s her, bending her entire body to fit with his.
“How’d a lady like you get hitched up with a stableboy like me?”
“Just lucky, I guess,” she answered before kissing him again.
One of the things that Houston liked best about Kane was his lack of knowledge about what was right and what was improper. There were people not far from them, servants who could easily decide to take an evening stroll, gardeners who could come searching for a forgotten tool—but none of this bothered Kane.
“You wear too damn many clothes,” he said as he began unbuttoning her dress, slipping the satin off her shoulders as he progressed.
When she was standing in her underwear, her dress a heap at her feet, he slipped his arm under her knees and carried her across the lawn, through a tangle of flowers to a marble pavilion containing a statue of Diana, goddess of the hunt.
He placed her on the grass at the foot of the goddess and carefully removed her clothing, piece by piece, kissing each part of her body as it was exposed.
Houston was sure she’d never felt so good in her life, and her passion was very slow to build since she wanted to prolong this time together forever.
He stroked and caressed her body until she was dizzy. The world seemed to be spinning and twirling about, and her fingers began to tingle.
When at last he moved on top of her, he was smiling, as if he knew what her thoughts were. She clung to him, pulling him closer and closer until they were one person.
He continued to move slowly, prolonging her ecstasy, slowly bringing her to new heights of passion.
“Kane,” she whispered repeatedly, “Kane.”
When at last he exploded within her, she shivered, her whole body shuddering with the force of her own release.
He lay on top of her, bronze skin in the moonlight, sweat glistening on his skin, and held her close to him. “What have you done to me, woman?” she thought she heard him whisper.
Slowly, he moved off her. “Warm enough? You want to go inside?”
“Never,” she said, snuggling against him, the mountain air cool on her damp skin. She looked up at the statue above them. “You know, don’t you, that Diana is the Virgin Goddess? Do you think she’ll resent our intrusion?”
“Probably jealous,” Kane snorted, running his hand up and down the smooth skin of her waist and hip.
“Why do you think Jacob Fenton paid Sherwin for working in the mines when it’s obvious that he’s too weak to actually earn his salary?”
The groan Kane gave as he rolled away from her was heartfelt. “I can see that the honeymoon is over. Or, with you, maybe it’s still on, since you only started these questions after we got married. I reckon you can get dressed by yourself. I got some business to finish before I can go to bed.” With that, he left her alone.
Houston was torn between wanting to cry and being glad that she had asked Kane what she had. There was something deep between the Fentons and the Taggerts, and she was sure that Kane could never be truly happy until he was rid of what bothered him.
The next night, Houston woke shivering and somehow knew that her sister’s life was in danger. She’d heard her mother’s often-repeated story of how one afternoon when Houston was six years old she’d dropped her mother’s best teapot and started crying that Blair was hurt. They’d finally found Blair by the side of an arroyo, unconscious, her arm broken from having fallen from a tree. Blair was supposed to have been attending a dancing lesson.
But the odd bond between the twins had not appeared since then—until now. Kane called Leander, then held Houston for over two hours until she stopped shaking. Somehow, Houston sensed the danger was over, stopped shaking, and fell into a deep sleep.
The next day, Blair came to Houston’s house and spent the afternoon telling her what’d happened that had indeed endangered her life.
* * *
It was four days later that Zachary Younger burst into their lives. The Taggerts were just sitting down to dinner when the boy, a footman running after him, stormed into the dining room and yelled that he’d heard that Kane was his father, and that he already had one father and didn’t want another one. He left in the next breath.
Everyone seemed to be stunned except Kane. He sat down while the others remained standing and asked the maid what kind of soup they were having tonight.
“Kane, I think you should go after him,” Houston said.
“What for?”
“Just to talk to him. I think his heart was broken when he found out that the man he thought was his father wasn’t.”
“Pam’s husband was the boy’s father as far as I can tell. And I sure as hell didn’t tell him any different.”