A Sense of Sin by Elizabeth Essex Page A

sheets, her dark hair spread in riotous abandon across his pillows.
    But the reality of her appearance was no less arousing. Even in the dim moonlight, he could see her skin was aglow with suppressed passion, her hands were knotted into the sticky, prickly yew branches, and her breaths were labored.
    “So, you see why you cannot touch me. Why we cannot touch each other. I beg you, Miss Burke. Do not tempt me with so addicting a drug. Do not tempt me to forget everything decent and right.” He said it with more force than he ought, but he was in an agony of arousal. Thankfully, his last words had finally broken the spell he had cast around them.
    She eased back away from him a pace or two.
    “Forgive me, Miss Burke. You need not fear. You are quite safe with me. I am remembering, at long last, that I am a gentleman. For Emily’s sake.”
    She nodded, a firm little dipping of her head. Her breath was still too fragmented to speak.
    “You should go. Please.” He needed her to go before he forgot all his fine words and noble-sounding, gentlemanly sentiments, and fucked her against a yew hedge. Because he was only kidding himself if he thought his actions of the past half hour were all about revenge or justice for Emily. He was deluding himself if he thought he was doing it for any reason other than that he wanted Celia Burke. He wanted her with a hunger that made a mockery of his self-control. A hunger that made a mockery of his gentlemanly behavior. And he knew if he didn’t do something, he wasn’t going to stop until he had her.

C HAPTER 8
    C elia woke with a feeling of lightness she had not experienced in weeks. All would be fine. She was going to be fine. At the end of her road was still a lovely little cottage covered with fragrant climbing Rosa bracteata. When Viscount Darling’s temporary fascination with her was through, she would still have her good name, her good sense, and her botanical work.
    She had no doubt it was a temporary fascination. However she might try to remind him of his better self, he had shown her without question he was still a rake. And rakes always, always moved on to other pastures. Pastures full of widows and barmaids.
    She felt so expansive she took Bains in tow before breakfast and set off across her father’s estate to an old, unused stone granary where she had created her workshop.
    “You’re chipper as the larks this morning, miss.”
    “Yes, I am, Bains. I defy anyone to put me out of countenance this morning.”
    “You’ll be out of countenance once we get to that cave of yours and you find one of your precious specimens has died since the last time we’ve been there.”
    “Not at all. I know where to get more!”
    The workroom was more than a place to Celia, it was an idea. And an ideal. One she had nurtured from its inception in her brain until it was a physical place. A place where she could finally pursue her passion for botany without either interruption or interference. It was her sanctuary.
    When they arrived at the tall stone barn, Celia and Bains climbed up the stairs to the loft and one by one threw open the heavy wooden shutters, flooding the room with bright summer sunlight. Beams of light slanted across the wide floor planks and filled the vaulted space with a golden glow.
    All her money—all the money she might otherwise have had on hand to pay Viscount Darling, instead of becoming his willing partner in his game of seduction—had gone into this loft. In the dark days after she had come home from school, Celia had sought refuge in the great empty stone barn situated at the edge of the home farm, looking down over the mill creek.
    Long ago, before her father had bought the manor as a wedding present for her mama, the barn had been a great granary, storing the harvest from the surrounding farms. But since her father’s management of the estate had been mostly pastoral, rather than agricultural, and they no longer grew and cut much grain, the barn had fallen