LANCASTER WATCHED THE heavy door swing shut behind Sophie.
Could nothing with her go according to design? His protection plan for her had involved keeping a professional distance, doing absolutely nothing that could build on that undeniable electricity between them.
One week in, and Sophie had managed to totally thwart his plan, not just by giving her detail the slip, but by taking dark, isolated paths by herself and cavorting, alone and unclothed, in a hot spring.
Even though she was afraid.
That shriek, when he had startled her, and the look in her eyes, had given her away. She carried fear inside her. Was it defiance of that fear that made her take chances?
He felt a shiver go up and down his spine at the thought of someone with ill intent coming across her in either of those vulnerable states. The fact that he sensed some fear in her made his need to protect her intensify.
And so a week in, he had to admit his original plan seemed to be sadly, and totally, in tatters.
Now, a simple walk to town for a scone had become this.
He realized, though, as much as he wanted to, he could not blame Sophie for this latest unexpected turn in events. He had chosen the route. Because he could not walk down Honeysuckle Lane, with its row of thatch-roofed cottages.
Sophie could not know that one—the one that had been razed by fire—was missing. In its place, he understood, was a tiny, but beautiful garden spot, tended lovingly by an entire community that still grieved his loss with him.
Even though nearly half a dozen years had passed, he could still see it in the faces of the people who looked at him, how they shared his pain and his sorrow.
Still, avoiding Honeysuckle Lane tonight had been one of those rare decisions that he made based solely on emotion.
And look where that had gotten him! It was a warning about the reliability of emotion. He was losing control of his charge as easily as Henderson had. Make that Ricky. With his girlfriend, Becky, and his dog, Buck.
Lancaster had not—until the moment of Sophie’s reveal—known Henderson’s first name. Certainly not that he had a girlfriend or a dog.
But that was the thing to remember about Sophie. She could weave a spell around a man in minutes, getting him to reveal all his secrets.
He remembered, with a sudden ache, a long, long time ago, when he and Edward had arrived in Mountain Bend, incognito. He had hurt her, and he had gone to Sophie deep in the night to tell her why. To tell her there was a stone where his heart used to be. He had told her that for her, so that she could understand his rejection of her was nothing personal.
And yet, after he had confided his deepest loss to her, there had been a feeling of some weight in him lifted.
There it was again. That word. Feeling. It had no place in his life, and it was probably preventing him from doing his job properly right now. Because he was standing out here on the street, like a gauche teenage boy trying to deal with his feelings, and she was probably in there trying to find the back door, giggling about giving him the slip just as easily as she had Henderson.
Feeling as though he was striding toward battle, Lancaster took a deep breath, crossed the walkway and shoved open the door.
The light was soft and the atmosphere in the store was frighteningly feminine. Sensual might not have been too strong a word. The brick walls were painted a pale pink. Tufted chairs were dotted about. There were lit glass columns displaying all manner of skimpy, lacy things.
Lancaster almost thought an alarm bell might start ringing, a robot voice shouting warning the enclave had been breached, Man, man, man.
He was almost sorry that Sophie was not trying to make her escape at all. She was standing, with a very elegant-looking woman, both of them focused on something the woman was holding.
They looked up when he came in, revealing what the woman had in her hands. It appeared to be a brassiere.
Which really shouldn’t have surprised him. Top Secret, particularly after its endorsement from Princess Madeline, was making a name for itself around the world, exporting these highly personal feminine items.
“Oh, Lancaster,” Sophie said, “you’re just in time.”
In time? For what? He contemplated what he was feeling. Panic. Flight or fight. He realized his hand was still on the door handle.
That thing Prince Edward had said he’d never seen him feel? Fear? Lancaster was feeling it now. It took every ounce of his soldier’s nature to keep himself from bolting back out the door.
“I can’t understand a word she’s saying. I need a translator.” Unless he was mistaken, there was an impish little smile tickling around the edges of Sophie’s full lips.
Lips he had tasted.
Now there was a dangerous thought to be having in a lingerie shop! He could not let Sophie know she was having this effect on him. She would use it mercilessly.
The woman turned her attention to him, and recognized him. For just a moment, he saw that deep sympathy in her eyes. And then her gaze flitted to Sophie and back to him. Filled with hope.
Hope from a stranger. It felt as if it could weaken something in him in a moment when he felt he desperately needed to be strong.
