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have my own… effects… and am perfectly capable of making my way to Aveiro on my own, but if you happen to be headed that way as well, it would make the time pass more quickly and I’m sure my horse would appreciate the company—”
    “Are you asking to travel unchaperoned with three gentlemen not of your acquaintance?”
    She hated him in that moment, for sounding so much like her father. She wanted to holler. Then she became resolute. “Fine. If you are going to allow traditional rules of behavior to prevent me from traveling with you, at the very least, will you untie these ropes so I may proceed of my own accord?”
    “I never said we were going to travel without you,” Javier said as he approached her. “I was genuinely asking to make sure I had heard correctly.” He nodded to the other men to get on their horses. “Go get her mare saddled and bring her here.”
    How did he know she had a mare? He was far too pleased with himself. And now they were alone again. He walked closer to her. Isabella looked toward the forest in the direction Sebastián and Marco had headed, then quickly back at Javier. He was too close again.
    “Your hands,” he commanded.
    She held out her wrists for him to free her and she gasped when she realized the motion pushed her breasts together and nearly out of her still-untied rag of a dress. Only one day had passed and already she missed the protective confinement of fine silk and cool, pressed linen against her skin.
    He began to untie the fine compilation of ropes, and within seconds had the whole length loose and sliding from her body. It turned out it was one single piece of narrow rope, and it slipped from behind Isabella’s neck and back with an exhilarating swishing sound. “How did you—?”
    Javier shrugged and Isabella had that pang of dreamy longing again. He looked boyish and… delicious.
    “I grew up around horses,” he said. “I loved learning about knots and bridles and netting and that sort of thing.”
    She could tell he was embarrassed for some reason, though she could not see why. Horsemanship and the attendant skills required to master it had been an honored component of every aristocrat’s education for centuries. Perhaps one of his parents had belittled his interest. She wanted to encourage him. She reached out and touched his upper arm. He was wearing a white shirt, open at the neck, and a deep, midnight blue riding jacket of the softest silk. She had not realized how elegantly dressed he was until that moment. What with being held hostage and all, her mind had been elsewhere.
    He flinched at her touch.
    She pulled her hand away quickly. “I’m sorry… I only meant to…”
    He stared at her lips when she spoke.
    It made her even more flustered. She continued too quickly. “Oh, please excuse me. I think I must be a bit rattled by my actions of yesterday after all. I cannot quite recall the rules of polite society when all I see are pine trees in every direction and I wake up with my cheek against a bed of pine needles and a pillow of coiled rope. Please forgive my impertinence for touching you just then.”
    He tightened his lips, as if her apology annoyed him. “Very well.” He looked down at her ankles. “May I?”
    He gestured to indicate he wanted to undo the rope at her ankles as well.
    “Yes. Please. If you would.”
    He lowered himself slowly to his knees and she felt his eyes on every inch of her body as he went down… her neck, her breasts, her stomach, her… sex, her thighs. Then, thankfully, he was sitting back on his heels and quickly removing the second rope that had held her legs together. He looked up at her then, resting there at her feet like an adoring angel, rubbing a piece of the rope slowly between his thumb and the other fingers of his hand. It was not an absentminded rubbing either. He was practically caressing the length of rope. “It’s still warm,” he said in a throaty whisper, “from your skin.”
    Isabella’s