She wrenched off her spencer and started to unb.u.t.ton her blouse with fingers that shook.

"Christina..." Lucas covered her hands with his. He was shaking, too.

"Don't stop me," Christina said. "Please-"

He shook his head. His eyes were smoky dark with desire. "You will regret it."

"I want it," Christina said. "I want you."

He made a sound halfway between a gasp and a groan and she knew that for the first time she had broken through that cold reserve and reached the man beneath. A feeling took her that was part fear, part triumph, and wholly exciting. She wanted this man, needed him desperately.

He kissed her again. He tasted so good, hot and masculine, and he smelled good, too, of fresh air and summer gra.s.s and a musky scent that was the essence of him. Her senses drank him up. Something shifted and opened within her, a willingness to recognize her own desires at last. It felt arousing, dangerous and yet so right because it was Lucas that she was with and it was Lucas she needed.

He picked her up and carried her through to the inner room, placing her gently on the bed, coming down beside her, propping himself on one elbow. She wanted him to kiss her again but he was still, leaning over her, studying her face. She sensed hesitation in him and another emotion she could not place. Confusion? She doubted Lucas Ross was ever confused in his dealings with women, yet he was uncertain now.

"It shouldn't be like this," he started to say, but she pressed her fingers to his lips.

"Hush." She drew his head down to kiss him again and felt the resistance in him melt. Through the thick material of his breeches she could feel his erection hard against her thigh. She pressed against it and heard him groan again with a harsh urgency. Suddenly it was too much; she had waited too long. She pushed the shirt from his shoulders with hands made clumsy with eagerness. She had wanted to touch him since the day she had seen him cutting the lilacs in the gardens, so powerfully built, so elegant with the slide of muscle under warm, smooth skin. She ran her hands over his shoulder and back, exulting in the sensation, then reached down to unfasten his breeches. His hands b.u.mped hers. They were as awkward as virgins; she wanted to laugh and yet there was such a tight, sharp ache inside her that defied laughter.

"Lucas, please..."

She heard him swear under his breath as he stripped off his breeches, and then his body was hot and hard against her softness-and she was definitely overdressed. She thought of the time it would take to remove her clothes, the frustration to struggle out of all the layers, and then she felt something rip and Lucas's hands on her bare shoulders, pushing down her bodice, and she could almost have wept with relief.

"Oh, yes..." His mouth at her breast made her twist and writhe. She had never wanted anything in her life as much as she wanted Lucas now. She was the one who pulled up her skirts, shameless now, brazen. There was a moment of longing, of desperate antic.i.p.ation, and then he was kneeling between her thighs and sliding inside her. It was fast, fierce and desperate. She came at once in a helpless tumble of ecstasy that would have had her crying out had Lucas not covered her mouth with his.

She had experienced nothing like this before. The lovemaking she had known as a debutante was a pale imitation of the pa.s.sion and emotion she felt now. It had been the exploration of a young woman on the cusp of adulthood who had been eager to grasp at life and understand its secrets. In contrast, the depth of her feelings now scared and awed her so much she could not think about them, and she let them float away and emptied her mind to everything except sensation. She clung to Lucas as he continued to move inside her, the smooth slide of his body over and in hers an almost unendurable pleasure.

He bent his head to her b.r.e.a.s.t.s again and the sensation ripped through her, building, always building, toward that ultimate pleasure. She grasped the wooden bars of the bed head and clung to them as his body took hers, feeling him through every inch of her, a part of her. At each stroke the feelings intensified and she released her grip on the bed and slid her hands down over his back, his taut b.u.t.tocks, drawing him in ever closer. She came again, hard, shattering with a gasp of shocked pleasure at the sheer, brilliant beauty of it. She felt the tension in him as her body drove his over the edge and at the last moment she felt him withdraw from her and collapse at her side, breathing hard.

