Page 23 of A Remarkable Rogue

“A warning to stay away from you.” She held it out to him. “It was left in my barouche in the park this afternoon after we’d taken our walk together. They’re coming after me now.” She pulled in a trembling breath. “They’ll come after you, too, if you don’t leave me alone.”

He closed his hand around the toy and stepped closer, blatantly ignoring her warning to keep away.Keep away?If he were any closer, she’d be pressed against his bare chest…although she suspected that wouldn’t have been so terrible.

His eyes lingered on her mouth. “You’re frightened.”

She wished she could stop the shaking in her hands and the prickling at the backs of her knees, wished the sensation wasn’t as much from him as it was from fear. But her indignant response emerged as barely more than a breathless whisper. “Of course I’m frightened.”

“Then tell me what you know,” he murmured, “and I’ll protect you.”

“Please, Captain Reed, for both our sakes, stop—”

Without warning, he grabbed her arm with one hand and clamped the other over her mouth as she began to cry out in surprise. He pulled her inside the stall, then closed the door silently behind them with a tap of his boot and pressed her against the side wall.

“Shh,” he whispered, his lips close to her ear. The heat of his breath fanned over her cheek and sent her belly fluttering with longing. She was certain he was going to kiss her, thoroughly and properly, until he warned, “Someone’s coming.”

She strained to listen through the silence of the stable for any sound, but she heard only the restless moving of horses, a dog barking outside…Nate’s steady and deep breathing.

Then she heard it—

Footsteps crunched on the gravel.

The quiet sound echoed down the stable aisle as the person moved slowly toward them. A watchman?

Dread squeezed her stomach. If she was found here—Good Lord, if they were found together looking likethis!—she could be arrested for trespassing, Nate could be put into the stocks if not court-martialed, both of their reputations would be ruined, and all of it would be her fault for coming here in the first place.

Sydney trembled. “Captain—”

“Hush,” he silently breathed out. He pressed his fingers to her lips and leaned even closer until his hips shifted against hers and held her pinned against the wall where they couldn’t be seen through the narrow rectangle of bars in the stall door.

The watchman paused just outside the stall.

She clutched at Nate’s bare shoulders to hold herself steady. His large body was folded around hers, she knew, in his attempt to protect her. But her heart pounded so hard that her chest ached from the panic-filled tattoo of it. So hard she knew he could feel it.

Footsteps shifted in the gravel as the guard turned toward the stall.

She clamped her eyes shut, held her breath, and waited for the watchman to yank open the stall door and find them, for her life to come crashing down around her—

The guard moved on down the aisle. The crunch of footsteps grew fainter and farther away as he walked to the end of the stable aisle. The reverberating clank of metal on wood signaled that he’d slid open the rear stable door, then slammed it shut with a clang against the latch a moment later.

The stables fell silent except for the soft movement of horses shifting quietly in their hay-strewn stalls and the roar of her pulse in her ears.

With a tremulous shudder, she eased her desperate hold on Nate only enough to sag against the wall behind her, but her hands still rested on his hard shoulders. She wasn’t ready to release him completely.

“Thank God that watchman didn’t find us.” She gave him an unsteady smile.

No relief registered on his somber face. “That wasn’t a watchman.”

The little hairs on her arms prickled, and she dreaded his answer even as she asked, “How do you know?”

“Because I’m the stable guard on duty tonight.”

Icy fear spiraled down her spine, and she forced herself to take a calming breath to keep from casting up her accounts all over his boots. “Then who was he?”

Nate placed his hands on the wall on either side of her shoulders, trapping her between his arms and broad chest. “You tell me.”

He was so close she could feel his body heat warming into her skin even through her clothes, and the delicious scent of soap and leather, musk and man filled her senses. The combination made her head swim. “I don’t know.”

“Oh, I think you do,” he murmured and lowered his head until his mouth lingered above hers, almost touching but achingly still so far away.