Out of the Dark by Jennifer Blake Page B

heating her heart, weighting her lower body while her mind swam with the euphoric intoxication. The sensation was like nothing she had ever known, a consuming flame of purest concupiscence. Startled, unbelieving, she was defenseless against it.
    The man's rigorously sculpted features softened. He transferred his hat to the same hand which held his cane, then reached out to her. As he moved forward, his long cape billowed to expose the red silk lining inside the dark folds. It made him look, for an instant, like a hawk swooping down on its prey.
    “No!” she said on a quick gasp. Shuddering at the effort, she stepped backward beyond any possibility of physical contact.
    He stopped and let his hand drop to his side. A waiting stillness settled over him while he regarded her with distracted care, as if listening to her panicked breathing, absorbing her reluctance. Beyond the brick and wrought iron cemetery fence, a carriage rattled past at a slow pace and faded into the night.
    As quiet closed in on them once more, he said simply, “Why?”
    “You—you must be mistaken in who I am, sir.” She clasped her hands tightly together at her waist under the slits of her short velvet cloak.
    His mouth, sensual in its chiseled curves, exquisitely tender in the tucked corners, curved in amusement. He said, “Oh, I don't believe so.”
    “Well, I certainly don't know you! And if you will permit me to pass, I have to retrieve—”
    “ Renfrey .”
    “I beg your pardon?”
    “My name. You did not know it.”
    The tenderness of his voice was like a caress. Carita did her best to ignore it. With great firmness, she said, “Yes, well, but your saying so can hardly be called an acceptable introduction, can it? As I was saying, there is a vase behind you left by my Aunt Berthe that I must—”
    “It’s worthless. I wouldn't trouble myself over it.” The words were judicious and dismissive. He paused, then said in intent demand, “How are you called?”
    “ Carita . It's odd, I know, but was an endearment my father used, so had special meaning to my mother before—” She halted, amazed at herself for saying so much when she had meant to say nothing at all.
    “Before she died?” he finished gently. “I was reading the engraving on her tomb, I think, just now.”
    Carita looked beyond him to where a bouquet of wilting chrysanthemums and wild ageratum tied with black ribbon streamers lay on the couch-like foundation of the family resting place. There were roses there, also—a huge mass of late fall blooms. How fresh they looked, as if just cut. She didn't remember her aunt bringing them. Who had?
    She gave the man before her an inquiring frown. At that moment, a luna moth of enormous size fluttered from the ranks of tombs. Pale gold, ethereal, it drifted about their heads, then settled on Renfrey's broad, black-clad shoulder like a gentle, moon-dusted ghost.
    And abruptly Carita's every sense was exquisitely alive.
    How delightful the night was; she had hardly noticed before. Moonlight glinting on the dark and shiny leaves of the evergreen magnolia just beyond where they stood gave them the look of black crystal. The marble mausoleums and memorials that surrounded them were smoothly graceful and touched with peace, while the planes and angles of their shadows were velvet-edged and inviting.
    She could smell the delicious scent of the roses on her mother's tomb, and from some nearby garden sweet olive drenched the air with its honeyed seduction. She identified the mustiness of decay on the withering seed pods of the magnolia, caught the dry herbal mustiness of the lantana where it grew against a headstone. The scents of parched grass and old bones hovered near.
    In the mausoleum just over there, a mouse scuffled, making a nest. At the wrought iron fence, a stray cat, gray with night, weaved in and out between the palings; he had not yet detected the mouse.
    The wind on her face had currents of coolness and warmth, of spice and