"Oh!" She lay still in a welter of tumbled clothes and equally confused emotions. She was afraid; at the back of her mind feelings started to stir, and she did not want to confront them. Then she felt Lucas's hands moving over her with leisurely ease, unfastening b.u.t.tons and untying laces. The realization that he was undressing her, stripping her, shocked her so much that everything was driven from her mind other than wanton need. She had thought herself sated. Now, though, in the darkness, with shifting shadow and patterns of moonlight, with Lucas's touch on her bare skin, she felt shameless and wicked.

Her clothes were gone. There was the kiss of the cool air on her bare skin, and then Lucas was touching her again, exploring her with his lips and fingers and tongue, and her body seemed to open to each and every caress, each demand he made of her. He slid a hand down from her shoulder to her breast. She could feel it lie warm and heavy in his palm just as it had done on the first night he had almost made love to her. Her body jerked at the inciting memory. He ran his fingers over her nipple and she felt it harden, heard herself moan. Already she could feel her body tightening with renewed need. He played with her nipples, tweaking them, rolling them until they were tight buds of pleasure and the hot, tight sensation within her intensified.

"My b.r.e.a.s.t.s..." she whispered. "I always thought they were too big."

She heard Lucas laugh. The sound, so low and intimate, made her shiver. He ran his tongue up the underside of one breast and she shifted restlessly. "There is no such thing," he said, his lips against her nipple. "Your b.r.e.a.s.t.s are perfect. You are perfect."

His bit down gently and Christina writhed, stifling another cry.

"How do you feel?" Lucas's voice was soft. "How do I make you feel, Christina?"

"Wicked," Christina admitted. "Shameless." She could hear both pleading and pleasure in her tone. She had not quite abandoned all modesty, and lying here naked, spread beneath him, she felt utterly exposed. Her mind trembled at the wantonness of it but she did not want to stop. He had unleashed in her something so wild she could only beg for surcease.

"You can be more wicked still."

Lucas slid his hand down and between her thighs, spreading them apart. She caught her breath. His hand covered her mound, his fingers sliding over the damp folds between her thighs. She could feel herself shaking now. She did not want to give him the satisfaction of knowing how deeply he could affect her, yet there was no hiding it from him. His fingers unerringly found her swollen nub and pinched it very gently. Christina gasped, arching. He did it again, and the sensation shot through her body so sharply she cried out. She was snared by the feelings he aroused in her, captured by the powerful sensuality and the sheer wicked pleasure. He stroked her nub, rubbing gently, fueling those sensations. Her body twitched. She could not stop it. She moaned again.

"And how do you feel now?" Lucas's question was accompanied by another sly stroke that made her quiver.

"I feel so breathless," she whispered. "So strange."

"Good."

Her body felt hot and acquiescent beneath his hands. He returned to her nub, thumbing it, making her hips jerk hard. He held them down and put his mouth to her and the shock ripped through her. No one had ever done this to her before. She had had no idea.

She heard Lucas make a sound of satisfaction deep in his throat. He held her tightly and touched his tongue to her, keeping her still when she tried to roll away, flicking at her core, teasing her with long slow strokes so that the pleasure built and she writhed under his hands.

"Lucas." Her thighs were quivering. Her entire body was trembling. She gave a keening cry as she broke, shuddering and lifting her hips against his mouth in frantic rhythm.

He slid back up her body, pulling her into his arms, kissing her gently. She could smell the muskiness of her own scent on him and felt another pang of shock and sinful pleasure. Lucas cupped her face and kissed her again, his lips moving over hers.

"I want you again," he whispered. She felt the press of his erection against her thigh, hard and urgent. "May I?"

Christina made a sound of sleepy acquiescence, but all lethargy fled as he grabbed the bolster and rolled her onto her stomach, pushing it underneath her, canting her up so that she was almost on her knees. She felt his hands smooth down her back and over her b.u.t.tocks, sliding between her thighs, parting her.

"I won't hurt you," he said. "Tell me to stop if I do."

