Deborah Simmons - My Lady De Burgh

She wasn’t sure what was worse, the fact that she had stared up at him like a besotted ninny while he held her in his arms, or that she had willingly gone into them in the first place, pouring out her grief as if a dam had burst. The memory made Sybil feel ashamed, embarrassed, a fool, and yet, she knew she hadn’t thought so at the time. Tucked against that big, hard body, she had felt safe and warm for the first time in her life, as if she were home at last…. Sybil drew a ragged breath and shut her eyes against such nonsensical thoughts, but still the discoveries dismayed her.

He smelled like wood smoke and leather and something indefinable, something that was singularly his, and it was the most wonderful scent Sybil had ever encountered. She wanted to bury her face in his tunic again and just breathe. And this time, she wouldn’t cry, she would wrap her arms around his strong body and…what? Sybil shook her head. She knew even less about men than she knew about murder, but she was learning.

She had learned that this one possessed compassion. Despite all their heated exchanges, snapping at each other like dogs vying for the bone of the killer, when she had lost her composure entirely, he had enfolded her with his body, treated her to a gruff tenderness that made her weep all the more for the lack of it in her life.

Oh, she had vague memories of sweet nuns, of being held in gentle arms, but who here would have helped her this day? The abbess and most of the nuns would have been appalled by her outburst. Some would have been frightened, some pitying, and a few might have stepped forward to try to aid her. But none could have given her what this strange man had offered: his arms and his strength and his comfort.

When he had first arrived, Sybil had resented what Robin de Burgh could do to her; now she was heartily afraid of it. Before, she had had no idea what was lacking in her life, but now she knew, and she yearned for more with a fierceness that made her tremble. ’Twas a most dangerous desire, for comfort was not all that he gave her with his body. To Sybil’s horror, he also had roused in her a certain curiosity for something else in that hushed moment when all the world seemed to dim in the brightness of his being.

His eyes, like some kind of sweet and heady syrup, had held her spellbound, while against her belly she had felt something hard. Sybil had recognized that it was a part of him, and the knowledge had thrilled her, filling her with a power she never knew existed. Her fingers had spread upon the hard expanse of his chest, and she had wanted to rise upon her toes, to somehow make herself closer…

“Perhaps you would allow me the benefit of your knowledge?”

The sound of that deep, harsh, intensely male voice nearly made her jump. “What?” Sybil said, swinging round to face him in stunned surprise. Surely, she had not heard him right! Could he tell what she was thinking?

But the look upon his face was not one to lure her. Indeed, he wore a hard scowl that marred his beautiful features, hiding his dimple and his laughter, but that nevertheless could not mask the goodness in him. “Who was the man Elisa took an unseemly interest in?” he demanded.

Sybil glared at him, revising her opinion, and not to the good. She refused to listen to any slurs upon Elisa’s name, especially an echo of Maud’s horrible slanders! But before she could protest, he stalked across the tiles and grasped her by the shoulders.

“What are you hiding?” he asked, and Sybil knew she ought to spit in his face, but he was touching her, and the heat from his fingers blazed up and down her arms and all through her body until she felt unnaturally weak. Her anger at his insinuations faded away, replaced by a bizarre fascination with his lips. Considering the hard, wide planes of the rest of his face, they appeared soft and a shade lighter than his tanned face. From there her gaze drifted to his cheek, and when she found the spot where his dimple lay hidden, Sybil had to fight against a sudden urge to seek it out with her fingers—or her mouth.

With a low moan that sounded suspiciously like an oath, Robin released her abruptly and turned his head away. “Were you meeting him, too? Is that why you conceal his identity?”

He seemed unaccountably angry, but Sybil could only stare at him dumbfounded. He thought she was seeing a man? She didn’t know whether to laugh or to slap him in outrage.

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