Caroline breathed in deep, watching him stand in the doorway. He took up a lot of it, and his presence seemed to fill the room before he even entered it.
Mittens used the open door to return to the bedroom, twining his tail around Snowdon’s leg as he passed.
The man did not enter yet. Blue eyes surveyed her, a trace of anxiety in them that stirred a warmth in her belly.
“You’d better come in,” she said, discarding all the warnings her upbringing as a lady taught her.
He stepped forward, drawing the door closed behind him. “Miss Garland, I realize I shouldn’t be here, but I wasn’t able to see you earlier. How do you feel?”
“Warm,” she said. “Which for a while felt like an impossibility.”
“I’m glad. May I?” He gestured to the chair Estelle occupied before.
She nodded, and he sat down. “I’ve been worried. You were in a bad state when we arrived back at the house. You were delirious.”
Of course he’d think that. She’d told him she thought he was a snowman come to life.
“Please ignore anything I said before. I’m much better now,” she said quickly.
“Yes, a remarkable recovery,” he said, reaching down to rub the cat’s ears, a gesture that was met with heartfelt approval.
“The formula is remarkable—” She halted, realizing that she shouldn’t have said that. The only thing her father had mentioned was his laboratory notes, which could be for anything. “That is, never mind. Please ignore anything I said now as well.”
“As you wish.” He didn’t seem to notice her flustered state. But from what she knew, Snowdon noticed everything.
Mittens looked at Caroline, but then hopped up onto Snowdon’s lap, where he immediately made himself quite comfortable.
Snowdon stroked the cat, and Caroline noticed how finely made his hands were, strong but not clumsy. He wore no rings at all, somewhat unusually for a man of his stature. Jewelry was so important to the aristocracy.
That thought made her remember the loss of her own jewelry, and her breath caught as the shame of it hit her again.
He heard and thought it a physical pain. “What’s wrong?” he asked, leaning forward to see her face in the dim light. “Do you need me to call someone for you?”
“It’s nothing like that. It’s just…I lost the rubies,” she confessed.
“What?”
“I was wearing them at the pond…I know, it was stupid. I just…wanted to feel special.”
“You don’t need rubies for that.”
“They’re at the bottom of the pond now,” she went on, not even hearing him. “The pond that is freezing cold and covered in ice that’s getting thicker every day. By the time spring comes and the water will be—barely!—warm enough to swim in, the rubies will be covered in silt and decomposed leaves and sand and no one will ever find them. I have lost my family’s legacy all because I wanted to feel fancy at a skating party. I lost the rubies my mother gave me because she thought I was grown up enough to have them. Clearly I wasn’t.”
“Caroline, they’re stones, that’s all. What matters is that you’re safe. You survived.”
“You don’t understand. You’re a lord, you can probably buy a dozen ruby necklaces without stopping at the bank.”
“Definitely not true,” he said. He scooped up Mittens and deposited the protesting cat near the fireplace, then moved to kneel before Caroline. He surveyed her, his eyes shadowed blue, with a tender cast. She felt her heart responding to that look with an ache that felt strangely good. He gently reached out his hands to take hers. “You are worth more than any jewels. I could tell that the moment I met you.” He raised one hand to his lips and turned it up, kissing her palm.
Caroline’s breath hitched when his lips brushed against the sensitive skin, and pleasure rippled through her limbs all the way to the tips of her fingers and toes. No danger of losing sensation anymore. She could sense her whole body reacting to Snowdon’s presence.
He caught her gaze, and gave her a tiny grin. “I’ve been waiting all day to do that.”
“You have?”
“Not just that.” He dropped his hands and leaned in, appeal in his eyes. “If you permit me.”
“You didn’t ask permission before, under the bed.”
“I was a little preoccupied then. But let me kiss you now.”
“I thought you said the previous kiss was a mistake,” she protested, but without any spirit.
“And you believed me?”
Caroline leaned forward, bringing her mouth to his. Unlike the first time, it began gently. But now Caroline was the one in charge, and he seemed quite content to let her lead. She tentatively nibbled his lower lip, remembering he’d done that to her. His response was a sudden intake of breath, and his hands rose to cup her face, encouraging her to go on.
She opened her mouth, not entirely sure what prompted the urge. But when his tongue darted in and slid along her lips, she realized that her body knew far more than she did. Every glide and slip was a revelation. Her nerves tingled with anticipation of more, and he delivered more. His mouth tasted hers a dozen times, and then he moved his attention to her cheek, her ear, her neck.
A soft moan escaped her, and then she was encircled in strong arms, held firmly as he continued to kiss his way over the skin bared above the neckline of her loose night rail.
“My lord,” she whispered. “Is it wise to continue this…this…I don’t know what to call this.”