“She’s my job,” he told her, sternly, in their own tongue. “She can’t understand you. She’s asked me to translate what you’re saying.”
The woman nodded, clearly not convinced about the job part. “This is our most popular design,” she said, holding up the item so he could see it better.
He was translating, not drawing a picture! Schooling his features to complete boredom, he relayed that information to Sophie.
Sophie actually took the item and studied it. Against his will, his eyes went back to the item in her hands. It was a confection of ivory-colored lace and soft gray mist.
“It looks so insubstantial,” Sophie said doubtfully.
What did she need substantial for? he thought, making himself not look at the area in question. He had just assured her no guardsman would ever sneak a peek!
Not that he had to be sneaking peeks. He knew darn well precisely what she was built like. Her first day here she had reminded him of that exactly by falling into him. It was burned into his brain like a brand.
Do not go any further down that road, he ordered himself, and do not blush.
The saleslady looked askance at him.
“She says it doesn’t look like it’s up to the job,” he said. His voice had a bit of a croak in it. Job, he reminded himself. What you’re here to do. Job? Earth calling Lancaster.
“Yes,” the woman said, pleased. “That’s the magic of this design. The support hasn’t been sacrificed for the sexiness.”
He did not want to be part of a conversation about support and sexiness in women’s underwear!
“She said looks are deceiving,” he told Sophie. Discussing sexiness with her, in any context, was not in the job description.
Sophie turned it over in her hands, not looking convinced about the support issue, but looking enchanted all the same. Did she not own any sexy underwear? Did she have to act like she had never seen lace on a bra before?
“It’s so soft,” she said.
What did that mean? The one she wore was hard? He did not need to be thinking about what the one she wore was like! Thinking those kinds of thoughts would be worse than sneaking a peek!
“Ask her what her measurement is,” the saleslady instructed him.
He would not!
“She should try one on.”
He stared at the woman. He opened his mouth. Not a single, solitary sound came out.
“Tell her she won’t believe it. It will make her feel like a woman in a way nothing ever has before.”
It seemed to him that was a rather remarkable claim. He was not jealous of underwear. He simply was not. He wouldn’t allow it.
“What?” Sophie asked him. She had a mischievous glint in her eye. She was enjoying his discomfort. Immensely. He’d had enough.
“She says she’s closing. You need to come back another time.” But that begged the question, with whom would she come back? Henderson? Ricky?
To the salesclerk he said, “Could you give her a catalog? She says it is highly personal. She’d rather order online.”
The saleslady eyed him suspiciously, because Sophie’s one word—What?—obviously did not amount to what he was saying it did. Still, his reputation helped him out, because she did not question him, but went and got a catalog and pressed it into Sophie’s hands.
“Tell her there’s a section in the back she must see. Our new line. Pleasure enhancers.”
She had quite the twinkle in her eye. It occurred to him the clerk, while being more subtle about it, was enjoying his discomfort at least as much as Sophie.
“I would not deliberately embarrass a person by publicly discussing something so private,” he said evenly, a lesson he hoped she would hear.
She was not the least contrite. What was it about him and difficult women tonight?
“Americans aren’t usually so inhibited,” she said, lifting a shoulder.
To his great relief they were back out in the night in seconds. The air felt cold on his cheeks, which made him realize they must have been burning.
“I heard the word Americans. What did she say?”
“It was an honor to have a visitor from so far away.” He was unaccustomed to lying and wouldn’t meet Sophie’s eyes. Lying got a man into trouble, anyway. For instance, he had told her this shop was closing, and now if he didn’t want her to know that was a lie, they would have to return to the pathway to the castle by way of Honeysuckle Lane.
Oh, what a tangled web we weave when first we practice to deceive.
And so his relief at getting her out of the shop was short-lived. They entered the warmth and light of the bakery and he was impossibly aware of Sophie. The counter girls greeted her as if she was a long-lost friend, and he saw her warmth and friendliness as she returned the greeting, calling one girl by name.
It was a reminder Sophie, despite the new layer of sophistication, was a wholesome, small-town girl at heart. She was not a person anyone should be having terrible renegade thoughts about what would make her feel like a woman in a way nothing had before.
“Go find a seat,” he said to her. “I’ll order.”
“But you don’t know what I want,” she said.
That was true. He did not. Not in any of the multitude of ways that could be taken.
“What do you want, then?” Did his voice have a snap to it he hadn’t intended? She wasn’t being unreasonable. He was.
