Chapter Six
Jonas shouldered his way through the crowd. Livvy scrambled off the bench and pushed up on tiptoe to see Jonas cut a wide swath to the door. He was leaving?
“Miss Halsey?” Lady Rowen’s voice came from behind her.
“Don’t worry about me. I’m walking home.”
“Miss Halsey, I say that’s unacceptable…” Will Hastings’s voice faded behind her as she waded through a tide of revelers rising from their chairs. Men scraped tables across the room to stack them against the wall. It was impossible to break through the mass of people and tables and chairs.
She’d not get to dance with Jonas.
Masks swarmed around her. People laughing and drinking and hefting the Sheep’s Head’s tables and chairs. The din was painful to her ears. She stepped to the right and a jovial Mr. Fortham banged into her, a pint sloshing in his fist.
“Miss Halsey? Is that you?” he asked.
Heart pounding, she ducked around him fast and spoke over her shoulder. “Good to see you, Mr. Fortham.”
Two burly farmers who didn’t bother with masks or costumes blocked her path. She dove around them in time to see Jonas shut the inn’s door behind him.
Why did that closed door feel so…final?
That bit about Mr. Fortham was beneath her. She’d wanted to have fun, to have Jonas dance attendance on her. His caress to her bottom had shocked her. It was more than she expected. Elbows jabbing her, she stood arms at her side, people swarming the room. Tonight was a the rare evening when Plumtree’s folk mixed, all the classes from this district to neighboring areas. Most came for frivolity. Some came for a taste of local debauchery.
She wanted both. With Jonas.
Mrs. Bainbridge sidled up to Livvy, a rag in one hand, five pints clutched in the other. “Now there went the best man in three districts. A man of solid character and—” Her throaty voice dropped suggestively “—easy on the eyes. You’d do well with the likes of him.”
“He is a fine man, but I’m, I’m unofficially betrothed,” she said, speaking above the clamor. “It’s a business arrangement. My family duty. Friendship is all that Jonas and I have.”
“Humph! Did the good Lord put Adam and Eve together for commerce?” The proprietress fisted the rag on her hip. “A business arrangement makes cold comfort in the marriage bed. Take it from me, you’ll want a man to keep you warm at night. Should that man be a best friend? Well, that woman should count herself lucky.”
“But Jonas doesn’t want to stay in Plumtree.”
Mrs. Bainbridge groaned. “All men need their minds changed. It’s the first lesson of marriage, luv. Convince your blue-eyed pirate to stay and, if you can’t, go with him.”
She balked. “Leave Plumtree?”
“Come now, you’ve never been missish. There’s a whole world out there. You ought to know that from helping your father.”
True. She was bold in every other aspect, yet when it came to Jonas, her heart thudded and her legs stuck in place. Behind her, the room was cleared. Fiddle music hummed the first notes of a reel. Shoes scraped the floor as men and women lined up.
“Do you want him?” Mrs. Bainbridge asked.
“I do.”
“Then don’t stand there like a lost lamb.” The proprietress shooed her away. “Go after him.”
She rushed to the door and snatched her cloak off the hook. Throwing open the door, horses and dog carts cluttered the village road outside. A few coachmen tarried in the cold by finer vehicles, hands cupped over their mouths. The skies were clear, a thousand stars glimmering from heaven.
Where was Jonas?
She ran to the middle of the road and spun around. She hadn’t asked how Jonas came to the inn. By horse? One of the carts? Or did he borrow the Captain’s flat cart once used to deliver furniture?
Hooking the frogs under her chin, she called out to the coachmen. “Pardon me, gentlemen, have you seen a tall man in black exit the inn?”
“A big gent.” The coachman tapped his ear. “Had a gold earring right here?”
“Yes, yes! That’s him.”
A lanky arm stretched to the east end of the road. “He went that away, miss.”
She barely said her thanks before grabbing handfuls of her cloak, her legs pumping hard. She sprinted up the road, leaping over deep ruts. Tight stays manacled her ribs. There was nothing ladylike and proper about her mad dash through Plumtree. The main road curved east with a fork heading north to Halsey and Braithwaite land. She took the northern turn, and it was there she spied Jonas, his stride eating up the road. Blast it, but he was fast.
“Jonas!” she yelled, her run easing to a trot until she stopped from a stitch in her side.
He halted his progress and slowly turned around. Her feet were made of lead, and her heart lurched. Lungs billowing, she let go of her cloak and smoothed it if only to occupy her hands. Jonas stayed put, all six feet and several inches of him. The brim of his hat shaded his face, yet she felt his blue-eyed gaze rake her from head to toe.
A shiver skipped her spine.
Was it possible a man’s hostile stare could keep a woman in place?
Jonas was a good twenty paces from her, and she dare not venture any closer. Not that she could. A horrible stitch pinched her side.
