Inevitably it was a man.
Was it the same man who had taught her how to kiss?
The fellow had made a good job of that at least. Although Ranelaw suspected Antonia demonstrated natural talent.
His horse shifted. Perhaps at the long delay. Perhaps at the tension building in his rider. Ranelaw injected all the charm he could summon into his smile. “Will you walk?”
Antonia didn’t smile back. “Will you behave?”
“Of course.”
She studied him with an assessing light in her eyes, then relented with a sigh. “For a moment.”
A moment was all he needed. He hid his triumphant grin and swung out of the saddle. “Let me help you.”
She still looked as though she ventured into the den of a hungry bear. But she reached for his shoulders and only flinched slightly when his hands circled her waist.
As he lifted her, she was stiff, expecting him to pull some trick. Wise dragon. He wasn’t yet ready to make his move. His hands didn’t linger when he set her on the ground, much as having her close made him itch to kiss her senseless.
“There’s a brook not far away,” she said with unconvincing calm. She looped the reins over her arm and bent to collect her crop from the grass.
“Of course you’ve had days to explore the estate.”
To his surprise, she answered readily. “I miss the country. London’s so crowded and dirty.”
While she didn’t sound at ease, her voice wasn’t edged with the usual hostility. He wasn’t sure what prompted her to stay, but he refused to question the fortunate turn in his scheming.
As they followed a faint trail through the trees, he fell into step beside her. The leaf litter muffled the clop of their horses’ hooves to a soothing rhythm. Even under the trees, the morning became uncomfortably warm. He shucked off his jacket and slung it over one shoulder. She cast him a sharp glance. He waited for a protest at this breach in decorum, but she remained silent.
The path was so narrow, his arm occasionally brushed hers. The first time it happened, she jumped like a scalded cat, but when he pursued no further liberties, eventually she relaxed.
Ranelaw took advantage of her uncharacteristically confiding manner. He wanted her in his bed. But with that never-ending desire came gnawing curiosity about her seemingly inexplicable choices. “You grew up in the country?”
She nodded, swishing her crop at the long grass edging the path. In the capital’s ballrooms, she bottled up her natural energy. Here she revealed more of her true self every second, did she but know it.
“Yes. But in a much wilder place than this.”
She was at home on this estate, and the groom had commented on her aplomb when handling a difficult horse. From the first, Ranelaw’s title hadn’t struck her with particular awe.
Unusual in a paid companion.
Everything pointed to a woman from Ranelaw’s level of society.
If that was so, why did she play the stultifying role of companion to a spoiled flibbertigibbet like Cassandra Demarest? Even Cassie’s father wasn’t top drawer. The man was second or third cousin to the Earl of Aveson, a link too tenuous to sweeten the whiff of trade that clung to the Demarest fortune.
Hoping to encourage her to continue, Ranelaw found himself confiding in turn. “So did I. In Hampshire. Near the sea. In a tumbledown manor house infested with ungovernable children and even more ungovernable adults.”
He rarely spoke of his childhood. The subject stirred few happy memories.
In his opinion, his upbringing provided an infallible argument against marriage as an institution. His parents had loathed each other. He’d hated his father more with every year and once he was old enough to form an independent opinion, he’d felt little but contempt for his shallow, self-indulgent mother.
The house had brimmed with a continually shifting tide of unruly humanity, children, mistresses, servants, various relatives and toadies. Political intrigue that wouldn’t have disgraced an Ottoman court had poisoned his boyhood. Until he was eleven, Eloise’s affection had provided his one constant, but then his father had banished her forever.
No, he was more than happy to relinquish the dubious joys of family life to people whose optimism outstripped grim reality.
Wary curiosity laced the glance she cast at him. “That wasn’t what I imagined.”
He’d known she must think of him in his absence—if only to consign him to perdition. But her admission filled him with pleasure. If he took up residence in her thoughts, he’d soon take up residence in her bed. “What did you imagine?”