Cleo stood before Thornton in a sitting room off the library, a quiet, less opulent chamber meant for family rather than guests. He hadn’t changed from his riding clothes and he smelled of the outdoors, the fresh scent of moss, woods and clean air. Mud specked his boots, his black hair carelessly wind tossed. He was, in two words, sinfully tempting.

At the moment, however, he appeared immune to her presence. A peeved expression marred his face. Lady Cosgrove had arranged their rehearsal, offering up the private room and making certain a footman directed Thornton to Cleo immediately upon his return. It had perhaps been an unwise decision, but she had not wanted to affront the gracious lady.

She decided to strive to be pleasant. “Good morning, my lord.”

“Good morning, my lady.” He gave her an abbreviated bow and then spoiled the effect by opening his mouth again. “Is there a reason I’m brought to your heels like a mongrel?”

Cleo sucked in a breath. “I’m sure you smell of one, having been roaming about the countryside for the better part of the morning. As for why you should feel like a mongrel, I can’t say, unless you’ve been dallying with other female guests in darkened rooms recently.”

Thornton gritted his teeth. “I think we both agree our mutual enmity makes the task Lady C. has set upon us impossible.”

“Enmity? I adore you, my lord,” she drawled, determined to meet him, verbal stride for verbal stride. He would not win a match of rapier wits with her.

“What, do tell, has her esteemed ladyship selected for our farce?” he demanded, crossing his arms over his chest.

It was a delightfully broad chest, she noted against her will, and strong too. After all, she had been intimately pressed against it just yesterday. Probably, she should be sent to the asylum at Broadmoor. Her body was betraying her mind.

“I do not like this any more than you.” She felt compelled to remind him. He was not the only suffering party in their hostess’s madcap plans.

He eyed her with an unconvinced glare. “For a woman professing to be in vehement disagreement, you certainly capitulated with alarming rapidity.”

Cleo narrowed her gaze. “That is merely because I do not wish to be rude to our hostess.”

“We waste time,” he decreed, imperious as ever. His lips thinned with impatience. Gone was the passionate lover of yesterday.

Indeed, she began to wonder if her heated imagination had not dreamt the entire episode. It infuriated and yet somehow intrigued her that he could be so warm and then so cold, so remote.

“Act two, scene one,” she said. “Happily, it is a scene in which Rosaline delivers a most deserving setdown to Biron.” In that moment, she praised Lady C. for her choice. Really, it could not be more suited to reality.

She handed him his lines. “If you don’t wish to make a fool of yourself, you ought to practice.”

“I dare say I’ve already done that,” he muttered, taking the papers from her.

Cleo pretended she hadn’t heard him. “Would you prefer to study on your own first?”

“No, damn it, I wouldn’t.” Thornton ran a hand through his already mussed hair.

Cleo moved to the window, a safe and respectable distance from him. She trained her gaze on the scene Lady C. had provided them. Not looking at him, she knew, would make the effort more pleasant. “Very well. Your lines are first, Thornton.”

He muttered something that sounded like ‘damned meddlesome biddy’, then cleared his throat before beginning. “‘Hear me, dear lady. I have sworn an oath.’”

She sighed and was forced by habit to glance up at him. “No, you’ve the wrong lines. You are not the king, even if your ego suggests otherwise.”

“Tut.” He gave her a sullen expression. “You needn’t be a shrew over it.”

“Your mother says ‘tut’, you know,” she pointed out in her most amenable tone. “It quite makes you sound like a doughty old matron, which is, one may suppose, a status very near to that of political saint. You are without the dress and heaving bosom, of course.”

Thornton’s nostrils actually flared. “As I said before, your tongue is far more appreciated when it is engaged in an activity other than speech, Countess.”

A gentleman, a true gentleman, would never dare utter such vulgarity to a lady. Oh, he was a most vexing man, rigid and haughty at one turn and bawdy at another. And thoroughly appealing. She wanted to cross the room and kiss him or slap him. She wasn’t certain which. This wouldn’t do.

“Look to the star Lady C. marked for you,” she directed him. “It will tell you where to begin.”

“Can I not be the king?” He grinned. “I rather fancy the line ‘your ladyship is ignorant.’”

“Tut,” Cleo repeated in her most mocking tone.

“Touché.” His gray eyes warmed as they raked over her.

“Let us begin again.” She smoothed a palm over her tiered skirt to calm herself.

“At this house party, or at the dialogue?”

Well, both really. How much simpler her life would currently be had she not feigned a megrim? Likely, she would have been partnered with the always elegant, always agreeable, always above reproach Duke of Claridge. Certainly, she would not be all odds and ends, her stomach tossed as a ship, her heart too fast, her flesh too warm, her dratted dress improver once again too cinched.

“The dialogue,” she clarified, at last recalling his question. The man had the most unsettling, undesirable effect on her. “Let us begin the scene anew.”

“Yes. Very well.” He glanced down at the play. “‘Did not I dance with you in Brabant once?’ Brabant? You know, I’ve never been there. Where the devil is it?”

“Thornton!” She threw up a hand in frustration. “You’ve muddled the lines.”

“Who gives a damn? We haven’t an audience.”

True, she mused. All the more reason for her to cleave to the window. “Yes, but one doesn’t make interjections while one rehearses for a play.”

“Perhaps one doesn’t,” he growled, “but I do. And you haven’t answered my question. Where the devil is Brabant?”

“It was a duchy in Belgium,” she answered, exasperated. “But now we must begin again.”

“Are we to recite our lines from opposite ends of the room?”

“Perhaps I wish to retain a safe distance from your odious presence.”

He stalked toward her, a knowing smile dawning on his mouth. “Or perhaps you don’t trust yourself to be close to me.”

“You are presumptuous.” And too perceptive. She held the scene out before her like a shield. “You needn’t stand so near. I hardly think Biron and Rosaline were atop one another.”

“No, I should think that came a bit later.”

Cleo bit her lip, meeting his gaze. “You are beyond the pale.”

“Go on,” he said lazily. “I enjoy hearing my many faults cataloged. It brings my ego to earth. I’m sure it distracts you from your inconvenient attraction to me.”

“There is no attraction, inconvenient or otherwise.” Though she tried to keep her voice cool and unaffected, she feared she sounded anything but. Her hands trembled as they clutched the play. She lowered them so he wouldn’t see. “Are you ready to continue?”

“Of course.” Thornton stepped closer. Her hem dragged across the tip of his boot.

Her dress improver tightened yet again.

He didn’t bother to examine the script, just kept his stare trained on her with an intensity she found most disconcerting. “‘Did not I dance with you in Brabant once?’”

His gaze caught her, sent her tumbling headlong into memories she had no wish to relive. Dancing with him, laughing with him, riding with him. Kissing him. His crushing betrayal, the days and nights of heartache, the loss. She could not forget, would not forget, what loving him had cost her.

“Cleo?” Thornton’s voice, gently prodding, brought her back to the present. “Are you well?”

“No.” She swallowed, then exhaled. “No, I am not well. If you don’t mind, I think I shall go and lie down.”

As she moved to pass him, he stayed her with a hand on her shoulder. “Wait.”

She stilled, watching him, terrified she would make a cake of herself by pitching into his arms or worse, by sobbing. “What is it?”

“It is…” He faltered, seeming as much at a loss as she. His free hand captured her other shoulder and he pushed her until her back pressed against the cool windowpane. Her full skirt sprang forward into his legs, but he stepped closer, the descent inevitable. “It is this, I’m afraid.”

His lips claimed hers.