Lord Beast (16 page)

She grumbled something
inarticulate and reached for her book again, locating easily the page she had
left off, and resumed her reading. It was easy to lose herself in the stanzas
of Wordsworth and she found herself engrossed to the extent that she lost track
of time.

“Not another weapon you intend
using on me, I hope?”

Startled, her eyes snapped to the
direction of his voice and she involuntarily dropped the book. From her
contorted position on the ground, he practically towered over her from the
other side of the oak. “Rhys!” Dani exclaimed, shifting to a sitting position
on her elbows. Somehow, she had managed to sidle down on the blanket until she
was lying flat on her back. “What are you doing here?”

She couldn’t see anything past
that hood but she could feel his gaze on her nonetheless. “
What
are you
wearing?” he rasped, harshly.

His hands, she noted, were fisted
at his sides as if he were physically restraining himself from something. An
imperceptibly hot shiver went through her.

“Do you like it?” Dani asked,
tilting her chin onto her chest and surveying the length of her. Good God, she
hadn’t realised she was about to explode out her bodice. Hastily, she scrambled
upright and hoped gravity would rectify a precarious situation.

“It’s indecent,” he barked.

She threw him a dirty look. “It
is not. Stop being such a prude. This is the
height
of fashion.”

“I don’t care if it’s the height
of idiocy,” he said savagely. “It’s the height of torture, more like.”

Dani stared quizzically at the
dress she wore then back up at Rhys. “Don’t be ridiculous. It’s quite
comfortable.”

“Not,” Rhys stated emphatically,
“for you.”

Still finding this just as
confusing as the man before her, Dani thought better of pushing for answers she
might not find savoury. “I suppose you want me to invite you in for tea?” she
asked him.

Rhys appeared to take in the cosy
setting she had established in the small garden. “Where is your aunt?” he asked
suddenly.

“Sleeping. I’m sure she will wake
up at any moment.”

“Good,” he grunted.

Dani sighed. “Would you like to
go inside for tea?” she asked, repeating herself.

“No, out here is fine.”

Dani waited quietly for a moment,
watching him intently as he just stood there looking at… her? Well, she hoped
he was looking at her. “Would you like to sit?” she asked, gesturing to the
wide blanket spread around her.

He hesitated a moment before
following her indication, placing himself right on the tiny corner of the
blanket. It was funny watching him endeavour to maintain a wide berth of space
between them and at the same time try to contain his impressive size on the
small edge he had allocated himself. Dani had to smother a smile.

“Danielle!” her aunt called,
swinging open the window of the drawing room she had been in and popping her
grey head out. “Why did you let me drift off like that? Have you been out here
all day? Would- oh, hello. Is this proper?”

Fiona never had to act as
chaperone until Dani entered her life, so proprieties were something new to
her. “Don’t worry, aunt,” Dani reassured with a smile. “Lord Ashcroft has just
joined me.”

“Ashcroft, you say?” she said,
drolly surprised as she pushed her spectacles up her nose and squinted at the
man in question. Astonishingly, the old woman snorted with disbelief. “Pah.
That’s some tramp in a cloak. Be careful, gel. I’ll send out refreshments then
you send him on his way. And I’ll leave the window open too, so don’t get any
of this nonsense into your head.”

“A tramp?” Rhys echoed, amazed,
as he watched her disappear again.

As hard as she tried, Dani could
not contain the embarrassing little snort of mirth that escaped her. She looked
at him with wide, gleeful eyes, her hands clapped over her mouth.

“Don’t,” Rhys warned.

Dani shook her head trying to
tell him that she wouldn’t ever
dream
of laughing at him, but fearful if
she were to open her mouth she would do just that. It was hard to keep her
composure in the presence of a man she could scarcely see yet was able to infer
the palpable threat coming off him.

“Danielle,” he said in a gravelly
voice, “the last day has by far been the worst in my life. You would be trying
my patience at your peril if you laughed.”

The desire to know why his day
was terrible trumped the overwhelming urge to burst into hysterics. “Why?” she
managed to strangle from her throat, a smile in her voice. “Why was your day
bad?”

“Apparently, I’ve somehow made a
re-emergence into society.”

Her eyes danced with laughter at
his predicament. “Of course. And now everybody wants a piece of the Earl of
Falmouth.”

“Exactly.”

“Poor thing. Such a hard life
being so popular.”

One of their few servants carried
out a tray laden with tea and sandwiches and set it in the middle of the
blanket.

“You’re laughing at me again,” he
told her dryly, reaching for a small triangle.

“Oh, I wouldn’t say that. Teasing
you, maybe.”

“For being popular? Sounds more
like mocking.”

She shrugged, the side of her
mouth lifting in an ironic smile. “Perhaps you take for granted what it is like
to have all of society at your feet.” She noticed he had adopted possibly the
most masculine reclining position she had ever borne witness to. Long, muscular
legs stretched out along one edge of the blanket, booted feet crossed at the
ankles. She watched, mesmerized, the flexing of his taut thighs through the
fawn-coloured breeches he wore as he stretched for another triangle. Rhys lay
back on his elbows, completely at ease, brimming with sensual magnetism that
left her mouth dry and her skin burning.

“Perhaps that is the most
ludicrous thing I have ever had the misfortune to hear,” he returned,
enunciating his sentence by what Dani thought was popping an
entire
triangle sandwich into his mouth.

“Are you telling me you don’t
enjoy the attention?”

“I deplore it.”

“Really? How peculiar. Many would
willingly sell their own mother for a taste of your infamy.”

“They can keep their mothers and
take the infamy for free.”

