Relentlessly rocking her to ecstasy.

Breathing was beyond her. Nothing mattered but the sensual communion. The meeting of the physical and the sensual in which she and he were so deeply engrossed.

Never had Breckenridge experienced such absorption, such depth of sensual abandon. Normally he always had a part of his awareness monitoring his surroundings, on watch, keeping guard. . not tonight.

Not with her.

He was as ensnared as he knew her to be.

They moved together in an intimate harmony he’d never before known, never before experienced, never dreamed could be.

Beneath the covers, they danced in the darkness, bodies joined in hot, slick, breathless desperation as passion escalated in a rising crescendo.

Long, voracious, rapacious kisses built their hunger until it was raging.

Explicit caresses, intimate and uninhibited, drove desire higher still, until passion became a whip.

Until possession reared and seized. Gripped and held.

And hurled them to the peak.

Desperate and yearning, striving and wanting, they shuddered and clung, his body plunging one last time into hers.

Glory erupted. Scintillating and brilliant, it flashed down every nerve. Pleasure indescribable surged through every vein.

And they shattered.

Fractured.

Lost touch with the physical plane.

Lost themselves in the void. . then ecstasy swept in and claimed them.

Renewed and remade them.

Leaving them floating, slowly sinking back to earth, to a reality that had altered, changed.

Head bowed, he hung over her, their kiss finally broken, their bodies slowing, then halting, muscles quivering.

In that instant he knew, had a moment of blinding clarity. Through the sound of his sawing breaths, her softer pants, he heard the inner truth. Knew it.

He’d intended her to be caught — to be captured by the sensual delight so she would yearn for it, want more of it, so that when he offered for her hand, when he offered the prospect of constant indulgence, she would agree.

He’d intended to fashion a net from the silken ropes of passion, one with which he might hold her.

He’d intended to trap her.

He hadn’t intended to become ensnared, too.

Yet he was.

Even as the knowledge resonated in his brain, satiation slammed into him, rolled inexorably over him, heavier, denser, and laced with contentment, with that simple peace he’d never known.

Resistance wasn’t possible.

With a muted groan, he summoned the strength to lift from her, disengaging only to slump half over her, still wrapped in her arms.

His place.

Where he should be.

Closing his eyes, he surrendered.

The moon was riding the sky when McKinsey walked Hercules into Kirkland.

He’d picked up the trail of his fugitive pair at New Bridge. They’d turned off the Glasgow Road there, and for some godforsaken reason had headed this way. Luckily, given how late it had been by the time he’d found their trail, the lane they’d chosen had had few turnoffs and had been bordered by numerous small crofts and farms all along the way. He’d been able to verify the pair’s progress without having had to waste too much time.

He’d pushed hard — they were on foot, and even with his delay they couldn’t have been that far ahead of him — but the failing daylight had forced him to slow.

Now it was all but pitch, too dark to risk riding on.

He paused to look along the narrow road, saw the lights burning in what appeared to be an inn in the middle of the short row of cottages. Stifling a sigh, he trudged on.

He’d get a room at the inn and start afresh at first light. He’d have to cast around and make sure they’d come this way — that they’d passed through Kirkland and headed on. After losing them this morning, he wasn’t going to make any assumptions about where they might be heading.

But he wished he knew why.

Heather Cynster’s reputation was, he judged, irretrievably ruined by now. Once he confirmed that, his mother would have got her wish, and he and his would be safe once more, but that wasn’t as he would have had it.

The best-laid plans. . too often went awry.

Especially when women were involved.

He truly hadn’t wished the silly chit any harm, but. . regardless of what had occurred between her and the man who was traveling with her, his intentions remained unchanged. He would follow, catch them up, and make sure she was protected — either by that opportunistic bastard, or by himself.

Whichever way she preferred it.

Drawing near the inn, he raised his head, drew in a tired breath, and made a mental vow. Tomorrow, one way or another, he would make atonement for his recent sins. He’d find the fleeing pair, and then he’d learn what fate had planned for Heather Cynster — and what fate, fickle female, had planned for him.

Chapter Thirteen

They bade farewell to Mrs. Croft soon after the sun had sailed into the blue sky. Heather had woken in the ghostly light of predawn to find the bed beside her empty. Almost immediately she’d heard the distinctive thunk of a log being split outside.

By the time she’d risen, washed, and dressed, made the bed and packed their satchels, then finally gone downstairs, Mrs. Croft had been busy in the kitchen, tending pans on her stove, and Breckenridge had been perched on the kitchen stool, sipping from a steaming mug of coffee.

With a cheery good morning, Heather had slipped into the second kitchen chair and had promptly been regaled with a catalogue of Breckenridge’s virtues, from which she’d gathered he’d cut enough wood to last Mrs. Croft into the next week.

They’d parted from the widow on excellent terms. Heather had approved of the sizeable tip Breckenridge had left on the washstand upstairs.

They set out from Craigdarroch, striding easily into a morning that looked set to be fine, although mist still clung about the nearby peaks and shrouded their way up ahead.

Breckenridge had taken her hand again; she’d refrained from pointing out that the lane was relatively even and she was unlikely to trip.

