would not harm me. Now, do put my rampant curiosity to rest and tell me why you are granting me such a boon.” A boon. He was beginning to talk like her. Before long he would be singing songs of knights and maidens cavorting in the glade. Or not.

“ ’Twas for ma sister.”

“Which sister?” He brought the Highlander’s face into focus for an instant. “Ah. A sister who lost her way, much as the lady’s mother has lost her way, I am to guess.”

The Scot’s jaw worked. Within Wyn, so deep he almost did not feel it, some memory of compassion stirred.

“I see.” He uncocked the pistol and slid it into his traveling pack. “I wish her to believe that you remain a threat to me.”

“A do remain a threat ta ye.”

“A threat to me while she is in my company. And a threat to her.”

Eads glared. “Yer playing a deep game with this girl, Wyn.”

“Unfortunately not as deep as your depraved imagination has taken you, Duncan. But you have given your word and I anticipate your assistance.”

“A’ll be there at the end.”

“I expect you to. Once I have delivered her safely into the hands of her family, you may do with me what you will. But . . .” He turned his head to the man that he had tracked halfway across Bengal, searching for a Highland rebel only to discover a man beaten by grief and angry as a cobra to have been found. “If you would first allow me to take care of an errand, I would be much obliged.”

“A don’t owe ye anything.”

Wyn set his foot in the stirrup. “I haven’t the least idea why you are still working for Myles when you have an estate—good Lord, a title—to retrieve in Scotland.” He hauled himself into the saddle, recognizing even in his muddled state the hypocrisy of these words. “But if you truly cannot wait to kill me, then I ask only one thing.”

The Scot’s eyes narrowed.

Wyn swallowed over the desert of his throat. “If you must kill me, Duncan,” he said slowly so as to get the words just right, “don’t make it easy on me. Draw the thing out, will you?” He turned away, pressed his knees into Galahad’s sides and guided him out from beneath the trees into the slanting afternoon sunlight, toward the mill in which as a lad more than a decade ago he had worked a harvest season.

Mr. Argall did not in fact recognize him. He no longer resembled that boy who had loaded grain and hauled sacks of flour hour after hour, week after week, gaining strength in his arms, hot meals, and a few coins for his labors. That boy had been angry. Running away. But he’d not yet killed in cold blood.

Diantha had saved them both. Instead of cowering in fear and begging him to return her home, she met danger with passionate sincerity. In baring her heart to the man pointing a pistol at her, she had been braver than he’d ever been. Begging Eads to spare his life so she could save another’s. Believing he would help her.

He pinned his gaze between his horse’s ears, dead ahead to the carriage waiting on the road. Chestnut curls spilling out of her bonnet caught the light filtering through high clouds and glistened.

Once before a girl had trusted him. Chloe Martin, the Duke of Yarmouth’s terrified ward, had told him her horrifying story and he promised to help her. Just like today, he had trusted in his extraordinary abilities—his intelligence and reflexes. And, in a tragic accident, instead of saving Chloe he had killed her.

He would not help Diantha Lucas. She had put her faith in the wrong man.

Another ten miles along the narrow southerly road skirting hills that for centuries the English had called Shropshire and the Welsh theirs, the modest town of Knighton rose along a steep main street. Wyn installed the ladies in a tidy inn, arranged for their dinner to be served in a small private parlor, and saw the horses bedded in stalls with dry straw. When the ladies bid him good-night—the maiden with creased brow, the matron with suspicious eyes—and ascended to their bedchamber, he went to the taproom.

Diantha knew she oughtn’t to be standing where she was standing or contemplating what she was contemplating.

In theory, while lying restlessly in bed beside a snoring Mrs. Polley, it had seemed a reasonable enough program: knock on his door, demand that he answer her questions about Mr. Eads and the man in brown, then return to bed and finally sleep. It was not a plan in the truest sense, but it seemed the only solution to calming her nerves. She must understand better what had passed. She must understand him better. With knowledge, a woman could plan.

She lifted her fist toward the door panel and took a deep breath. Then a deeper one. Then she closed her eyes and—

“Impressive, Miss Lucas.”

She whirled around. He stood across the short corridor, at the top of the stair. A sconce in the stairwell lit him from below, casting shadows into his eyes and carving dark hollows in his cheeks. His arms were crossed loosely over his chest, one black-clad shoulder propped against the wall.

Her lungs released a little whorl of air. “Oh, there you are.”

“I wondered how long you would stand there before you mustered the courage to knock. Or the wisdom to return to your own bedchamber without knocking.” His voice sounded unfamiliar, slow. Emotionless. Without any feeling at all, like his eyes at the mill. “Not as long as I had imagined.”

She should walk over to him and make this conversation unremarkable by behaving as she always did. She could not. His unnerving stillness glued her feet to the floorboards.

“I wish to speak with you about what happened today.”

“And you could not wait until breakfast to do so, I gather?” No warmth either—the warmth that was always there beneath the teasing.

“Mrs. Polley will be with us at breakfast. I understood that you wished her to remain ignorant of our encounter with Mr. Eads today. Did I understand you incorrectly?”

He moved toward her, his steps very deliberate. A shiver of fear passed up her spine. Why she should fear him, she hadn’t any idea, unless it was the lusterless steel of his eyes in the dark corridor or the scent of cigar smoke and whiskey that accompanied him. But she was accustomed enough to the latter from parties during her visits to Savege Park. Her fear must come from the incident with the pistols earlier that day.

No. It was not the pistols. It was his eyes, the absence of any light in them. It made her at once cold and unnervingly hot—cold with that unexpected fear, and hot with . . . she knew not what.