Dani gave him a speculative look,
curiosity gnawing at her from the inside out.

“You’ve got that look about you,”
Rhys warned over a mouthful of cucumber and bread. “Don’t even think about it.”

“What?” Dani protested
innocently.

“That
look
. You’re about
to ask me something I’m not going to want to answer. Don’t even-”

“Well, now that you
mention
it,” she said over him, loudly and pointedly, “I do have a couple of
questions.” And so quickly he couldn’t divulge an interruption: “Why the
aversion? Why stay if you don’t like it? What made you decide to stay at
Falmouth?”

He was silent for a long moment.
Dani raised questioning brows at him, urging him to answer with a look of hope
and encouragement.

“I was just waiting for you to
get your breath back,” he said dryly.

“Are you going to answer me?” she
demanded.

“Maybe.”

He didn’t say anything more.

Dani ground her teeth together.
“Rhys!”

“Fine. If you
must
know, I
would trade in all of this,” he gestured vaguely with his hand, “for the simple
life I used to have in Ireland.”

“What kind of life was that?”

“A life devoid of an impertinent
little debutante intent on murdering me with a barrage of questions.”

That earned him a filthy look.

Rhys sighed. “I used to sail.”

“You were a
pirate
?”

“Why the hell would you think
that? Of course I wasn’t a pirate, woman. I was setting up a merchant fleet and
establishing links with the East when the missive about my… father reached me.”

“You would certainly suit the
role of a pirate,” she informed him cheerfully. “But why did you stop doing
what you loved?”

Rhys was not going to answer that
question. The little minx was intent on baiting him today and she was, he
reluctantly admitted, succeeding. He couldn’t help it. That bloody dress. She
practically poured from it. If she could see where his eyes continued to drift
throughout their conversation, she would be affronted. Or would she?

“Who says I stopped?” he growled.
Yes, he had stopped being personally involved in his business investments, but
that didn’t mean he had stopped profiting from them. Luckily, the fleet had
been adequately established by the time of his father’s death and Rhys was able
to manage it flexibly from Falmouth and London respectively. When the accident
occurred, he made sure capable men were placed in the higher management positions
to ensure that he did not have to show his face. All business correspondence he
took care of from the confines of Falmouth Castle. But he would not reveal all
that to Dani, not on his life. He could just imagine her reaction to his
explanation. She would reprimand him for being afraid, for being a coward, that
his features would scarcely impact a trading venture.

“You still sail, then?” she asked
dubiously.

“No. But I can be a pirate.”

She looked at him as if he were
mad. And he felt, at that moment, that he was. “Rhys, what are you talking
about?”

He rolled onto his side, extended
his hand and closed his fingers around the warm, silken skin of her bare arm,
gently but firmly yanking her closer to him. She fell forward onto her palms,
her eyes startled. “I thought pirates claimed their hostages for their own,” he
told her huskily, “took whichever woman pleased them.”

“Rhys,” she squeaked.

“Yes?” he purred, leaning in
close to her and revelling in her unique scent, the heat of her nearness. He
wanted her closer; he wanted to be absorbed into her. He yearned to touch her,
to taste her, to have her in the only way a man could have a woman. The need
was so powerful, so overwhelming, he ached with it. With a growl of
satisfaction, he jerked her towards him again and she almost toppled onto the
tray of sandwiches, needing to brace one of her hands against his shoulder.

“What are you doing?” she
mumbled, her voice thick.

He looked at her, marvelling at
the blueness of her eyes, the slumberous dilated look of a woman lost in a
world of passion and need and desire. A pulse throbbed from the points their
bodies touched, hot and demanding.

“What does it feel like?”

Those eyes… and that
dress
.
What a little minx she was. She could drive a man wild with the look she had on
now. Wild.

“But… The cloak…”

“You don’t need to see me,” he
urged raggedly, his hand mindlessly stroking her arm in a repetitively
deliriously rhythm.

A small, incoherent sound escaped
her slightly parted mouth and she seemed to sway towards him. He could feel her
about to relent, about to relinquish control of that wondrous body to him. Her
eyes were half-shut already, unfocused and dazed with need, and the heat… Lord,
she was on fire. He could devour her for days, sate himself over and over-

“Danielle!” Her Aunt Fiona
hollered from within the cottage. “Have you gotten rid of the tramp yet?”

Dani lurched away from Rhys, her
breath escaping from her in one long hiss as if she had been holding it for a
long time. She stumbled slightly, toppling a cup from its saucer in the
process.

“Danielle?” Fiona stuck her head
out the window. “Oh, I see he’s still here.”

“I assure you, madam, I was just
leaving,” Rhys told the old woman witheringly.

How could he be so cool and
composed when she felt as if she were about to disintegrate into a cindering
pile of ashes? Her equilibrium was thrown off-kilter and her mind still clung
to the blurry daze of passion that had consumed her but moments before yet he
reclined there, completely at ease in his surroundings, as if nothing had
occurred at all.

“Good, good,” Fiona mumbled as
she began to turn away. “You wouldn’t be the first tramp our Danielle has given
food to, but you’ve certainly loitered the longest.”

“Pay her no heed,” Danielle said
suddenly, unable to stop the smile sweep across her lips.

Rhys grunted humourlessly.

“You shouldn’t do that, you
know,” Dani said, quietly as a blush crept up her cheeks.

“What?”

Dani knew that
he
knew
exactly what she meant and that he was deliberately playing coy just to irk her
and make her uncomfortable. She gave him a glare. “That,” she snapped,
gesturing vaguely at the air that separated them. “Taking advantage of my
conditions.”

“Your conditions?” he asked
incredulously.