He slid into her and her mind splintered with a different sort of pleasure. She was so sleek and tight and he felt so huge that it was difficult to take him all. She felt overwhelmed, invaded. He moved very gently, easing forward, allowing her body to adjust to the sense of possession. It was exquisite, overpowering. She clamped around him like a velvet glove and following blind instinct her body moved with his, pushing back. Immediately he drove into her a little harder, a little faster, and she gasped as her whole body jerked to his thrusts. He surged deep within her and she heard him groan, a harsh sound, elemental. The pleasure pushed her relentlessly onward, burning higher, claiming her until it swept her away with the force of a tidal wave, her heartbeat wild and the ecstasy pulsing through her.

For a while she lay there, aware of nothing but the shimmer of sensation fading through her body, Lucas lying at her side, and the whirl of feeling that poured through her body in a torrent. She had never felt like this; she had thought that she was experienced but instead she had been unknowing, unaware of the depth of emotion of which she was capable, ignorant of how it felt to make love with a man she...

A man she loved.

A man she loved, not with a girl's infatuation but a woman's emotion.

She lay absolutely still as she thought about it. She was in love with Lucas Ross and it did not matter who, or what he was. Servant or lord, it made no difference to her feelings.

She turned her head to look at Lucas. She was warm, lying in the circle of his arm. He was stroking her hair. It felt utterly perfect, as though they had been made for this moment. She wanted to feel happy, but instead the slide of emotion was very different, a deep, dark fall into despair. The tears p.r.i.c.kled her throat and stung the backs of her eyes.

She had made a terrible mistake.

Again she felt that rush of emotion-dark, terrifying. Love and loss were two sides of the same coin. She had learned that when she was young.

Besides, now that she could think rationally again she realized that what they had just done had been wonderful but it was forbidden and very, very foolish. It was tempting but it was wrong. It could lead nowhere and it could cause a very great deal of trouble.

Somehow she was going to have to go back and pretend that this had never happened. She was going to have to do it because there really was no alternative. Perhaps Lucas could be her lover for a little while, but in the end the outcome would be the same; there was no future for them. There could not be. She did not want to love him. She did not want the vulnerability that love brought, nor did she want the pain. And if she continued on this foolish path, that was exactly what would happen.

She made a tiny, instinctive movement away from Lucas's embrace. He felt it.

"Christina?" he said.

"This can't happen again," she said shakily. She rolled away from him and stood up, feeling her legs tremble. It felt cold out of the shelter of Lucas's arms. Immediately she wanted that security back, that astonishing sense of belonging.

"It's wrong," she said. "We must not do it again."

"Why not?" Lucas said. He propped himself on one elbow, watching her. She was conscious of his gaze all over her as she tried to find her scattered clothing. Her hands were shaking so much she could scarcely manage to dress herself. She felt cold inside and out. Suddenly the little cottage seemed chill and cheerless and their encounter squalid and shameful, the mistress of the house seducing her gardener. What had she been thinking? Lucas was a servant, a member of her staff. It was her role to care for her people, not to use them. She felt ashamed.

"It's wrong," she said again. "It's wrong because I would be taking advantage." She avoided his gaze. She did not want to look at him or for him to look at her. She felt so vulnerable with her emotions stripped bare. She ached for him and she knew he wanted her, too. Yet she had to do the right thing whilst impossibly tempted by the wrong. "I am older than you," she said, "and I am your employer. It would be wrong to exploit that and abuse my position. If relationships between staff members are forbidden, I can scarcely expect to break those rules myself. That would be hypocritical."

Lucas stood up quickly, wrapping the blanket around his hips. He came over to her and gripped her shoulder, partly turning her to face him so that she was forced to meet his eyes. She could feel the warmth of his hands through the thin material of her blouse. His touch woke all the longing within her. She shivered.

"That isn't how it is between us," he said harshly.

She risked a quick look at him. He looked fierce, and there was hardness in his eyes she wished she had not seen because it only served to remind her that beyond desire he had no feelings for her. He could not. He was so self-contained. He needed no one.

