Kathryn Caskie (12 page)

Mr. St. Albans turned abruptly and snatched up his small Newtonian sweeper, then whirled back to take Hannah’s hand. “Come with me.
Hurry!
” he shouted just as a roar of icy rain showered over them.

Hannah’s teeth clacked together as she watched Mr. St. Albans turn the knob on the lantern, raising the flame inside the small military tent where he had taken her for refuge from the storm.

With utmost care, he dried and wrapped his telescope in a length of sailcloth then lashed it to one of the wooden tent poles. From a leather sack, he withdrew a blanket and held it out to Hannah.

“Take off your wet pelisse and wrap yourself in this. You are shivering, and the fire in the brazier won’t last long. You are certain to catch a chill if you do not shed your wet clothing now.”

His fingers moved to her throat and pulled the ribbon tie of her bonnet loose.

Hannah stared at him as he lifted her bonnet from her head, unable to drag her eyes away from the beautiful man kneeling before her.

Water dripped from his jaw and from the coiled lock of hair at his brow. She swallowed deeply, and at that moment, felt something tighten inside her body.

Lifting her hands outward, Hannah gingerly accepted the blanket from him. “Why is this tent here? You s-seemed well prepared for the s-storm.” Already her teeth were chattering with the chill.

His gaze held hers fast and strong, and though he laid not a hand to her, said not a word for several seconds, her every sense seemed intensely attuned to his physical presence.

“The manor house is far from my view site, and I knew from the humidity in the air that a storm might well interrupt my sweeps this eve. I cannot afford to allow my telescopes to be ruined. So I brought the tent as a precaution.”

“Yes, of course.” Hannah tightened the blanket around her shoulders, suddenly feeling conscious of their proximity. “They are invaluable to you.”

He glanced, she was sure without meaning to, at a long narrow box at the back of the tent. “I had them constructed to my specifications. There are no others like them.” He quieted then and gazed deep into her eyes, then surprisingly caressed her cheek with the back of his damp hand. “And no other . . . like you, Miss Chillton.”

He turned his gaze from her, as if he meant to allow her a moment to take in his words, and shrugged off his soaked overcoat.

As he did so, a rush of heat from his body suffused her, pricking up her senses in a way she could never have imagined. Her heart pounded in her chest, wicking away the blood from her head and making her quite dizzy. Even so, she was more aware of Mr. St. Albans than she’d ever been.

She could hear the heaviness of his breathing over the pelting of rain on the tent walls, see the excitement in his eyes, and her body thrilled.

A warm shiver raced over her skin, and in that moment her instincts became inexplicably crossed. At once, she felt that she should dash from the tent, despite the storm raging outside. But also that she should take refuge in his warm, capable arms and kiss him . . . again.

She truly didn’t know what to do.

Oh, that she was more like her brother, Arthur. He was always in control. Always behaving logically. His emotions were at all times tempered by his morals and principles.

Not so for Hannah. At least not when she was near Mr. St. Albans. For when he was near, looking at her so . . . so seductively, her ability to reason seemed to vanish.

Perhaps she just needed a few more moments to tighten her grip on her judgment.

“Please, call me . . .
Hannah
,” she told him, before she could snatch the words back. Well, that request certainly purchased her a few more moments. Though she ought not to have ever said such a thing.

It was meant only as a thought, but she had to own that for some reason, as yet unknown to her, it seemed awkward to her ears that the man who touched her and kissed her with such intimacy should refer to her as Miss Chillton.

Her cheeks went hot and pink as the words left her mouth, but at the same time she longed to hear him whisper Hannah in that low, rich voice of his.

At least she didn’t say that aloud.

What was it about being alone in the dark with this man that made her want to act on her every impulse, no matter how inappropriate?

“Very well,
Hannah
.” Something moved in his eyes then, catching her notice. At first, she thought him wary, cautious, but then she recognized the look of profound uncertainty—something she never expected to observe in a man so confident as Mr. St. Albans. “I am . . . Griffin.”

“I overstepped, Mr. St. Albans,” Hannah blurted. “Do forgive me.”

