Free The Earl Next Door by Amanda Grange Page B

broad shoulders. ‘I will go first and you can pass it through to me.’
‘A woman after my own heart. I have always admired enterprise.'
Marianne pulled her cloak tightly round her and crawled through the crack, standing up inside a large, deep cave. A moment later the coat was pushed through to her and Lord Ravensford followed, standing up beside her and looking round in surprise.
‘Who would have thought it?’ he murmured.
Marianne handed him his coat. As he took it, his fingers grazed the back of her hand, searing it with a burning heat. She gasped, letting go of the coat more quickly than she had intended.
He caught it as she dropped it, giving her a wicked look as though reading what was in her mind.
Why did he seem able to do that? she thought, finding it intimate and disturbing. He had no right to know what she was thinking; especially as her thoughts these days seemed to be all about him.
‘If we go to the back, we’ll be above the tide,’ she said, picking up the hem of her cloak and leading him towards the back of the cave.
Natural light came from a hole in the cliff top, lighting a strip down the centre of the cave and casting shadows into the rocky recesses. The floor of the cave was covered in sand, which was dark and damp by the opening, and light and dry towards the back.
‘We used to keep candles and a tinder box here,’ said Marianne, running her hands along a rocky shelf just above her eye level when she reached the back of the cave.
Lord Ravensford, being taller than she was by some six inches, saw what she was searching for and fastened his fingers around the box just as her hand discovered it. The contact burned her like a brand.
‘Why aren’t you married, Marianne?’ he asked suddenly, his eyes glowing gold in the shaft of sunlight and his fingers remaining closed round her own.
‘I . . . I hardly think that’s a proper question,’ she gasped, her heart drumming in her chest.
‘Of course it isn’t.’ He gave a wolfish smile. ‘Proper questions don’t interest me. But you should be married,’ he said, his look suddenly intensifying. ‘A woman of your passionate nature shouldn’t be condemned to the single life.’
‘Passionate?’ She felt her eyes lock on to his, as though he was holding them there by some magnetic force, a force from which she could not break free. She made a determined effort and drew her eyes shudderingly away. ‘I am not a passionate woman,’ she said, trying to inject a note of normality into her voice.
‘Oh, but you are.’
‘That’s preposterous.’ She retreated into being Miss Travis, taking a step back and using a dismissive tone to hold him at a distance; or at least, to try.
But she had not stepped back far enough, and for answer he ran the back of his hand over her cheek. ‘Can you deny the way this makes you feel?’ he asked softly. ‘Can you pretend it doesn’t make you burn inside?’
‘Lord Ravensford.’ She tried to keep her voice level, attempting to fight down the tide of sensations and emotions that were rising inside her. ‘Are you trying to seduce me?’ Her words were intended to shock him back into polite conversation but they did nothing of the kind.
‘If I was trying to seduce you, you would already be . . . ’ on your back by now , he almost finished. But his hand, grazing her cheek and then pushing back her vibrant black hair, revealed a pearl earring; an earring he himself had helped Kit choose. With a flash he remembered that she was his friend’s sister, and that he was here to help her; not to taunt her with her passionate nature, a nature which he himself had unforgivably roused. He had forgotten how to behave in polite company, it seemed.
He took his hand away from her face and, reaching up, took down the candles and tinder box. Within a few seconds he had managed to get one of the candles to light. The others, their wicks dampened by the air, took longer, but at last burst into flame. Letting a little of the