She told him and went and found a seat. He placed the order and went to the table. He put a steaming-hot tea in front of her, and one at his place at the table. He slid into the seat across from her. Sophie ignored him completely, pouring over her new catalog.
Don’t look at her, he ordered himself.
He’d been in the military for all of his adult life. For thirteen years. He was a man who knew how to obey orders. So, he looked over her shoulder, out the window and saw evening fog moving in, watched people moving down the streets, and in and out of shops.
And then he glanced at her, and the order he’d given himself was gone like that fog outside would be if sunlight hit it.
She had removed her little red riding hood thingy. He looked at the way her hair fell forward over her face, and at the slight gloss on her lips, the thickness of her lashes, the way her sweater hugged the part of herself that he was newly and uncomfortably aware of.
She looked up suddenly, turned the magazine to him, just as scones, fresh from the oven, were set on the table in front of them.
“What do you think of this one?”
He stared at the picture she had turned toward him. It felt like the worst kind of sin that he could imagine her in that. He was a professional. He was a professional protector and she was the principal, in other words, his job, his mission. The one he would not sneak peeks at if she was stark naked!
“Um…” He picked up a scone, heaped a small mountain of clotted cream on it and shoved the entire thing in his mouth. He thought he was going to choke on his scone, that’s what he thought of that one.
Despite the fact he had barely swallowed his first scone, was in danger of choking on it, and snorting cream out his nose, he picked up another and bit into it, as well.
She waited patiently.
“It’s very nice,” he managed to choke out, finally.
“Red or black?” Sophie smiled sweetly at him.
But he was revising his assumption she was wholesome. It was possible she was the devil herself.
“Are you trying to make me uncomfortable?” he asked.
“I’m just having a bit of fun.”
Obviously, she was way too much for Henderson. Any ideas he had of returning the guardsman to his protection duty were evaporating.
She turned the catalog back to herself, and flipped through the pages.
“Oh,” she said, her eyes suddenly widening.
Lancaster braced himself.
But she closed the catalog abruptly and put it in that ridiculous oversize bag that he suddenly felt grateful for.
“So, Lancaster,” she said, her voice a touch squeaky, “tell me what you do for fun.”
Nothing to do with women’s underwear, he retorted in his mind, but not out loud, because he had a reputation to uphold and they were in a public place.
And possibly he could not say it without the tiniest bit of regret.
For some reason, he tried to think of ways he had fun, as if it was a test question that he was about to fail.
While she waited for an answer, she took a bite of her scone, and there was a little dot of cream clinging to her lip. After a moment, she removed it with the tip of her tongue.
It made him think of fun in a terrible new light.
“I don’t have fun,” he told her grimly, amazed that he hadn’t given her that totally honest answer instantly.
“That’s ridiculous. Everyone has fun.”
He didn’t say anything.
“There’s a poster on the wall over there. The local pub is hosting a band coming from Ireland that plays spoons. I don’t even know what that is for sure, but it has to be fun.”
For a moment, he was transported to the warmth of a kitchen, shouted laughter, the rat-tat-tat percussion of the spoons, like a horse trotting across a wooden bridge, voices raised in song, a baby bouncing on his knee, clapping chubby hands together.
“We should go,” she suggested.
We. She was going dangerous places. Far more dangerous than she knew.
“Come on,” he said, scraping back his chair. “I want to show you something.”
She looked at the one nibble she had left of her scone, and looked as if she was going to argue—naturally—but then she didn’t. She got up and had to put her hands way over her head to get the red thingy back on. A gentleman might have offered to help her. But he doubted there was a man on the planet who would be thinking gentlemanly thoughts after witnessing that catlike stretch.
He turned from her and she practically had to run to follow him out the door.
He turned deliberately toward the darkness in his heart that would lead him straight to Honeysuckle Lane. He would stop only briefly at that gaping hole where his life once had unfolded in normal things: a woman who waited eagerly for him, who had made him—so undeserving of the honor—the center of her life.
He wouldn’t stop long enough to see a little boy in a hand-knitted jumper crawling across a swept stone floor toward him, calling out his one and only word.
“Da.”
He would stop only long enough to make Sophie understand where the fun had stopped for him.
He would use it as a reminder to himself that once he had been a man who had everything, including fun. He had not treasured his life being crowded with small pleasures nearly enough when he had it. And he did not deserve to have it again.