He shook his head, sending a droplet sailing to her cheek. “No, Hannah, you did not. I’ve wanted, nay
needed
to tell you who I am—who I
really
am—since I came to Bath.” He exhaled, as though a great burden had at last been lifted from his shoulders. “Call me Griffin.
Please
.”

Hannah wasn’t sure she understood what he was saying, but she knew something had changed within him. It was almost as if he felt a great relief in sharing something so simple as his name with her.

“Griffin.” It felt so odd to think of him so.

“That’s right . . . I am Griffin. Remember that.”

What an odd thing to tell her. Why should she not remember his name?

Griffin leaned toward her, faster than she expected, and in that moment she knew he would kiss her.

Hannah pressed her splayed fingers to his chest, intending to stop him, at least for a minute. But the feel of hard muscles, his strength, beneath her fingertips was her undoing and instead of drawing back, she bowed into his embrace and allowed the strictures of Society to slip out through the fluttering tent flap.

Closing her eyes, she moved her lips gently against his, until he passionately claimed her mouth fully with his own.

Why had she fought these feelings, his advances, for so long?

What a great fool she had been.

She was not like her brother, Arthur. But now, as she felt the heady sensation of Griffin’s mouth moving over hers, Hannah wondered why she would ever have wished to be like her ever-proper brother.

It was difficult for Griffin to believe he held Hannah in his arms and that she was kissing him with an ardor that rivaled his own.

He had not resorted to trickery, as his brother would have. He had told her the truth of who he was, and that, somehow, had opened wide the door to Hannah’s heart.

Wrapping his arms tightly around her, he lowered Hannah to the homespun pallet he’d laid upon the ground earlier in the night, letting the blanket fall away from her shoulders.

He rested the weight of his upper body on his elbows over her and leaned back, the smallest amount, to look at Hannah . . . this beauty beneath him. Surely this was a dream.

Hannah shivered as she peered intently up at him from heavily lidded eyes, then cupped her hand behind his neck and hungrily drew his mouth back to hers.

Griffin sighed the moment her soft, full lips touched his and began to move.

He felt himself stiffen and his buckskin breeches grew ever tighter as her soft tongue slipped across his lower lip, and her mouth opened to let him explore the fleshy warmth inside.

He rolled to his right and let his finger trail lightly over her hip. Beneath the damp fabric of her gown, he felt the curve of her slender form, the soft give of her body under his fingertips. He skimmed her lower ribs, allowing his hand to drift higher over her body.

Hannah wriggled beneath his seeking touch, and though he knew her to be an innocent, she did not pull away even as his palm brushed over her bodice to the hardened peak of her breast. Instead, she arched passionately against his hand.

Griffin’s heart slammed against his ribs, pounding like the rain upon the earth outside the tent. The lustful urges he’d fought so hard to restrain, since the moment his eyes first beheld the beguiling Hannah, broke their bonds.

She stared wide-eyed up at him, her breathing quickening as though with anticipation of his next touch.

Griffin lifted his hand from her breast and ran his fingertip over her full bottom lip and her mouth opened. He expected her to beg him to stop, but instead she astonished him by uttering three simple words.

“Kiss me, Griffin.” Though her request was but a whisper, thin and unsure, he did as she asked and pressed his lips to hers.

She moaned as he kissed her, and her arms came up around him, encircling his shoulders.

Never before had he felt like this. Though he’d lain with women many times before, it was never like this. His body was tight and alive with need, his heart full with emotion.

He wanted nothing more than to rip her wet clothing away, and then his own, then press their naked bodies together.

There would be no guilt. Griffin knew this. There would be no shameful regrets, such as the sort he’d always felt after slaking his male needs with an eager miss in the wilds of Cornwall.

No, this time it would be different.

For in the morning, he would procure, with the earl’s assistance, a license and take it and Hannah to Bath Abbey without hesitation.

And there, he would make her . . . his wife.

Chapter Eleven

H
annah lifted her fingers to her lips, swollen and still damp from Griffin’s heated kisses. She stared up into his eyes, not quite able to reconcile what had just happened.

