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Willis saluted and rushed to help the ostler manage the heavy, drooping horses. Ro stepped to the back of the carriage, opened the boot, and hauled his portmanteau up and out just as the carriage started moving, then strode up the steps to the i
He opened it and squelched inside. The sound made him wince; Hoby wouldn’t be impressed. “I
“Right here, sir.”
Ro looked up. The i
The man sighed, then ran his gaze up Ro’s long frame, animation increasing as he took in the quality of the greatcoat hanging from Ro’s shoulders and the elegant coat and waistcoat beneath, equally sodden. “A dreadful night, sir. You’ll be wanting a nice dry room, I’ve no doubt.”
“One with a fire, and a room for my coachman as well. He’ll be in shortly.”
Ro’s voice brought the man’s gaze to his face.
The man blinked. “Why…bless me! It’s Ro-” He corrected himself. “Lord Gerrard, isn’t it? We haven’t seen you in quite some years, my lord.”
Everyone remembered Rogue Gerrard. Ro managed to summon the charming smile that rarely failed to get him what he wanted. “Indeed. Bilt, isn’t it?”
Bilt was flattered to have been remembered; he came around his counter. “A right beastly night, my lord. Never seen anything like it-all this rain. A night for Noah, it is. We’ve one of our front rooms vacant. I’ll just nip up and get the fire roaring, and have the missus turn down the bed.” Eager to please, he reached for Ro’s bag. “If you’d like to sit in the tap for a moment, catch your breath, I’ll take your bag up and make sure all’s ready.”
Ro surrendered his bag. He was tired and sodden and wanted nothing more than to get dry. Getting warm would hopefully follow.
Using both hands, Bilt hefted the portmanteau and hurried to the stairs. “You’ll remember the tap from before, I’ll warrant.”
Ro did. He turned to the archway that gave on to the tap, a decent-sized room with a bar along one wall.
The room lay in chilly darkness. It wasn’t the room in which the firelight had flickered.
Ro swung his gaze to the door opposite the archway. If memory served, it gave on to a parlor. Crossing to the door, he opened it. Warmth and golden light rolled over him.
“My lord! Ah…”
Already over the threshold, Ro leaned back through the door to look up at Bilt, on the landing wrestling with the unwieldy portmanteau.
Bilt looked down at him, expression aghast.
Ro raised a brow. “What is it?”
Bilt swallowed. “If you don’t mind, my lord, someone’s hired the parlor.”
Ro glanced into the room, then looked back at Bilt. “Whoever they are, they’re not here, most probably because it’s the dead of night. There is, however, a fire still burning. I’m sure it hasn’t escaped your notice that I’m drenched, Bilt. To the skin. I’m sure you wouldn’t want me to catch a chill while waiting for my room to be made ready-especially as this fire is burning so well and otherwise going to waste.”
He smiled at Bilt, but this time the smile held an edge, one mirrored in his silver-gray eyes. “I’ll wait here by the fire.”
Very few people forgot Rogue Gerrard.
Entering the parlor, Ro closed the door and walked across to the hearth. With every step he could feel the welcome warmth reaching for him, engulfing him…but only on his face and hands, his exposed skin. The rest of him remained literally chilled to the bone, and that rest was rather a lot.
Halting before the fire, he shrugged out of his greatcoat and draped it over the back of a wooden chair beside the hearth, then mentally shrugging-there was no one around to see-he fought his way out of his coat, not an easy task given the lengths to which Shultz had gone to tailor the garment to his shoulders and back. The waistcoat was easier to strip off, but even his cravat and shirt were more wet than not. He couldn’t recall ever being so drenched. The cravat was a yard of limp, creased linen; he laid it over his coat on the chair. His buckskin breeches-thank God he hadn’t changed into trousers before setting out-had largely repelled the rain; they were already giving off steam.
He paused, considering his shirt, but was too desperate to feel heat on his iced skin to wait. Pulling the tails free of his breeches, he tugged and wriggled and managed to haul the damp linen off over his head. On the way, his dripping hair wet the fabric even more, but the heat of the flames caressing his chilled chest and arms brought instant relief.
He sighed, closed his eyes. Rubbing his hair with the bunched shirt, he gradually felt the worst of his i
His marrow might even be thawing.
Opening his eyes, reaching behind him, he mopped his back with the shirt, then dried his arms, rubbing briskly to get the blood flowing. Then he tried to dry his chest; given the state of his shirt, his skin remained damp. Standing before the fire, he let the flames warm him while passing the crumpled linen back and forth across the band of crinkly hair adorning the heavy muscles.
His mood was almost mellow when the door opened. Expecting Bilt, he turned-
And froze.
Across the room, a lady whisked into the parlor, turned and shut the door. Swinging back into the room, looking down, shaking rain from an umbrella, she walked a few paces, then halted.
She was swathed in a heavy cloak, the lower foot of which was wet through and muddy, but she’d pushed back the hood, revealing hair the color of burnished walnut neatly secured in a chignon, and a small oval face with delicate features.
Features Ro recognized, that still held the power to stop the breath in his chest.
She hadn’t seen him; she was patently unaware he was there.
He frowned. “What the devil are you doing here?”
She jumped. Smothered a small shriek that died away as her gaze rose, locked, and she stared.
Not at his face.
Her gaze had risen only as far as his chest. His naked chest.
He knew perfectly well what it looked like, knew precisely why women, ladies especially, stared at him in that way, but this was Lydia, and her staring at him in that way was definitely not going to help.
Somewhere in the i
His only option was to ignore his half-naked state. It could have been worse; he might have changed into trousers before he’d left home, and then she’d have swooned.
“Lydia-cut line! What the devil are you doing here? More to the point, where the devil have you been-in a torrential downpour in the dead of night?” The words came out more harshly than he’d intended, a reaction to the unwelcome realization that ten years had clearly been insufficient time to mute the effect she had on him. And all that flowed from that.
An impulse to shake her, given she’d clearly been doing something witlessly dangerous, being just one of his reactions.
She blinked. Her gaze slowly rose over his chest to his shoulders, then up the line of his throat to his face.
Her lips parted even further; her eyes widened even more. “Ro?”
Pressing his lips tight, he hung on to his temper. What the devil did she mean by staring at his chest when she hadn’t even known it was he? “As you see. Now, if you please-where the deuce have you been, and why?”
Mouth agape, Lydia Makepeace stared, for quite the first time in her life fully comprehending the meaning of the word “dumbstruck,” at the gentleman-gentleman rake, gamester, dissolute womanizer, and acknowledged libertine-displayed so delectably before her, all that damp skin just begging to be touched…and valiantly tried to harry her wits back into working order. The flickering firelight caressing his chest-that amazingly sculpted muscled expanse-lovingly outlining each ridge of his abdomen, each heavy curve of shoulder and arm in golden light, didn’t help.