"It is." She was not going to tell him that it was all the more impossible because she loved him. She had to finish this now, before it had begun. She had to do it for both their sakes.

"Do you really believe that?" Lucas said. "That you would be abusing your position if we..." He hesitated, as though choosing his words with care. "If we were to be together?" He was frowning now, his gaze searching her face.

"Yes, I do," Christina said. "It is my duty to protect Kilmory and all the people who belong here." She bit her lip. "To fail to live up to my responsibilities would be quite wrong. I could not place you in so difficult a position."

She saw Lucas's lips twist into a wry smile. He took her hand and pressed a kiss on her palm. "You are an extraordinary woman, Christina MacMorlan," he said slowly. "Not one man in ten would be as honorable as you."

He let her go and moved over to pick up her cloak and bonnet whilst Christina knelt down to hunt for her hairpins on the stone floor. They seemed to have scattered everywhere. Once she had found a handful she stood up and Lucas wrapped the cloak about her, his hands lingering for one long moment on her shoulders as though he wanted to pull her back into his arms. She wanted it, too; she wanted it quite dreadfully and she did not dare look at him in case he read that message in her eyes.

"Thank you, Mr. Ross." She made an effort to rea.s.sert formality, then realized how ridiculous it sounded. No wonder, after such liberties. His mouth on hers, his hands holding her, his body inside hers, so intimate, so impossible to forget. She shivered again. Part of her wanted Lucas to stop her leaving, to tell her they could be together, that everything would be all right. Yet it would not be, she knew that, and another part of her was so grateful to him for not making matters any more difficult for her than they already were.

"Good night, Lady Christina," Lucas said. And she let herself out into the cold night, wondering if she was not being honorable after all and was simply a fool to reject such pleasure in a life empty of it.

LUCAS THREW HIMSELF down on the narrow bed, put his hands behind his head and stared up at the ceiling. His body felt satisfied but his mind was tied up tight in knots, his head aching.

He had behaved unforgivably. Not since he had been in his teens had he been so at the mercy of his senses. He had never lost control the way he had done tonight with Christina.

Not such a monk now, Lucas.

The irony was not lost on him. He had not slept with a woman in a very long time, and then he had chosen the one woman he should never have touched.

He had thought himself invulnerable. Over the years he had started to believe that he needed no one, no physical intimacy, no emotional closeness. As a youth he had been as careless and thoughtless as any other young man in his att.i.tudes toward women and s.e.x, but as he had grown older he had found himself thinking more and more of the fact that he was a b.a.s.t.a.r.d, conceived out of wedlock, and that his birth had caused his mother endless shame and grief. He could never be like his father, seducing, abandoning without care, without thought. That realization alone had prevented him from ever becoming a rake.

Or it had until tonight.

Tonight he had forgotten every last one of his principles.

He thought about Christina, of the sweet vulnerability beneath her starchy exterior, of the soft appeal in her eyes, her disbelief that he would ever find her attractive. He remembered the scent of her, felt again the caress of her hands and the clasp of her body about his. It had been explosive, the most devastating lovemaking he had ever experienced; elemental, profound, all the things he did not want it to be and far too important to be dismissed easily.

Guilt lacerated him. Christina MacMorlan had been all that was honest and good, and he was a scoundrel who had seduced her when she did not even know his real name.

He sat up, put his head in his hands. He could not tell her he was not a gardener. He could not tell her he worked for Lord Sidmouth. Least of all could he tell her the real reason he was at Kilmory. He imagined trying to tell Christina that he suspected her father of murder. She would be appalled. She would rush to defend the duke. He needed proof before he broached so difficult a subject. It was either that or abandon his quest for justice and his heart ached at the mere thought. He could not fail Peter again now, in death.

One thing he could do, though, was to write to Sidmouth and ask to be released from his role in hunting the smuggling gang. He wanted nothing to do with Eyre's work or with his methods.