Truth be told, she wasn’t sure why he insisted, albeit wordlessly, on holding on to her, but she wasn’t about to eschew the contact. Even as they strode along, it was pleasant to feel the connection, the implied closeness.

A hundred yards further on, it occurred to her that his hold on her hand might be read as possessive, as indicating some degree of possession. . she was immediately distracted by her response to the thought, to the possibility — which, in her experience, with a man of his ilk was quite high — that his action, whether unthinking or deliberate, was a sign that he saw her, in that typical, inherently male way, as his.

Some part of her wasn’t at all bothered by the notion of him seeing her as his.

Given her aversion to possessively protective, ergo arrogantly high-handed males — such as her brothers and cousins — that lack of antagonism struck her as strange.

Strange, but somehow comfortable.

Their hearty breakfast of porridge and honey stood them in good stead as they marched steadily on. As Breckenridge had predicted, the lane rose for several miles, wending around the flanks of hills and through a large stretch of forest. But then they climbed a rise and, halting on the crest, saw the land and the lane gently fall away into a green valley. Beyond, in the distance, another line of hills marched in a hazy purple line across the horizon.

Heather pointed. “Those are the hills at the back of the Vale.” Lowering her arm, she searched the far side of the valley, then pointed again. “And that’s about where the Vale itself lies, but we can’t see the manor from here.”

Breckenridge nodded. While Heather looked ahead, trying to pick out familiar landmarks, he glanced back along their trail — and froze.

From where they stood, he couldn’t see much of the lane they’d walked that morning, but by a fluke of the landscape he could see all the way back to just outside Moniaive.

To the horseman riding confidently along, following their trail.

To be accurate, the man was riding along on the same narrow lane they’d followed, but they were well out in the country and as yet had seen no one else traveling the lane. .

Turning, Breckenridge retook Heather’s hand. “Come on. Let’s get going.”

She threw him a curious look but consented to stride along again.

If he could see the man, then if the man glanced up, he might see them. Best, Breckenridge thought, that they headed for the Vale as rapidly as they could. With Heather beside him, he could only go so fast, but he set a good pace and she obligingly kept up.

While shooting speculative glances his way.

Finally she asked, “What is it?” Her eyes narrowed on his face. “What did you see?”

He briefly met her eyes, considered not answering, or even lying. . instead replied, “A man on a horse. A good-looking horse.”

Her eyes widened. “You think he’s the laird?”

She immediately craned her head to look back.

He tugged her forward. “He’s well back — just out of Moniaive, I think. And I can’t tell if the rider might be our villain. It’s easier to see that the horse is of good quality, but the man is dark-haired and looks to be large.”

“And he’s wealthy enough to own a good horse.”

He nodded, striding on at an increased pace, one she could only just manage. “But we’ve passed the entrance of quite a few drives, quite a few large estates. Mrs. Croft mentioned there were several about. The man could just be a local riding home. Regardless, I’d rather not meet him on such a desolate stretch.”

A little way along, she predictably said, “What if we—”

“No. We are not setting a trap, or finding some place to watch as he rides by, on the off-chance he’s our villain.” He glanced at her warningly. “We need to concentrate on getting you safely to the Vale.” And he wasn’t about to let any potential villain get between them and that goal.

He was carrying one of the pistols he’d bought in his coat pocket. It was primed and ready, but if he drew it and leveled it at their pursuer. . there were far too many variables in that scenario. What if the horseman had a gun, too, or worse, a shotgun?

If it had just been him, he would have been tempted to do exactly as she wanted, but with her by his side he couldn’t afford to attempt any action that had an even long-odds risk of leaving her without protection. He couldn’t risk tangling with the man on horseback in case the rider was their villain and he — Breckenridge — lost the encounter.

It went against the grain to run, but. .

He glanced at her. “Tell me if I’m going too fast for you. We’ll walk on without stopping. We can eat while we walk.”

She held his gaze for a moment, then, somewhat to his surprise — he’d expected some protest, at the very least a tart comment — she nodded and looked ahead. “All right.”

After a moment, Heather added, “I can keep up this pace for a while longer.”

He nodded and they strode on, his hand clasping hers more firmly than before.

She’d been tempted to press her point, but then she’d looked into his eyes, felt his tensed grasp. . understood. He needed to keep her safe. Yet instead of trying to shield her from the reality of the potential threat at their heels, instead of lying or spinning her some tale about why they needed to hurry on, as her brothers assuredly would have, he’d treated her like a sensible adult and shared the truth and his deductions with her.

For that alone she felt compelled to do what she could to make things easier by acceding to his wishes.

She hadn’t thought of it before, but clearly being intimate with her had rescripted his view of her; he certainly wasn’t treating her like a schoolgirl anymore.

She wasn’t about to complain about that — indeed, accepted female wisdom, the kind passed on by Lady Osbaldestone and Heather’s aunt Helena, Dowager Duchess of St. Ives, held that the correct response when a male of Breckenridge’s class improved his behavior was to reward him.

Five steps on, she abruptly halted. He immediately swung to face her, agate storm clouds in his eyes. She stepped into him, framed his face with her hands, tugged him down as she stretched up and kissed him.