Unbuttoning Miss Hardwick by Deb Marlowe Page A

destroyed the barrier that was her stark persona. She’d done it even knowing that the consequence would be the loss of Denning, of their working relationship.
    Now she saw that he had lowered his own blockade, if only a little. This was a rare glimpse of the man behind the remote and forbidding Marauding Marquess.
    She found that she wanted to see more.
    And yet…she forced herself pause. What of her own mission?
    It took but a moment for her to know one thing with certainty. Chloe did have something in common with Hardwick: she wanted to know Lord Marland nearly as intensely as she wanted to know herself.
    She straightened—and blushed when she came within inches of his encompassing, waiting form.
    ‘I will make a vow, should you require it, right here and now.’ He pitched his tone low and earnest. ‘I will not allow the search to hinder the help that you are giving to Mairi.’ The look he ran down the front of her made her feel restless and hotly aware. ‘And though I cannot begin to understand it, I promise that I will not interfere with your…transformation.’
    Grateful, she nodded.
    He drew breath. ‘I—’
    She placed her fingers against his mouth. His lips were soft. Like silk. Warm, living silk. His breath stopped—and she found herself pleased. ‘Yes.’ The rest of her words had disappeared.
    ‘Truly?’
    The one-word question emerged on a searing breath. The sensitive pads of her fingers picked up the heat and sent it winging along the roadmap of her nerves, awakening every cell within her. She’d never been so aware of every part of herself—or of the nearly painful sting of connection between them. ‘I’ll help you find the Spear.’
    How often she’d imagined him as a warrior of old. He looked every inch of one now, staring so intently down at her in the disappearing light. He reached out for her again—and she gasped at the heat ignited inside her when he grasped her by the waist and lifted her to her feet as easily as if she were a child.
    Somehow her hands had come up. They rested lightly against the thin linen of his shirt. Beneath her fingers she could feel his heartbeat. Her own filled her ears, drowning the comforting lullaby of sleepy bird sound.
    ‘Thank you.’ His simple words vibrated against her fingers, as well as in her ears. They started a chain reaction. She was trembling in the deeper shadow cast by his large form—and then she was caught unaware by something entirely new.
    He smiled.
    A hundred times she’d dreamed of this moment—the instant that he looked at her with more than an ancient weapon on his mind and polite expectation on his face. Now it was here, and it was—shockingly, impossibly—far more thrilling than she had dreamt.
    Never would she have considered that the rarity of his smile might be a good thing, but the thought crossed her mind now. It transformed him completely and captivated her utterly. She was caught. Not frozen. Warmed, rather, by the sunlight that was his pleasure, approval and regard. It stunned her, that smile, and brought to life every fantasy she had ever indulged in. Knights and Vikings paraded behind her eyes, followed quickly by stolen kisses and impassioned embraces. Heat rose to the surface of her skin and she lost herself in the promise and potential and possibility that lived in the creased corner of his eye and the turned-up edge of his mouth.
    Possibility. The word struck a chord inside her that released her from his spell. Her mind began to spin and tumble. She stepped back, smoothed her skirts to hide her confusion, ducked her head to keep from revealing the revolutionary notions erupting inside her.
    ‘Come.’ He gathered up his coat and slung it over his arm. ‘Let’s get you back before Mairi begins to worry.’
    Chloe nodded. The garden was small, not many steps and only a few moments until she could retreat to the privacy of her room.
    ‘How shall we start?’ he asked.
    She barely registered the question, so