Page 24 of Lord Ramsey's Red-Headed Ruin
He lived with her, ate with her, slept with her. Each moment was innocent. Designed that way. Decreed that way. Agreed that way. Yet each movement of hers was a tease to his psyche. A charm to his groin. It mattered not what she did, he wanted to absorb everything she was. Each look, each sigh, each bright, shining laugh.
He was a prisoner to her aura. Worse, to his imaginings.
He could watch her slip into her shoes and long to wrap his fingers around her slim ankles. Slide his hands up her calves, caress her thighs, and open her wide and wet and hot to him. He could glimpse her applying a hand cream she’d bought in the town apothecary shop and long to put his lips around her fingertips. He’d nip them, lick them, and suck her into his rabid desire for her. He could admire how she discussed the fine art of whisking a good custard crème, and instead want to eat her up. Put her to the fine white linen tablecloth, ask the Boyers to quickly depart, and spread her legs and arms out for him like the finest delicacy. There he would entertain her with sweettales of his boyhood, and woo her with wicked adventures of his manhood. He’d take down her bodice, push aside her corset, trail kisses down her deep cleavage and cup the wealth of her bounteous breasts. He would lave her nipples and stroke her silken stomach, make her writhe and want his mouth on her creamy folds. Pet her engorged pearl and sink inside her sweet—
“Shall we do it?”
He stared at her.
“Ramsey?” She always called to him in an affectionate tone in front of the Boyers. She had paused in the midst of the fairgrounds. People danced around them.
“Of course. Anything you want.” Whatever the hell it was, he’d give it to her.
She chastised him with narrowed eyes, then grabbed his hand. “Come along, then. Let’s see if you have the skill.”
If she only knew what skills he wished to offer her, she would run like a deer from a salivating buck. But those sensuous skills had to die a prompt death, didn’t they?
He sighed and went where she led.
She glanced at him. “What roils you?”
Dismayed that she perceived enough of his inner turmoil to ask, he glanced toward the flowing river beyond and frowned. “I wish we were somewhere we could truly enjoy this celebration.”
“You think we are not?”
He squeezed her hands in reassurance. “No. We are. I am simply being cautious.”
“Good,” she said, but she glanced around, her joy in the moment gone.
“The dunking contest.” He nodded toward a tall tin water barrel before them. Atop a ledge above the barrel sat a young lad on a rickety woven chair. One young woman below giggled as she taunted him, attesting she was going to hit the swinging ball withher own flat club so that he would splash into the barrel. “Can you hit that moving ball?”
“I’d rather win a stein of beer.” Amber pointed just beyond to the archery contest. “There.”
“Are you any good?” He paused, hands on his hips.
She narrowed her long-lashed eyes at him. “I am the very best.”
He blew out a breath, and beneath it he muttered, “Why should I be surprised?”
“I heard that,” she scolded with a playful toss of her head. Today, with the new spring-green gown they’d had sewn by the modiste in Buzancy, she wore no hat. Her wild red curls had grown longer since he found her in Varennes. Today, she’d caught them up in jade ribbons, and in the willowy June breeze, they danced. The look transformed her to be years younger. Beside him, she strolled toward the villagers, who took up the offered bows, quivers, and gloves and stood in line waiting their chance.
Four contenders tried their luck at a time. The crowd encouraged them as they took their places, nocked their bows, and took up the proper stance. Then the chief monitor called the mark, the ready, and the go. The crowd oohed and aahed, then jeered and cheered when one of the latest four appeared to have hit the target more closely to the center. When those four moved off, the four in front of Amber and Ram advanced in line.
Amber craned her elegant neck to see what had been posted at the front. “I say, this contest is popular. The beer must be very good.”
“If certain people knew you worked for beer,” he said with a pained expression, “they’d have the best laugh.”
“If only what you and I did were so easy.”
“Full of decisions too complicated to be rewarded with simple alcohol,” he complained in a deadly serious tone.Vaillancourt was after her, but once he had her in his grasp, he would press for more, wouldn’t he? Fouché was Vaillancourt’s superior, ruthless in his professional role, but at heart a family man. He was no fool who’d allow his deputy to keep so valuable a suspected agent as his mistress. So, of course, Amber would die once Vaillancourt grew tired of her. Or Fouché got tired of Vaillancourt.
“There are rewards for what we do,” she challenged Ram with a hint of humor. “Big ones. You know it.”
He scoffed. “Such as?”
She frowned and turned away from him to finger the protective leather gloves upon the nearby table. Woodsmen had donated them for the competition.
The man in charge of the lineup called for the current four contenders to nock their arrows. The crowd cheered and crowed, scoffing at the losers and yelling congratulations to the winner of that round.
