Page 29 of The Earl

Chapter 13

Conrad didn’t know if he wanted to shake Cait or kiss her.

In fact, he did know. He would do both if given the chance. To think the ladies had so deliberately misled him.

They’d been planning this. She’d been planning this, and now she was here. Opening his tent. Standing before him.

He would not look down. Nor would he notice the curve of her legs in those hose.

“You’re angry.”

Ah, God. Yes. No. He was confused as hell.

“Cait, do you realize the kind of danger you’re in? Tomorrow morn you must go back. With two men. You cannot be here.”

That look, the one she gave him now—it was one of the reasons she’d so attracted him at the tournament all those years ago. She’d had the same mixture of innocence and resolve, even then.

“The others have gone as well. With their husbands. You should let me stay.”

Sabine. Idalia. Roysa.

Conrad shook his head. “I am not your husband.” He waved his hands frantically around them. “You are alone. Unchaperoned. There’s not one other woman to be found in this camp.” He shook his head. “No, I cannot. We cannot. Terric will kill us both.”

Cait rolled her eyes. “Terric will not kill you. ’Twas my choice to come. Mayhap you’ve not noticed, Conrad, but I’m not a young girl any longer. Terric is, in fact, my junior.

Though Terric was only younger than him by one year, Conrad and Cait the same age at nine and twenty, she spoke the truth. But that didn’t mean his friend would not still kill him when next they met.

“I promised him,” he ground out, unable to form a coherent thought.

Cait planted her hands on her slender hips. “You promised what, precisely? That you would not find yourself alone with me? That you would not do . . . what did you promise?”

“I promised to act honorably.”

“This is not honorable? Us speaking? We are simply—”

He moved quickly.

Wrapping his hand behind her head, Conrad brought her lips to his. The shock of it took him aback—he’d intended to honor his word to Terric. And Cait clearly did not know how to react.

What to do.

He showed her. Gliding his tongue against the folds of her lips, he told her, without speaking, to open for him.

She did.

Slanting his head, he pulled her closer, touching his tongue to hers.

Cait immediately responded. Within a few moments, she understood completely. Her mouth moved effortlessly against his, and the sweetness she gave, Conrad willingly took.

When her hands settled tentatively on his forearms, her warm touch only served to inflame him. He should go gently, but Conrad had dreamed of this moment for what felt like his entire life.

She was not his.

She’d stopped writing.

Her brother would certainly kill him.

But this was Cait. She stood in his tent, looking at him as if he would save her from the confusion they both felt. And God help him, Conrad wanted to heal the breach between them. He wanted to be the man he’d once been, the one who had killed her attacker, the one who had opened his heart to her.