Forever a Lord

She stripped his great coat from her shoulders and held it out. “I shouldn’t keep you.”

“You aren’t keeping me.” He took the coat and shrugged himself into it, adjusting it around his large frame. “I always have time to entertain a beautiful woman.”

An odd giddiness poked at her knowing he thought she was beautiful. Her. She pressed her fingers nervously into her thighs, shifting the wet material of her robe. Maybe she should say something more. “Fortunately it stopped raining. So your walk home ought to be pleasant.”

“Is that your way of telling me to go?”

“No. I…I’m trying to make conversation.”

“Are you?” Amusement tinged his voice. “Might I point out, you’re not very good at it.”

She cringed and shifted against the wall. “I know.”

He shifted closer, the heat of his body drawing unnervingly close. “How old are you?”

She pressed herself harder against the wall, until she felt the plaster beneath the silk embroidered paper. “Old enough. Why?”

One hand and then another pressed against the wall beside her head, caging her in with his muscled frame. “Old enough for what?”

Her breathing shallowed. “For anything.”

Another slow smile teased his lips. “If I tied your hands behind your back or above your head, would you be amenable to it?”

A strange fluttering overtook her stomach as he hovered above her in dominating silence. “Am I supposed to answer that?”

He cocked his head, still watching her. “Let me give you some advice based on what I’m seeing here. Never let a man you don’t know this close to you again. There are a lot of assholes that prey on women like you. Consider yourself fortunate I’m not one of them.”

Assholes? She blinked.

His voice grew husky. “Are you warm yet? I can take off my coat again. In fact, I can take off whatever you want me to. All you have to do is ask.”

She felt the foyer sway and locked her knees together to keep herself from sliding down the wall. Something about the way he had said it made her want to drape herself against him.

His right hand left the wall and trailed to her shoulder. He gently curved his palm in and brushed past her throat, making her suck in a sharp breath.

Rough padded fingers nudged her face up toward the fuzzy outline of his own face. “You’re very pretty. Do you know that?”

Why did she sense this man was going to change more than her finances? She swallowed, feeling his lips hovering above hers. Should she let him kiss her? It wouldn’t be a sin, would it?

The heat of his breath tickled her mouth.

She grew faint. Very, very faint.

He released her and pushed away from the wall. “I have to go.” Turning, he stalked toward the entrance, his boots thudding against the marble with what appeared to be a determination to not only leave but never be seen again.

A long breath escaped her. He was leaving? After all of that talk of him doing whatever she asked and his strange quest to bind her hands? What happened? Did she suddenly cease being pretty?

Stumbling away from the wall, she glanced up at the stairwell, thankful it was empty, and hurried after him. “Mr. Coleman?” she whispered so no one would hear.

His large frame paused, still holding the entrance door open as he kept his back to her. “Coleman is my boxing name. It’s not my real name.”

“Oh. I beg your pardon. What is your real name?”

“Just call me Nathaniel. Now what do you want?”

Imogene brought her hands together in an effort to remain calm. Unlike all the blurred aristocratic faces she’d met this past week in countless ballrooms that had sent her into a cringing, stuttering panic, he had brought everything into focus and made her realize what had been missing all her life: a genuine strength to be more than her illness. “You didn’t say goodbye.”

He glanced over his shoulder, those striking clear blue eyes capturing hers in the candlelight of the foyer. “Are you asking me to kiss you?”

She gawked. “I… No. No. Why would I— All I was pointing out, and very respectably, mind you, was that you walked away without bidding me farewell.”

He slowly closed the door and faced her again. “I walked away for a reason.”

Her brow creased. “I hope I didn’t offend you in any way.”

Shifting his jaw, he strode back toward her, his coat billowing menacingly around his solid movements as if he were about to take flight and land on top of her.

Though she wanted to throw up her hands and dash up the stairs to find Henry, she knew that would only make her look the ninny that she was.

He paused half an arm away, blocking her view of the foyer. That crisp scent of leather, wood and coal drifted toward her again. He lowered his gaze to hers. “You didn’t offend.”

Everything about him was a bit too exciting. She almost couldn’t think. “I didn’t?”

“No.” He held her gaze. “My mind simply isn’t where it should be and I’m not one to take advantage of a clearly virginal woman.”

Her eyes widened. “What do you mean by that?”

“Oh, now, you can’t be that naive. What do you think goes on between men and women when no one is looking? They don’t sit and play cards.”

She fisted her trembling hands, which had gone from damp cold to damp hot, realizing exactly what he meant. She knew about kissing. She also knew that when bedchamber doors closed at night, something happened that resulted in children. So did he mean to say he wanted both? “Are you offering on my hand?”

His mouth quirked. “Not in the way you think.” He edged in tauntingly. “This is probably where you should turn and run, tea cake. Before all this pent-up self-restraint you see…flies. Because I’m not known for restraint when it comes to women.”

She swallowed. He was teasing her. “If you doubted your self-restraint, you wouldn’t have told me.”

He eyed her. “I’m not always this nice to women.”

“If I felt in any way threatened by you or this situation,” she confided, “I would have screamed by now. I can scream, you know. I try not to, given Dr. Filbert insists I never strain my throat, but I can. I’m not as frail as everyone thinks I am.”

He hesitated. “Doctor? Is something wrong with you?”

She shrugged. “I have fainting spells and issues with my throat. There was an incident when I was younger. I could barely swallow without being in pain and lost almost a quarter of my body weight when I was seven.”

He stared, his features darkening. “I’m sorry to hear it.”

She shrugged. “I was rather fortunate. I could have died. Everyone was surprised I didn’t.”

He said nothing.