“Please. Don’t go.” The heel of her hand pressed the cramp. “I, I want to talk with you.”
Starlight touched Jonas as he put one long leg in front of the other, making his way to her. Heaven help her but, she cringed. His forbidding glare, the gold earring gleaming like a sharp point…Jonas could be a landlocked pirate bearing down on her. He stopped a few paces away, his breath huffing clouds.
“About what?”
She rubbed the pained spot harder. “I want, I want…to be with you.”
“Why?”
She shut her eyes at his icy voice. Never had she known him to be this abrupt with her. She understood the distance. He was hurt. So was she. In a matter of days, years of childhood friendship sailed full speed ahead into exciting, choppy, mysterious waters.
“Because I have feelings for you, and making sense of them is easier if we have a decent conversation.”
“I’m sure your betrothed wouldn’t appreciate that sentiment.”
“I’m sorry about that. It’s an unofficial arrangement. Nothing legally binding…more of an understanding.” The words tasted like paper in her mouth, bland and silly. Jonas wouldn’t quibble over the status of her arrangement. The distinction of unofficial or not didn’t matter; the fact of another man did.
The whites of his eyes were wide. “You weren’t honest with me.”
Wincing, she stopped rubbing the cramp at her waist. She deserved the pain. “I know.”
“We were always honest with each other. Always.” Jonas turned his face to the field. “Never, as children, was it necessary to spell out the need for telling the truth.”
“Because we simply were.”
“Then what changed?”
Gentle laughter rolled out of her. “Everything. Surely you see that? Ten years you were gone with hardly a word to those you left behind. And what happens your first night back? You kiss me!” She exhaled, blowing a wisp of hair out of her face. “I understand being your friend, at least what we had as children, but things have changed. We’re different.”
His mouth firmed. Light snapped like blue fire in his lapis lazuli eyes. Jonas advanced on her, dirt and snow crunching in the silence. He kept coming until she had to tip her head to keep eye contact.
He was a handsome man in daylight, the quiet, gentleman grandson of a furniture maker. Definitely the kind of man a woman could bring home to have tea with her mother. At midnight, Jonas devastated. Night caressed his features…his freshly shaved jawline, the width of his utterly kissable mouth, the sin-black hair falling around his face. He was an adventurer, dashing in a stoic fashion, a man of secrets and foreign places.
“I should’ve told you everything when I was in your bedchamber,” she said, forcing her arms to stay at her sides. Otherwise, she’d touch him.
Saying aloud when I was in your bedchamber had an erotic effect, teasing the skin between her legs. Jonas’s brows arched. Were the words an aphrodisiac to him?
“But you kissed me and that changed everything.” Her voice was a wisp of sound on the empty road.
Jonas chuckled low and slipped his hand along her jaw. Black lashes hooded his beautiful eyes as his palm cupped the side of her neck. She sucked in hungry breaths. She needed him to say something, but Jonas was a man of few words, seemingly content to touch her.
“And then I kissed you when you came to my tower. An awful kiss. I was embarrassed,” she said, staring at his chin, her breath hitching. “I thought you had satisfied whatever lust or curiosity about me the first night, and well…my kiss was bad.”
“No it wasn’t.” His hand curled around her nape, warm and comforting. “Even a bad kiss with the right woman is heaven to a man.”
Oh, that melted her…those words said in his deep voice as his strong hand caressed her neck. Pleasure shot to her toes. Her body was flush to his.
He chuckled again and the rumble stroked her insides.
“That bad kiss? I made myself not respond. I had to know what was happening with you.” He kissed the crown of her head. “It’s my fault. I touched you when I had no business doing so.”
Waves of gooseflesh spread under her stays, the tickle skipping like pebbles down to her inner thighs. Words stuck in her mouth. Jonas’s fingers slipped into her hair before tracing her spine with painfully good slowness to the middle of her back. Her forehead rested on his velvet waistcoat, and she gripped the open ends of his outer black wool coat.
How far down would his hand travel?
Jonas stroked her velvet cloak, the hush of his hand the only sound on the empty lane. She pushed up on her toes, all the better to drink him in. His shirt smelled faintly of cedar, likely from his cedar-lined sea chest. An exotic soap-scent clung to his smooth jawline. She was lost in Jonas, his hand on her body, the still road, the excited flutter in her heart that he might…might—he did palm her bottom cheek.
She sucked a lungful of air. His big, beautiful hand rested right there.
Where else would he touch?
Jonas hugged her and spoke above her ear, his voice thick. “I want you to listen carefully to what I’m going to say. Know that whatever you decide, you will always be my friend, one of the best memories in my life.” He paused. “Give me a sign you understand what I’m saying.”
“Uh-huh,” she mumbled, nose deep in his cravat.
“I want to undress you. I want to kiss every inch of your skin until your voice is hoarse from crying out with satisfaction. We won’t think about the future or the past. We’ll be a man and a woman for—”