Free Secrets of a Perfect Night by Stephanie Laurens, Victoria Alexander, Rachel Gibson Page B

her.
    “It must be getting late.” She threw the words over her shoulder. “We should start back.”
    “The gallery.” He was just behind her. “After that, we can call it a day.”

    They returned to the stairs, then climbed the short flight to the long gallery that ran across the back of the main block. Its many-paned windows looked down over the gardens, presently a white wilderness. Adrian paused and glanced around. During his childhood, the gallery had been a favorite place, the deep window embrasures with their padded seats wonderful places to curl up and hide. The eighty-seven landscapes hanging along the inner wall had become old friends. They were still there, as if waiting behind their shrouds of dust for him to return.
    Abby, of course, was instantly diverted.
    Suppressing a smile, Adrian left her staring at a large painting and walked to the far end to begin a quick inventory. Beyond needing a thorough cleaning and a polishing of their frames, the pictures were in good repair. As he’d expected. As he strolled, he glanced time and again at Abby, wishing he could understand her as easily as he could the landscapes.
    Quite how he’d expected her to react to him, he couldn’t have said, but given she was unmarried, given he was here, given their past, he hadn’t expected to find her so…detached. Her behavior, the way she responded to him, gave him little clue as to what she thought. How she felt. Knowing how Abby felt, especially about him, was suddenly of paramount importance.
    She turned from the landscape, glanced briefly about to place him, then moved to a window.
    Lips tightening, Adrian pretended to study a small painting. He’d been spoiled, he supposed. For the past four years, the ladies of the ton had gone out of theirway to let him know how they saw him—he hadn’t had to exercise any of the talents that had earned him the title of master seducer.
    He hadn’t, of course, lost those talents—they were merely dormant. Perhaps a trifle rusty. Glancing again at Abby, now staring out at the snow, he felt the predator in him rise, savoring the challenge. Given his plans, and the part he wanted her to play in them, it was perfectly justifiable to turn those talents on her.
    He deserted the painting and strolled toward her. His gaze skated over her profile, pure in the clear light, over her hair, soft waves of silky brown, over her figure, curvaceously alluring. When he’d decided to return to Bellevere, he’d had a picture in his mind, but it had had a blank space at its heart. That internal picture—his vision of his future life—was now complete. He knew who he needed at its center.
    Abby.
    The realization hadn’t come in a blinding flash; instead, it had rolled over and through him in the past days with the undeniable force of a natural tide. She had never been anything but Abby to him—not on the same plane with any other woman; no other could reach the place inside him that she had occupied for so long.
    Whether she knew that was another matter, but surely his talents were sufficient to explain. Or at least make plain his intentions.
    He reached her side, deliberately stepping close, ostensibly to look out at the vista. “There’s a rose garden down there.”
    Abby looked to where he pointed. “You’ll have tohave a team of gardeners in as soon as the snow is past—they’ll need to do a late pruning.”
    She turned on the words. The sudden flaring of her eyes attested to her surprise at finding herself in his arms.
    Adrian smiled, just a little, and lowered his head. “Remind me to hire the gardeners.” He lowered his gaze to her lips. “Meanwhile…I have my own landscape to tend.”
    Abby made no demur when he set his lips to hers; she was too surprised, too stunned—too busy wondering what he thought he was about. Then the firm, cool pressure as his lips moved on hers captured her awareness and sent her wits tumbling. A shiver rippled through her, apprehension overwhelmed