“Like this?” She placed her boot in his hands and, before he knew it, executed his instructions with a fluid grace that had him staring up at her, flabbergasted.
Either she was the most natural horsewoman the world had ever seen or . . . His eyes narrowed. “No one gets it perfectly right their first time.”
She stared down at him, enigmatic. “I would guess there is a first time for everything.”
“And you’ve never mounted a horse before now?”
She shrugged, and he knew he’d been had. “Shall we go for a ride?”
The minx. What was her game? In answer to her question, he shook his head. “Not in the heat of the day. It might be too much for Lady. I thought we would be spending more time learning to mount, but it appears you’re a prodigy.” He grabbed a handful of oats to feed Lady Daisy when he heard the delicate clearing of a throat. Isabel stared down at him expectantly.
“Mayhap you could assist me in dismounting?”
Instant dread churned Percy’s gut. “Of course.”
He should have called for a groom. Or fetched the mounting block from the tack room. Instead, he found himself settling into position to help her down, arms extended up to receive her. The moment her hands pressed into his shoulders, and his fingers tightened about her waist, he knew he’d been wrong, wrong, wrong as the heat from her palm seeped through the thin layers of his linen shirt to find his skin, and he felt it, that spark of awareness, that flash of desire.
She tipped forward, trusting, as he steadied her down, her fingers clenching and digging into bunched muscle. Her toes touched the ground, and her body lightly brushed against his for what would have been a fleeting tick of time. Instead, he found his fingers clutching her tighter and pulling her into him. An action primal, instinctive, driven by his body’s response to her.
She inhaled a gasp that held, and her eyes flew up to meet his. He read confusion there, but desire, too . . . The spark of awareness flared into a banked fire that only needed a whisper of oxygen to turn into white-hot flame.
Her responding desire was such oxygen.
Experience understood where this feeling would take him. It would consume him whole until nothing was left.
He’d spent years—years—erecting defenses against his natural tendency toward wickedness. He wouldn’t allow it to win today.
His hands released their hold on her, and he took a step back. Her brow furrowed.
“I suggest you continue with the headache fiction to my family,” he said, his voice nearly unrecognizable to his own ears. “It will make the next few days easier.”
Isabel blinked, then squared her shoulders. The glint in her eye said she’d recovered herself. “And what sort of bride would that make me?”
“Bride?” Was the woman mad? “We’re not married.”
She jutted her thumb over her shoulder. “They don’t know that.”
Hot blood turned to ice in his veins. “Are you threatening me with exposure? I don’t take well to threats.”
Her mouth snapped shut and opened again. “No, I, um, simply meant that I might enjoy being a lady for a bit is all.”
He searched her eyes and found no malevolence there. Could he trust her with his family? He could. He felt it. “Do as you like,” he relented. “Now, if you will excuse me, wife, I have other matters to attend.”
“How will you explain it to them?”
Instantly, he took her meaning. “When the time comes, say in a month or so, I shall tell them that in our rush to be wed we hadn’t done the correct paperwork, and the marriage is invalid. You will have decided you were better rid of me and ran away with an Italian lord.”
Her head canted to the side, assessing. “How easily the lie comes to you.”
He felt himself flinch. “They expect no better of me. I’m the scapegrace of the family, haven’t you heard?”
With that, he strode out of the stall and called for a groom to attend Lady Daisy. Clearly, Isabel could handle herself. His boots a sharp click-clack against herringbone bricks, he stalked to the opposite end of the stable and climbed up to the hay loft, his mind racing. He grabbed a pitchfork and began pitching hay in no particular direction. He needed the physical exertion.
It was that bloody mystifying woman.
When he’d first seen her strolling arm in arm with Montfort and noted their close proximity, it had been all he could do not to give in to the urge, protective and unexpected, to pull her bodily away from the man. It was those eyes of hers. They were clear and direct, yet within them Percy sensed a vulnerability that caught between the chinks of his armor.
A woman with that gaze shouldn’t have dealings with Bertrand Montfort. First, he would exploit her. Then, he would crush her. And, lastly, he would discard her like rubbish once he’d finished with her.
Sometimes circumstance and bad luck bent people to its will and left them with no choice. Percy understood at a fundamental level how expert Montfort was at exploiting such circumstances to his benefit.
Coercion was at the root of Isabel’s relationship with Montfort, Percy felt it in his bones. He needed to get close to her. He needed her to trust him.
There was but one problem: he wanted her.
He’d convinced himself that he could control and channel his true nature into an asset as the Savior of St. Giles. He’d been wrong.
Instead, it had gotten him last night and landed him Isabel. He should have known that his wickedness, once wakened, took on its own life. He should have known he couldn’t control fire. And now he’d landed in it.
He tossed the pitchfork to the loft floorboards and made his way out of the stable. He needed to send a message to Hortense, informing her of his location and that plenty of intrigue was to be had here.
Then he would get himself down to the estate’s beach for a dip in frigid water.
How many years had it been since he’d felt the intimate touch of a woman? He’d stopped counting. The Percy who would have pursued the promise of a woman’s touch and acted on his desire had been locked up long ago, the key thrown away.
He wouldn’t become that man again.
Chapter 10
The library of Gardencourt Manor was a grand room.
Anchoring it was a single long wall lined from floor to ceiling with all manner of leather-bound books that swept down its entire length as myriad bibelots from around the world filled in the remaining space, including a standing globe and pianoforte near the exterior French doors.