“Not everything needs to be named,” he said, his voice rich and low in her ear. He followed that with a kiss just below her ear, a place that she was finding so sensitive that it stirred feelings in entirely different parts of her body. It would be an interesting thing to examine…if she could put two thoughts together. Unfortunately, her mind was far too consumed with the pursuit of these new pleasures in the arms of a man she barely knew.
His embrace warmed her far more than the formula ever had. Caroline closed her eyes, and let all the lovely, flickering feelings pour over her. Perhaps someday she’d find kisses to be unexciting, the novelty over. But not now. Now she wanted to revel in every detail so she could recall it later…after he was gone.
The intrusion of reality soured the sweetness of the kiss. She pulled away, frowning. “You’re leaving here soon.”
“That’s true, sadly. Why? Would you like me to return?” His smile set her heart fluttering.
“I think that before I answer that, I need to know why you’re here in the first place.”
“Hmm. I suppose that I can’t just say it’s because I can’t resist you.” He kissed her again, his mouth brushing against hers in a way that sent her thoughts flying away like leaves in a storm.
Caroline was lost for another long, delicious moment. But then she pulled away again. “You didn’t know anything about me when you arrived. So there was nothing to resist.”
“Not then.” He ran a finger along the underside of her chin, as if deciding where he wanted to kiss her next.
She pulled his hand away, only to find her fingers twining with his as if of their own accord. Holding his hand was an entirely different kind of wonderful. What if this was a thing I could have every day? The thought blazed up in her mind. She tamped it down, for the moment.
“My lord, why is it that whenever I have doubts about what you’re here for, you find it expedient to kiss me?”
He raised an eyebrow. “I’ve never had my kisses described as expedient. I’m a little insulted, to be honest.”
“How about you focus on being honest rather than insulted. You took something from my parents’ room, and not long afterward, my father reported his notes missing. Yes, he thought they were in the lab, but it’s quite possible they’d been taken into the bedchamber by accident, where you found them, because you were searching.”
“No.”
“No? You’re still pretending that you weren’t in the room? That you didn’t take something?”
He looked up at the ceiling, then, surprisingly, smiled.
“It’s not funny,” she said. “The papers are missing.”
“So they are. But that’s not what I took from the room.”
“What did you take?”
“Presents.”
Caroline blinked. “What?”
“Your father requested me to carry out a few small presents that had been wrapped up and put on his bureau. Apparently, your family has a bit of a tradition of trying to find gifts before the New Year, when they’re meant to be exchanged?”
“Well, yes, but…” In fact, the Garlands did exactly that, but this year’s holidays had been so hectic and strange that Caroline hadn’t found the time to engage in the usual hunt. “You took my presents?”
“One for you, one for Miss Clement. A couple others I think meant for your aunt Juniper. I was to hide them in my own room, since your father supposed that was the one place you’d never dare to look.”
“Why would he trust you with that? You’d never met him before you arrived!”
“In fact, that’s not quite accurate. I met him once in London. He was keen for me to come here to Hollydell, and we decided that the house party would be a good opportunity.”
“For what?”
“To discover exactly who was after his formula.”
“Wait. You already knew about the formula? He told me never to tell anyone.”
“And he was right to do so. Your father is a very clever man, and not just in the laboratory. He knew that his formula would be sought after by certain…interests. And while he kept it as quiet as he could, such innovations can’t be kept totally secret. He conferred with other colleagues in early stages, and he’s had assistants come and go. Word got out. And though he’s been careful to keep all the information about the latest versions here, certain parties must have guessed that he was making considerable progress. He suspected that someone would try to steal the notes or the formula itself from his lab at Hollydell. I came here to help him.”
“But notes were stolen anyway.”
“Yes,” Snowdon said. “It’s not quite as dire as you might think…I’ll let your father explain why. But the theft changed some circumstances around here, and might allow me to apprehend the culprit.”
“You know who it is?”
“Almost the instant after it happened. But I needed proof. And so I waited for most of the household and guests to be gone…which happened during the excursion to go skating at the pond.”
“What did you do?”
“On your father’s instructions, I searched all the rooms,” he said. “That was what occupied me most of the day and why I couldn’t see you earlier. In fact, I hadn’t really intended to go to that skating party at all. But I wanted to survey everyone there just to be sure I wasn’t missing anything. I rode the horse to save time. And it turned out to be a fortunate choice.”
She sighed. Yes, it was a choice that saved her life. Then she thought about the rest of his explanation. “Did you find the notes?”
“I didn’t find the notes. But a person intent on stealing papers has many places to hide them if they plan carefully. I am no closer to proving who’s behind the theft.”
“But you have your suspicions.”
“I’m absolutely certain of it.”
“Who?”
“Francis Foster.”