Maggie had absolutely no doubt that Reeve McKenna would make good on his threat should he be driven to it, and she was shivering hard now, cold to the very marrow of her bones. “What assurance d-do I have that you’re not pl-planning to light that lamp or—”

“If I lit the lamp, you’d be putting on a show for anyone stupid enough to be outside,” Reeve answered, “and if I wanted to seduce you, I’d never have thrown away a perfect opportunity to keep you under my roof by giving you your emigration papers, now, would I?”

Maggie saw reason in his words and began unbuttoning her dress. Given the cold numbness that had beset her fingers, she had the devil’s own time trying to work the bits of mother-of-pearl through the tiny openings provided.

Finally, in utter frustration, she spat out, “Damn, damn, and triple damn!”

Reeve chuckled in the darkness, and she sensed rather than heard his drawing nearer to her. Unerringly, he found her buttons and began undoing them without the slightest problem, even though he had to be every bit as wet and cold as Maggie was.

“You are fond of that phrase, aren’t you, Yank?” he said.

Against Maggie’s sodden camisole his knuckles felt warm and hard as they worked. She was stricken speechless by the magnitude of the situation she’d gotten herself into and the strange stirrings that Reeve’s touch engendered deep within her. “Wh-what do you mean?” she asked lamely, unable to turn and flee into the rain as she should have.

His hands were at her waist now, unfastening the last of those cursed buttons. “You said something similar on the ship when you found out you couldn’t go ashore in one of the dinghies.”

Maggie had heard Reeve’s words, but she couldn’t make sense of them. Her attention was focused on the hands she could not see, now slipping under the shoulders of her dress and moving it away. She shivered again, and not with cold, but with wonder at the hot, biting sweetness that possessed the most secret part of her.

She stood fast as Reeve untied her camisole and then peeled it away from her flesh, which was chilled on the surface and scalding hot underneath. His thumbs grazed her hardened nipples, whether by accident or design Maggie could not tell, and she gave an involuntary groan at the pleasure the motion spawned.

“Maggie,” he said in a low and ragged voice, and then she felt his breath on her face and instinctively she tilted her head back to greet his mouth with her own. His forceful but infinitely gentle hands entangled themselves in her dripping hair and he kissed her.