He lowered his gaze, as if he believed he’d gleaned some unspoken message from her—telling him to stop. But he had it all wrong. So wrong.

“No, Griffin.”

Pushing up, he started to rise.
Blood pudding.
She’d done it again!

Her hand shot upward and she caught his loosened neckcloth. Winding the starched fabric around her fingers, she pulled him back to her. “I only meant—” She softened her voice, not wanting to sound needy, the way her mother always did. “When I said ‘no,’ I meant I did not want you to stop.”

Her cheeks flushed hot again with embarrassment, and now it was her turn to avert her gaze, but somehow she managed one more small word.
“Please.”

She turned her eyes back to his face, hoping with all her being that she would find him smiling and as eager as she to enjoy just a bit more of the secret intimacy they’d shared only a minute or so before.

But he wasn’t.

His eyes changed in that instant from an expression of dark seriousness to one of wonder and surprise. She heard him inhale a shaky breath.

Griffin took her hand and pulled her fingers from his neckcloth. He leaned back.

Confusion rioted through Hannah, and suddenly she felt ashamed.

She had acted like a wanton, the very sort of woman her mother had always warned her brother about. The back of her eyes began to heat, and she clapped her palms over her lids.

Then she felt his grip around her wrist.

“Hannah,” he said, so softly that she barely heard him above the angry growl of the rain outside the tent.

He pulled her hand from her left eye and she saw that he was untying his neckcloth with his free hand. He let it drop to the ground. His waistcoat followed the same path, and before she knew it, Griffin tugged his shirttail from his buckskins and drew the wet lawn over his head, casting it aside as well.

The pulse of her heart pounded mercilessly in her ears. Lord above, this is not what she had meant, not at all . . . or was it?

Oh, she didn’t know anymore.

Her mind this eve was naught but one great tangled mass of contradictions.

Griffin bent his head and kissed her deeply.

Her hands eased up his sides and around to his back. She felt his smooth skin and tight muscles beneath. Her fingers delighted at the sensation, and she slipped her palms around to feel the defined mounds of his chest.

Griffin lifted himself and gazed into her eyes as she wriggled her fingers beneath the crisp mat of hair washing across his chest, until she felt the heavy beating of his heart throbbing against her hands. A sigh of pleasure escaped through her parted lips.

Her gaze sought out his face once more, just in time to see him close his eyes and drag a ragged breath into his lungs.

Within only a heartbeat, he opened them again and rested on his side next to her. He brushed a damp lock of hair from her forehead, then kissed her cheek.

She closed her eyes then, aware that now his fingers pulled at the cinch ribbon at her gown’s neckline.

Her own pulse quickened, and heat began to rush lower in her body as she felt Griffin lower her gown from her shoulders, then felt the cups of her stays, and indeed her lace-trimmed chemise as well, drawn back.

She daren’t open her lids; the cold air pricked at her nipples, and she thought she would die of mortification at that instant. That is, until she felt Griffin’s warm hand supporting the weight of her left breast and his mouth nestle over the hardened nipple of the other.

His tongue alternately suckled her and traced, with aching slowness, the pink skirt surrounding the engorged tip of her nipple.

His left hand gently cupped her breast fully while gently squeezing.

Never before had she imagined anything like this.

Well, maybe the act. On several occasions. But never
this
. Never.

Hannah moaned, lost in heady sensation.

As though hearing her, Griffin raised his mouth from her breast. He leaned over and coaxed her mouth open to his, as he moved atop her, nudging her legs open just enough for his own to move between and support his weight.

She could feel the hardness of him, pressing right against her . . . far too intimately . . . in a place where no miss would ever allow a gentleman to touch her.

She was sure of this, but her body did not seem to mind. And in truth, her body quite seemed to like it.

Without thinking, Hannah bucked her hips, instinctively inching down a little lower, edging him a little firmer between her legs.

Oh, this was so wanton. So, so
wanton
.

Hannah did not know exactly what would happen next. But she knew one thing. She never wanted the rain outside to stop.