The Regency Season: Scandalous Awakening. Elizabeth Beacon

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      Eve was about six years old when some fool told her the truth about her mother’s death, dashed to oblivion at the bottom of a mountain road after a wild race to some would-be poet’s latest party only a fool would embark on in winter. He spared a moment from the feel of Chloe shivering in his arms to be glad Eve was over her night horrors and now slept soundly of a night.

      For a long moment Chloe felt stiff and resistant in his arms then, with a great heartfelt sigh, she squirmed closer with a ragged sob she tried to stifle against his shoulder, as if she wasn’t allowed the luxury of tears. No storm of feminine hysterics could disarm him more. He could feel the shudders that still racked her body and the hand he rubbed across her slender back was meant to comfort. She stilled as if remembering who he was, then seemed unable to fight the security of another being close enough to push away her nightmares. Giving in to her need for human contact for once, she moulded herself against him so intimately her head rested on his shoulder and he felt the impact of her closeness through several layers of fine tailoring.

      Feminine heat cindered all the distance he’d tried to put between them. The scent of warm, frightened woman teased his nose along with stray wisps of fiery gold hair that escaped the heavy plait down her back. She shivered and he reassembled the sense to recall it was January. Wrapping her in the bedcover, he murmured a promise not to leave her as he crossed to the fireplace and set his candle to the fire laid there. He must have words with her in the morning about why, when every other chamber on this floor had a fire to warm it, hers was as cold as charity.

      Once flames were licking about the pine cones and sea coal, he went to the bed and picked her up, bedcover and all. It said much for her emotional state that she let him and still seemed to be staring sightlessly into some dire fate with horror in her wide eyes. He carried her to an old-fashioned chair banished from a more important bedchamber. You might as well sleep in a lumber room, Luke silently chided the shivering woman, then sat down with her in his arms, covering and all.

      Despite a half-hearted shake of her head she clearly didn’t want him to go. She tucked a slender foot into his side to warm it when the bedcover slipped and it felt more intimate than a week of passionate lovemaking in another woman’s bed. Steady, he ordered his inner fool; she doesn’t see you as a rampant male, but a source of comfort. You could be anyone.

      ‘If you refuse to cry it out, at least tell me what frightened you,’ he urged and felt her squirm in protest at the thought of giving so much of her inner life away. He fought his predictable male response to the slide of supple feminine curves against his over-eager body and hoped she was too deep in shock to notice. ‘No? Then I’ll puzzle it out for myself, shall I?’ he suggested softly against the ear she hadn’t snuggled into his shoulder and felt her flinch.

      She shook her head a fraction in denial and he heard her breath hitch, as if she wanted to scold him for bad-mannered prying into her private life, but couldn’t quite manage it, so she wriggled even closer instead.

      ‘I presume my arrival roused a fine nest of vipers in your clever, contrary head to upset you so deeply,’ he murmured into that tempting ear and thought she managed a muffled ‘no’ to deny it. ‘I don’t think I’m unduly vain to suspect I’m the reason you dreamt so vividly,’ he persisted.

      ‘No,’ she protested more distinctly, so he knew he was right.

      Although they had sworn never to kiss or long for each other again on a night of almost love they had shared a decade ago, this unwanted; ill-starred connection between them refused to die.

      ‘Yes, madam, you did,’ he persisted, ‘you very likely cause yourself to dream even more vividly by denying this feeling between us so fervently when you’re awake. So that explains why you dreamt, but not what. Not even the way we don’t want to feel about each other explains why you scream out in your sleep, then look as if all the devils of hell are on your heels the moment you wake.’