Ravishing in Red Read Online Free PDF Page B

in, Miss Kelmsleigh, and try to sleep. I will not disturb you. You are completely safe.”
    She looked long and hard at that bed. “Where will you be?”
    “On the other side of that drape.”
    “That would be most inappropriate.”
    “I think that we are beyond pretty proprieties, don’t you?”
    She grimaced in resignation. She wrapped herself in her shawl, lifted a corner of the drape, and disappeared behind it. They were in gaol for all intents and purposes, and there was no way to stand on ceremony. He could not sit out the night in that wooden chair with his bad arm, and he would probably not allow her to either, while he used the bed.
    She lay down and huddled on her side and closed her eyes. Despite her exhaustion, her body felt like a taut string on a bow. She kept hearing small sounds as he moved in the chamber.
    Then the mattress sagged behind her back and beyond that billowing drape. She felt his presence warm her even though not a part of them touched.
    She tried to sleep. It was impossible. He was just there . She imagined him reaching for her and—
    The notion shocked her. So did the manner in which her body flushed. She tried to turn her thoughts to other things, to Mama and Sarah, to her father. Even to Roger. None of it helped much. Instead the intimacy of this situation saturated the chamber and pressed on her.
    It was worse than being in a crowded coach with strangers. Then one pretended they were not there and ignored the physical proximity that would be wrong in any other situation. And they remained strangers, even if one of them liked to talk, because the talk was about nothing important. At the end of the journey they disappeared and so did the intimacy, as if it had never happened.
    Lord Sebastian would not disappear. She would have to face him in the morning and could not pretend this had not happened. He was not a stranger either, anymore, and their talk had been about very important things.
    And he had kissed her. And she had allowed it . That was what really left her fearful and, yes, waiting. She had given him cause to think that if he reached for her, she might not mind. That was what kept deepening this awareness of his body beside hers, in that shocking, startling, never-ending there .
    He did not sleep either. She just knew that. And so she dared not move. Not one bit, all night.
     
     
     
     
    S ebastian waited a quarter hour, sitting on the wooden chair while his arm pounded. Then he lay down fully dressed, boots and all, on the side of the bed left exposed by his artistry with the drapes. He went through great pains, literally, to avoid even touching the billow of fabric that shielded her.
    Just resting his shoulder and arm helped. Or maybe the feminine presence so close by distracted him from the wound. Like most men, maybe more than most, he was prone to seductive considerations. He smiled ruefully when signs of arousal stirred in him just from hearing her faint breathing.
    Bloody hell. Here he was, dressed in coats and boots, in as chaste a situation as one could create out of such a disaster, and yet his body encouraged him to speculate about the possibilities.
    Worse, for all her stillness, he was sure she did not sleep either. Any woman as artless in kissing as she had demonstrated would not find repose with a man in the same room, let alone two inches away on the other side of a swath of cloth.
    That same artlessness indicated, of course, that any speculations were idiocy. Not to mention he had an arm that could barely move.
    He forced his mind away from that billow and the woman behind it who helped to warm this bed very nicely. He eyed the low fire beyond his boots until he extinguished the alluring warmth in his blood.
    With the distraction gone, his arm started throbbing again like hell’s drum. He turned his thoughts to how quickly and thoroughly the night had turned into a catastrophe.
    He admired Miss Kelmsleigh’s courage in daring to meet the Domino, but a good