Delicate tracery of shadow and light played across the whitewashed room. In the high summer, these northern lands were seldom fully dark but the sun had dropped into the sea now and the light was a deep, dark blue. Up at the house all the lamps would be lit. He wondered if Christina would be able to slip inside unnoticed so that she need find no excuse for her tumbled hair and her rumpled clothes.

It's wrong because I would be taking advantage....

He felt warmth spreading in his chest as he remembered her defiant gallantry. It was the last thing he had expected. There were any number of men who would not hesitate to take advantage of their female staff and no doubt a number of women who would do the same with their male servants. There were also many servants who saw the master's or mistress's favor as a way to advancement. Alice Parmenter was one of them. But Christina was too good for that, too special. She would not sack him because she thought he needed the job. She would not sleep with him again because she felt it was wrong.

The physical satisfaction had drained from his body now, leaving him feeling cold and tired. Yet something had changed in him. There was a tiny flicker of warmth where once there had been nothing but ice. And that was the most dangerous, the most frightening thing of all.

CHAPTER TWELVE.

"MR. ROSS." CHRISTINA had summoned Lucas to the library first thing the very next morning. She had sent a servant; it was all extremely formal.

Christina laid down her pen and looked at him. Her eyes were tired. She looked as though she had not slept. She kept the desk as a barrier firmly between the two of them and did not invite Lucas to sit. It felt strange to see her like this, so businesslike and proper, when he had held her in his arms and made love to her with such heat and pa.s.sion and need. He wanted to vault the desk and kiss her to within an inch of her life. Yet at the same time her very formality touched him. She was trying to do the right thing. He felt a wave of tenderness for her that shocked him.

"I apologize for sending for you like this," Christina said. "The truth is I am not quite sure how to deal with this matter between us...." Her voice faded away unhappily. "I do not want you to think..." She fidgeted with the quill, turning it over in her hands. Lucas noticed an ink stain on one of her fingers. Her hands were small, capable looking, like the rest of her. He felt his heart twist with an emotion he did not recognize.

"I am making no a.s.sumptions, ma'am," he said.

He saw a flash of grat.i.tude deep in the blue of her eyes. "Thank you," she said. She took a deep breath. "Last night..." She stopped again. "I hope you realize..." She looked up. "I do not go around behaving like that."

"I think we established that last night," Lucas said.

"And I would not wish it to make any difference to our working relationship," Christina continued in a rush. She was looking extremely pink and fl.u.s.tered now, color in her face where it had previously been pale. "Obviously it will not happen again. But I have to maintain my authority amongst the staff here, so I would appreciate it if you did not mention-" She broke off as Lucas took a step forward and leaned his palms on the desk. Her gaze, startled and blue, met his. "Mr. Ross?"

"Lady Christina," Lucas said. He tried to erase the anger from his voice but it was difficult. "Do you even need to ask me that?"

She blushed. "I am sorry," she said. "I did not mean to insult your integrity."

She had a way of going straight to the heart of the matter that silenced him. And since his integrity was also questionable, he suddenly felt a cad.

"Do not give the matter another thought," he said gruffly.

Some emotion flickered in her eyes. "That may be difficult," she said with devastating candor, "but I shall do my best."

Lucas felt his body tighten. So she had lain awake, as he had, thinking about everything that had happened between them. Thinking about it. Wanting it. He almost groaned aloud. She was right; it was d.a.m.nably difficult to erase the memory of the previous night, particularly when he wanted to do it all over again.

Their eyes met. He saw the plea in hers and was helpless to resist.

"I promise never to do anything to compromise your authority," he said. He straightened. "I will behave with as much deference and respect as I have always done."

"Which is not saying a great deal," Christina said. "But I appreciate the sentiment."

Lucas grinned. "I am not naturally deferential."

She frowned. "I have observed that, Mr. Ross. I think-" She hesitated. "You believe that respect must be earned rather than accorded as a birthright."

Lucas was startled by her perception. He did not consider himself easy to read, and yet she had understood him perfectly. "Which is why you have my respect," he said gently.