Chapter Seven

D anny stiffened at the soft knock on her window. Lighting the candle at her bedside, she set down her book and tiptoed to where the moonlight shafted onto the dark floor and parted the curtains to reveal a most unwelcome creature.

Wishing she'd donned her dressing gown over her thin nightgown, Danny pushed the glass open and crossed her arms over her chest, letting her visitor know explicitly how she felt about his presence. "I hope you fall out of that tree and break your lying neck."

"Come now," Percy said, looking insufferably well-groomed for a man who'd just climbed a two-hundred-year-old oak. "Is that any way to greet a man who's come all this way to speak with you? The decent thing would be to invite me in."

"Decent? That's a laugh coming from you." She leaned against the sill, no longer able to keep up that back-bruising posture without her corset. "Believe it or not, you're not the first gentleman to climb that tree and ask for entry into my bedchambers."

Smiling eyes turning hard, his tone held a note of danger when he asked too casually, "And have any been accepted in?"

Why did that jealous glint in his eye, the one that promised the slicing of other men, thrill her so? "That's quite the question. One I believe is none of your concern."

She heard his teeth grinding and felt a sense of satisfaction. Served him right. First, he'd had the gall to be the heir of Grandfellow, and now he was at her chamber window, at a most unreasonable hour and demanding to know intimate details about the suitors in her life. Ha!

"Smugness isn't an attractive look, Lady Daniella," he said.

She smiled, fully aware of how his gaze kept wandering to the untied ribbon at her throat. "Liar."

His eyes widened, but his lips smiled. "Done with the pleasantries already? Very well, then." He crouched low and reached for the branches just above his head. "I suggest you step back."

Danny's arms dropped in her disbelief. "You can't possibly think you'd land safely?" It was a good eight-foot jump.

"Worried about my welfare now, Lady Daniella?" He placed a hand over his chest. "I'm touched."

"You're touched in the head if you think I will call for aid when you break bones doing something so reckless."

"Leave me to the wild dogs, will you? The same heroine who secured and bound the arm of a most grateful groundskeeper? I think not." He readied himself again. "Another step or so back, would you?"

Heart pounding, she grasped the window's ledge. "Stop this! You'll kill yourself—"

Tumbling back, the only thing that kept her head from cracking on the floor was a set of hands that came around to cradle her neck. Warm hands, big enough to be a giant's, and comforting if not for the boulder weight pressing down on her chest.

She gasped and stared up into eyes the color of hard coal and midnight dreams. "You didn't break yourself," she said stupidly.

Those eyes smiled. "Disappointed?"

She shook her head, still dazed. He smelled smoky, like the maple wood bonfires they lit at the country fair every week. Truly, was there anything about this man that wasn't perfect? From those tender hands to those sinful eyes to the hard contours of his figure that was currently pressed all along her barely clothed body.

Her mind cleared and with it came the knowledge of two imperfect traits: He was a liar, and he kissed like a devil without so much as a farewell afterwards.

"Remove yourself," she said, willing her mind not to focus on how his thigh was wedged between her legs and the ache it produced.

Those warm fingers tangled in her hair, seeming to be a different distraction for a different person. "I kind of like it here," he said. "Is it not cozy for you?"

‘Cozy' was not a wanton enough word for what it felt like to have his fingers brush against her skin. "You're heavy."

Fingers stopping their divine attentions, he glanced down at their pressed bodies, seeming to realize for the first time he'd trapped her beneath him when he'd broken his fall on her person. But he did not move immediately. Instead, he smiled—the scoundrel—and slipped down her body in a most indecent way before coming to his feet and offering her a hand up.

"You're taking this all rather well," he said.

Danny came to her feet, releasing his hand as quickly as possible, and smoothed down her nightgown. "I've found hysterics unhelpful."

"Don't tell me you've had a man pin you down as well?"

"Would that make you jealous?"

"Yes."

Danny laughed. For a man who'd boasted of killing and subterfuge, he was remarkably straightforward. His presence here should have sparked some panic, but Danny found herself uncommonly at ease. She knew something about following her instincts, and he'd had two opportunities to harm her and had taken neither. Words were important, but actions remained the deciding factor of a man's character.

She made for the chair by the fire and sat, shifting to get the best look at him in the moonlight.

Such a lean man. The black moleskin clung to his thighs and arms, both defined but slight, and yet he'd felt like a mountain atop her, as if there were nothing but muscle and sarcasm under the fabric.

Crossing her ankles, she made a point to look at the blue curtains behind him and not at those eyes that seemed to glow in the shadows and see right through her . "Now that you've found out we're stuck with each other, I assume you came here to threaten me to keep my mouth shut again." She refused to glance at her bedside table, where evidence of their last nightly encounter lay hidden beneath her daily correspondence. "On with it, then."

"Don't tell anyone about what we discussed at the Leishires' ball."

She frowned. That was it? "Or else...? Really, is this only the second time you've threatened someone? The first time was much better."

He chuckled and took her place leaning against the windowsill. "Most people find me terrifying, you know? I'm quite famous in the rookeries."

