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Chapter Four

S ian came to an abrupt halt when she came face-to-face with Christopher outside the chapel door.

What was he doing here? It had been only three days since his last visit to Sheridan Manor.

Three days during which she had tried to find an excuse to go see him and failed.

They barely knew one another. What reason could she come up with for a visit to Throckmorton Castle?

“You again.”

The corner of his perfect mouth curled at the same time as his eyebrow—the left, naturally—arched. “Me again. Good afternoon.”

There was a silence, during which Christopher allowed his gaze to roam over her.

Sian’s body grew hot wherever it landed, which was to say everywhere.

Even her feet didn’t escape his notice. Why was he looking at her with such intensity?

Was there something wrong with her appearance ?

At Branwen’s request, she had just gone to replace the flowers in the vase at the foot of the altar.

Had she somehow managed to stain her dress in the process?

Ripped one of the sleeves? Gotten the hem wet?

Did she have a smudge of dirt on her cheek?

Please, Lord, no. The last thing she wanted was to appear slovenly to him.

“You know,” Christopher said eventually, “you look like a bride, standing with flowers in your hand in front of the chapel.”

Everything within her surged at the words. She didn’t want to merely look like a bride; she wanted nothing more than to be a bride one day.

His bride.

After years spent yearning for their union, she would like nothing better than to be secure in the knowledge that she was his at last. If she looked like a bride, in his dark green tunic, he looked like the most dashing groom she had ever seen.

What would he look like naked? What would he feel like?

Soft and hard at the same time, she suspected, like kid leather wrapped over steel.

Was he tanned all over? Probably. Muscular?

Most definitely. Hairy? If he was, judging from the color of his blond locks, his body would be adorned with hairs as finely spun and as shiny as gold strands.

Would it tickle to feel them under her palms when she stroked him?

Perhaps. What was certain was that she would want to run her hands over every inch of him until she felt she’d learned him by heart.

A giant furry beast of her own to pet, all warm, soft, and comforting—nothing like a fish.

“No bride I know would choose to hold wilted flowers on her wedding day,” she breathed, forcing herself not to dwell on how glorious it would be to lie in his arms at last.

“Of course not. Silly me. Shows how much I know about weddings.” He said the word with the enthusiasm her seven-year-old sister, Seren, reserved for lessons with her Latin tutor.

“You don’t like weddings, then? Why aren’t I surprised?”

“Probably because I’m a man and predictable with my opinion.”

“Probably. Does that mean you never want to get married?” Her heart skipped a beat. Her breath caught in her throat. Her body tensed.

Here it was, at last, the question she’d wanted to ask him for months.

Christopher made a vague gesture with his right hand, not at all aware of what was at stake. “Eventually, I will get married, like everyone else. No need to worry about it now, though. I’m only five and twenty.”

She was only twenty, and marriage—to him—was all she worried about. But she could not tell him that, not yet, not like that. Instead, she asked what she had wanted to ask since he’d appeared in front of her.

“What happened to your cheek?”

Sian had to bunch her fist around the wilted flower stems to stop herself from reaching out to touch him. There was a slight graze under his left eye, and a bruise was discoloring the skin around it. She had not forgotten what he had told her once.

I only ever take an interest in people I can either fight with or fuck.

Well, she had cut him off before he could actually say the last word, but there had been no mistaking what he’d meant.

Was that what had happened? Had he gotten involved in a fight because of a woman he’d bedded?

Had the blow been inflicted by a disgruntled husband?

Suddenly, she wasn’t sure she wanted to know.

“I had no idea it was still showing,” he said, placing a tentative finger over the cut. “Is it very obvious?”

The question made something in Sian’s chest tighten. What sort of a lonely life did he lead that no one had pointed out to him that his cheek was bruised? Wasn’t there anyone at Throckmorton Castle who cared for him?

“It is rather obvious, yes, even if it doesn’t look too serious. How did you get injured?”

A smirk. “No doubt you’re hoping for a heroic tale, one where I rode to the rescue of a damsel in distress.”

“I’m hoping for the truth.”

“Of course you are,” he mumbled. “How didn’t I guess? You’re not like anyone else.”

