[Samuel Barbara] The Black Angel(Book4You) by Barbara Samuel Page B

red vine spread across a hedgerow, and at its foot bloomed a stand of wild crimson roses, vivid in the gray light.
    "I've never seen so many flowers as grow in this country," Tynan commented. "Especially in the spring, but even now flowers are everywhere, in every tiny waste place, on every wall, in every garden in every inch of the towns."
    Adriana glanced at him, wondering at this pleasant comment after the sharpness of the previous one. Was he attempting to make amends, or had she been too sensitive? She scowled. She was spending far too much time trying to puzzle him out. Deliberately draining her voice of any but the most polite of tones, she answered, "I imagine Ireland as very lush."
    "'Tis green," he said. "Moss and grass and shamrocks everywhere, even in the water. But not flowers like this." He gestured with that long-fingered, beautiful hand toward the forest. "Not a flower in every corner."
    "You'll like the town house, if you care for flowers. There's a conservatory, stocked with all manner of them—orchids and roses and lemon trees."
    "Who tends it when you're in the country?"
    Adriana shrugged. "The servants do. Leander—that's our cousin—sees to it when he comes to London every year or two—he'll go roaring through with clippers and fresh soil and great fuss, then it's fine again until he returns the next time." She didn't add that she loved the place, that it reminded her most pointedly of Martinique, where Leander had fallen so madly in love with the science of botany. "And indeed, you'd find Martinique quite a splendor."
    He inclined his head ever so slightly. "More flowers than England?"
    "Thousands more!" She found herself lifting her nose, as if smelling them on the air. "At night, it smells of…" She shook her head. "There are no words for that scent in the night. As if all the finest perfumes had been spilled into the very wind."
    The heavy lashes shaded his expression again, suddenly, and Adriana wondered what she'd said now.
    But she'd spent too much time entirely on trying to read his every thought. Feigning a yawn, she tugged a blanket over her shoulder and settled back against the seat. "Oh!" she said blinking, "I believe I'm sleepy. You will forgive me if I nap a little?"
    "Of course."
     
    Tynan watched her lean back and close her eyes. He'd not seen her in this animated mood before, her eyes bright and alert, her expression filled with the light of intelligence. She'd drawn him into conversation, teased him lightly, been chastened when he teased her in return.
    And every shade of emotion showed in her face, in her dancing eyes, on her mobile mouth.
    That mouth. From beneath half-closed lids he allowed himself to admire that lush, fine mouth at leisure. The tips of his fingers tingled faintly, remembering the plump give, the resilient firmness of those lips last night. He remembered the heady eroticism of her breath soughing, moist and warm, over the heart of his palm, a hint of the pleasure to be found within that harbor.
    Harbor. He sighed softly and made himself close his eyes entirely, though that was not the help he supposed it would be, since his imagination provided what his eyelids had blocked out. She had a mouth like a courtesan in the face of a saint—few men could resist the contradictions contained in such an arrangement. Few men could have resisted indulging the speculations he now entertained, speculations regarding the taste of that succulent lower lip, the flavor of that particular, exaggerated bow on the upper. Or fail to wonder what splendor lay within.
    St. Bridget
! He thought of Aiden, who'd resisted female flesh every moment of his life on earth—not, as he'd often told Tynan, because he did not hunger for them, but because he wished to leave them in their innocence.
    Tynan allowed himself one more glance at that ripe mouth of his bride. His brother had never seen a mouth like that of Adriana St. Ives.
    He shifted restlessly, focusing his gaze beyond the coach. His