"Most people believe coconuts are small enough for a dog to eat whole. Besides, I can always shoot you if you do something I don't like."

His gaze flickered to the reticule on the table beside her, her choice of seat in proximity to her weapon now evidently clear.

His teeth flashed into a smile, and Danny was glad for the chair's support.

"I won't tell anyone," she said, rising. "Happy? Now you may go out the way you came or risk a very real possibility of running into our housekeeper, Mrs. Norman. For your safety, I'd choose the window."

He blinked. "That's it?"

She cocked her head. "What were you hoping for? Refreshments? Shall I wake the whole house and invite you to tea?" Really, were men nothing but fools? "If Papa didn't shoot you on sight, my brother certainly would. And blood is such an affair to wash out of the rugs."

When he spoke, it was not with wounded pride, but with something darker, deeper. "What a sharp tongue you have, Daniella."

Why did he have to say things in that whispered tone? And why did her toes curl hearing it? She pressed her feet against the cold floor and nodded to the window. "You should leave."

He didn't move. "And if I don't wish to?"

"I could always scream and wake the household that way."

He came off the sill, shaking his head, and approached with unhurried steps that reminded Danny of the prowling tiger she'd read about just this afternoon.

She held her ground until she had to tilt her head back to keep him in her sights.

He looked down at her, his eyes black and predatory. "You didn't scream."

It was suddenly a struggle to catch her breath. "I did not."

"Why not?"

Her body was floating. His body, his smell, her head spun with it. The man had no right to be so large and smell like hidden fantasies.

A slight tug on her hair had her blinking fast and upwards into his smiling eyes.

"Why didn't you scream, Daniella?"

Why would she scream when all she wanted to do was sigh? She leaned into his scent, unable to help herself. "It would not be kind to wake the whole of the house for one inconsequential vermin."

His responding grin was devastating as his fingers lifted her chin. "I'd say you aren't as honest as you claim to be."

The insult in his words, the idea that she was on his same level of deceit, had her feet firmly coming back to the ground.

She batted his hand away, his spell broken. "You make assumptions, sir, and I don't care for it."

He snorted. "My lady likes nothing aside from badgering a man for his right opinions."

"His wrong opinions," she shot back, gaze narrowing. This man was an ever-changing path. One minute sensual and agreeable, and the next, completely infuriating. "Arrogance isn't so attractive either, Your Grace ." She paused. "And I'm not your lady."

"Really?"

His superior grin made her wish to break every mirror in the house, quite a feat since there were at least three dozen on this floor alone.

"Tell me," he said, "do most ladies kiss men without an understanding between them? Or just the ladies you know?"

Danny's mouth gaped. He didn't dare assume such things! "Cad!"

He shrugged. "Better a cad than a tease."

The blow struck true. Danny had heard nothing else from their social circle for years. Lady Daniella, charming and lovely and the worst tease to plague society. Men beware the succubus's charms.

She'd never accepted such idiotic labeling for truth. Having standards and being unafraid to lower them didn't make her anything but expectant. And she'd never encouraged a single suitor. Not. A. Blasted. One.

She'd had but three kisses in her life. One a chaste thing by Mr. Pendor that she'd made sure to end quickly and with the understanding made clear a man should wait for an advance to be welcomed. The second and third... they had been anything but chaste and with the same man. This man. A man she'd let into her bedchambers, barely clothed.

Anger gave way to shame.

She turned her back, unwilling to show him anything less than a warrior's face.

He cursed, and she felt the heat of him through her thin nightgown as he neared.

"Forgive me," he said.

His whisper sent her sizzling.

Never one for girlish outbursts or ridiculous fantasies, she wasn't the naive seventeen-year-old any longer. She was a woman of twenty and she had no illusions of what her reactions to his nearness meant. She'd been courted by nine men, feeling everything from mild amusement to rigid disgust, sometimes all during the same day with the same person. But Percival Cole made her feel nothing but alive. No one else made her want. Made her ache. In the strangest way, feel safe. The rest of the male population may have thought of her as they would: A lady. A tease. Cold and unfeeling. But it would not be the same with him .

She knew how this would end. The way she chose.

His hands came to her shoulders, hot and big. "Please, Daniella, forgive me. I should not have said such a thing."

She closed her eyes, reveling in the heat and size of him. "No, you shouldn't have."

"I didn't come here to fight."

She shuddered as his lips skimmed her ear. "No, you came to frighten me."

"Is it working?"

It was that final note of vulnerability in his question—so slight, she'd known he hadn't meant to give his insecurity away—that had her twisting around and pressing herself into his hard body. Or was it he who'd twirled her to bring them chest to chest?

When his mouth sought out hers, the who of it ceased to matter. What she'd mistaken as a kindling flame was a raging blaze that had the potential to ruin everyone in its path if not controlled. But there was no stopping the force between them, powered by desire and a blending of iron forged wills that somehow fit perfectly together.

There was no trepidation, only a sense of excitement that should've given her pause.

It didn't.