"Why, you little minx," he said, lunging for her.
With a motion that was almost expert Zared grabbed the train and flung it over her arm before she began to run from him. At first she began to run in earnest, immediately making for the door, but he reached it before she did and put his arm across it so that she couldn't open it. For a moment she was afraid of him. Had she teased her brothers as she had him, making fun of their masculine abilities, they would have made her pay. But when she looked into the eyes of the man she saw that he was amused by her.
She ran from him, holding her train with one hand and slipping around the bedpost with the other. At first it seemed odd to her that she knew he could catch her but that he didn't. She ran toward a table and put it between them, and when she dodged one way he blocked her exit, so she went the other way, and he blocked that way, too. She smiled, and then she laughed and moved back and forth as quickly as possible. But he was always faster.
Zared pushed a chair to the floor and made a leap across it, and he reached for her, but she ran before he could catch her. She ran toward the window seat, and when he made a lunge at her she gave a squeal of laughter and jumped to the floor. He was inches behind her, and twice he caught her, but his hands were loose on her body, and she could easily escape him.
By the time she jumped on the bed she was breathless from laughter and from running, and from something else that she didn't quite understand.
He caught her on the bed. He rolled her about, tickling her until she was dying of laughter, his hands running up and down her body.
"Do you beg me for forgiveness?" he asked, his hands at her ribs. He stopped moving his fingers as he looked down at her. She was on her back on the bed while he sat over her, his thighs straddling her hips.
"Never!" she said, but she was smiling. "I will never beg forgiveness from a Howard."
She had meant no harm by what she said—she hadn't even thought of the meaning of her words— but his face lost its good humor, and he moved off of her. She caught his arm before he left the bed. "I meant no…" She didn't know how to finish her sentence.
He sat on the edge of the bed for a moment, then he turned and looked at her. Zared held her breath. Actually, she thought, he wasn't a bad-looking man at all. She smiled at him.
He grinned at her, and Zared thought that perhaps he was the opposite of bad-looking.
He grinned more broadly and made a lunge across the bed for her. "You'll be the death of me," he said as he caught her in his arms.
Zared squealed, her arms together, then stopped moving and looked up at him. His eyes were soft, and she didn't
understand the expression.
"You're very pretty, you know." He tucked a strand of hair behind her ear.
"I'm not," she said softly. "I look like a boy."
At that he gave a snort of laughter and lay down beside her, then pulled her into his arms, her back to his front. "I never saw anyone look less like a boy."
"But no one even questions that I—"
"That shows how stupid people are."
She relaxed against him. No one had ever held her like that. There was no physical affection between her and her brothers, and there were few women in her brothers' home. Some part of her brain told her to move away from him, but it felt so good to be held that she didn't move.
His big hand smoothed the hair off of her face. Her hair was still damp from washing, and she felt him bury his face in it. She closed her eyes for a moment.
"You're not beautiful like Anne Marshall," he said softly. "You're more like… a two-day-old colt or a pup."
She pushed at his arms, but he didn't release her. "A horse? I look like a horse? Or is it a dog?"
"You know very well what I mean," he answered, and he put his face further into her hair, smelling it. His lips reached her neck and kissed her a few times.
"Mmmm. I understand," she said, her eyes closed. "Men like Anne Marshall. My brother did. He liked her even after all the terrible things she did to him." She moved her head so that he could have better access to her neck. He was placing little nibbling kisses down it. "I wager that you wish you could have had Lady Anne."
Tearle stopped kissing her and pulled her closer to him. "She was offered to me, but I turned her down."
Zared was astonished by that, and she wanted to look into his eyes to see if he was lying. She turned over in his arms so that they were facing each other. "You would not have turned down Lady Anne. She is beautiful, and she is rich. Any man who was offered her would have taken her."
"I was, but I did not." Again he began to touch the hair at her temple. "What fine red stuff this is. Like a spider's web."
"Spiders' webs are sticky. Why would you have turned down Anne Marshall?"
"Because I did not want her. She has a sharp tongue on her, and she is much too clever to live with."