“You understood me well enough. In that matter.” He halted close. Unbidden, her foot inched back, her heel tapping the door panel, and he watched her. “But it seems, Miss Lucas, that you understand me very poorly in another.” His gaze flickered down her face to her mouth, black lashes obscuring the gray of his darkened eyes. For a moment he seemed to study her lips. Then it dipped to her breasts. “Very poorly indeed.” He reached forward and placed a palm against the wall beside her head.

“I—” She pulled in a tight breath, but it made her breasts jerk upward. He was still looking at them. Him. Mr. Yale. Her gentlemanlike hero. Her hero who’d had his tongue in her mouth that morning. “I . . .” Her own tongue seemed to forget its purpose, lost in the memory of his caressing it.

He leaned toward her, bending his head, and the scents of strong liquor and tall, very dark man tumbled over her.

“You should go to your bedchamber now.” His voice was husky.

“I want you to kiss me again.” She nearly choked on the words as they tumbled out. “Or rather more, actually.” She had not meant to say this. She had not planned it. But she did want it. She’d wanted it since he walked out of the Bates’s stable that morning, yet he had told her she mustn’t ask again. But now she might take advantage of the fact that he had been drinking spirits. A great quantity of spirits, it seemed. His gaze returned to hers, but it did not really look at her, rather, it focused elsewhere even as he stared directly at her from only inches away.

His fingers clamped about her wrist before she even saw him move. She gasped. His grip dug into her flesh.

“Do you? Now why doesn’t that come as a surprise to me, I wonder?”

“Mr. Yale,” she managed in a whisper, her breaths fast in the close space between them. “You are hurting me.”

“With every pleasure there is also pain, Miss Lucas.” His eyes were dull and distant. “Has no one ever told you that?” He tilted his head down. Half of her wished to flee, the other half to rise onto her toes and press her lips to his hovering so close.

“Just how intoxicated are you?”

His gaze traveled over her face, and for an instant she saw a spark of light. “Entirely.”

His mouth covered hers.

It was not like the kisses he had given her that morning in the stable. It did not begin gently or slowly. It was complete, his mouth seizing hers thoroughly and demanding of hers reciprocal treatment. And she could not deny that she wanted him to kiss her like this. Her lips would not deny it. They sought his as eagerly as his sought hers. Feeling him made her more eager yet, and hungry for even more with each meeting. His flavor, whiskey and tobacco, was another world, a world of men and pistols and honor and danger, and she was weak with her entrance into that world. His world. He was kissing her and she knew he did not wish to but he was doing so anyway. Because he was foxed?

She didn’t care. She didn’t care that she was standing by a man’s bedchamber door in the corridor of an inn, letting herself be kissed like no lady should. She wanted this.

His hand came around her face, scraping through the hair at her temple and holding her tight, then his other as well. He drew her to him, capturing her mouth again and again in a succession of kisses that grew more intense. The tip of his tongue strafed her lips, slipping along the edges, stalling her breaths in her throat. Then he dipped inside her and she melted.

It was like dying and coming alive at once, so perfect, sublime, and she felt it everywhere—in her mouth, in her breasts and belly and in the deliciously hot place between her legs. A sound came from her throat she did not intend, a sigh slipping from her lips to his. “Oh, yes.”

He broke away.

One powerful hand went to his face. His breaths came hard, like hers, his fingers pressed into his eyes at the bridge of his nose. He shook his head once.

“No,” he uttered. “God, no.” He turned and moved to the stair with lurching steps.

She touched her lips, hot and damp now. Her heart raced. “Why did you stop?”

He swiveled around to face her, catching the wall hard with one hand. To steady himself? New fear rushed through her, tangling with the pleasure.

He returned to her in three fast strides and she hadn’t time to think, to plan, before he was upon her. He grabbed her arm, then the door handle behind her.

“Do you want to know what a man does to a pretty girl who begs him for kisses one too many times, Miss Lucas?” His voice was a growl.

“No.” She couldn’t breathe. “Yes,” the whisper stole from her.

He yanked her into the chamber and seized her about the waist. She fell against him and he grabbed her chin with an ungentle hand, trapping her face tilted up to him. His eyes were dark, no pleasure in them.

He lowered his head and kissed her and she was the wayward wanton her mother had borne, wanting his lips on hers and his tongue in her mouth, and hers in his, dizzy with the feeling of her body pressed to his. He was all muscle and strength she had not imagined—the iron strength in his arms, the power in his hands, his hard chest and thighs. She was far too weak to withstand him, but she didn’t want to. She sank her fingers into his arms and met his mouth hungrily, the thrusts of his tongue making her ache deep in her body, making her press her breasts to him more fully. Her skin and crevices seemed to hum for more contact. More kisses. More of him.

His hand spread on her waist gripped hard, his other slipping away from her face, fingertips trailing a rough path down her throat, then her neck. She gasped in air through the kisses, his hand spreading over her collarbone.

“This,” he whispered against her lips, “is what he does.” His hand surrounded her breast. “He touches her as he should not.”

She gulped in breaths—swallowed—sought air. She had not known this. She had not even imagined this. She had been very naïve. How could his hand on her breast make her feel this way, like laughing and crying and wanting his tongue in her again more than anything? The place between her legs filled with warmth and a strange, urgent hunger. She gripped his arms tight and tilted her head back against the door, her breaths hard and fast as he fondled her, his thumb passing over the fabric beneath which her nipple pressed. She shuddered, a light ripple of every part of her, oddly frantic beneath her skin. It was almost too much. Almost. She did not understand the feelings, but they felt so good and she wanted them. But it must be wrong to want them.