“You think that people would rather hear an outrageous tale of heroism from your lips even if they knew it wasn’t true?”

“If by ‘people’ you mean ‘women,’ then yes. I find they lap it up as eagerly as kittens lap at their mother’s milk. I once convinced a pretty little maiden that I had fought a dragon, if you believe it.”

She did believe it. The poor girl would have drunk his every word and likely gotten lightheaded with them, like someone overindulging in mead.

“How did you really get injured?” she repeated, fighting a smile. Who would have thought the mighty, forbidding, scandalous Lord Ashton could be so whimsical? “I know it was no dragon. I’m no pretty maiden you can impress so easily.”

“Are you not? A maiden, I mean. Because you are certainly pretty.”

All the air left her lungs at the compliment.

Admittedly, it was not the first time he had called her pretty.

But it had been months ago when he hadn’t known her and only to highlight the contrast between her and Jane.

It had not meant a thing, so she had done her best not to obsess about a passing comment thrown in a conversation meant to unsettle her, knowing he would have only wanted to be his provoking self.

“You still haven’t answered my question,” she breathed, choosing not to confirm that she was indeed still a maiden. He would have guessed as much already anyway, or so she hoped.

Christopher sighed and leaned a shoulder against the chapel wall.

“Very well. It is a woefully uninspiring tale, but you asked for it. Don’t come complaining that you would rather have heard about how I fought the dragon, which was, if I recall correctly, covered with copper-colored scales and blowing smoke. ”

This time, she didn’t fight her smile and even gave a giggle. “I won’t.”

“A visitor arrived from Kent yesterday, a man who insisted on being shown the state of the castle so that he could report to my uncle. Why the man would bother himself with this, I have no idea,” he added, almost to himself.

“He’s not set foot at Throckmorton once in all the years I’ve been there.

Anyway, as we were going down the staircase, the man, who is rather frail and unsteady on his legs, stumbled from behind me, and I ended up going head over heels down the stairs when he fell against my back. ”

The flowers scattered at her feet in a shower of petals when Sian pressed her hands to her chest.

“ Arglwydd Mawr! ” He could have been killed, had almost been.

Christopher stared at her for a moment, blinked, and then burst out laughing. It was not a sound many people would have heard from his mouth, she suspected, and utterly intoxicating.

“Now, what does that mean, I wonder? ‘You silly man’ perhaps?”

“No. It only means ‘Dear Lord,’ I’m afraid.”

“Disappointing. But then again, it would have been cruel to mock me when, in reality, I probably saved the old man’s life.”

She kept staring at his bruised face in dismay. He was making light of it, but she had heard of more than one person breaking their necks on stairs. His fall could have had serious consequences. He might have saved the man, but he could have died.

“Ah, poor little Welsh lamb, are you disturbed by the gruesome sight?”

“Yes.” She was. Not in the way he meant, but she was disturbed. Not because it was gruesome but because it made her think of what could have happened.

“Don’t worry. I’ll live.”

He gave a crooked smile, and she had to avert her eyes because every time he smiled that special smile, she wanted to kiss him.

The fault did not lie with the impish curl of his lip, though, but with her and her growing feelings for him.

She fought a constant battle with her need to kiss him when they were together.

“What are you doing here, then?” she croaked, kneeling to retrieve the flowers she had dropped on the floor. Better to do that than reach out to him.

“The decision to come had nothing to do with me this time,” Christopher said, kneeling in turn to help her gather the scattered stems. The spontaneous gesture delighted her. The much-reviled Lord Ashton was not only whimsical but also gallant and helpful. That was unexpected.

Or was it?

The more she saw of him, the more convinced she was that he was not the man everyone thought him and would indeed make a perfect husband for her.

He seemed interested in what she had to say, he never made her feel clumsy, and with him, she could fool herself into believing she was as elegant and beautiful as Jane.

All she had to do now was convince her family that he could make her happy.

The rest of the world didn’t matter. They could think what they wanted. She knew the truth.

“What do you mean, you didn’t decide to come?” she asked, reaching out to a yarrow stem that had landed by the chapel door.

“Your uncle bade me come. He sent a message to Throckmorton this morning.”