Chapter Fourteen #2
“Only if we switch teams,” Michael was saying, as the entire Chance family—minus Jessica, with the addition of Wilfred—attempted to put on scarves and gloves in the cramped hallway. “I will not have Teddy on my team.”
Theodora stomped her foot. “Of all the low blows!”
“I’m just saying. You’re a terrible shot and I want you failing to hit me!”
Irene giggled beside him and Wilfred’s stomach turned over. “Are you having a good time, Wilfred?”
A good time? How else could he describe the joy he was experiencing, being a part of this family, if only, in technical terms, as a houseguest?
Her face fell, just for a moment, and Wilfred said hastily, “Not a good time. The best.”
Her smile returned yet was transformed into a shriek as they stepped out into the freezing air and a snowball hit Irene in the chest.
“Michael!”
“That was me!” The Viscount Pernrith grinned, another snowball already held in his hands. “You took too long getting ready, you lot—prepare to be bombarded!”
The shrieks of laughter and giggles as backs were hit with snow, the snorts of mirth as Michael slipped and fell to the ground and the cackle of glee as Gwen threw a snowball that hit her brother full in the face—Wilfred could concentrate on none of them because he was too busy pulling Irene aside to avoid an errant shot from Theodora as his best friend slipped into his arms with a giggle.
“Careful!” Wilfred said before he could stop himself.
Irene looked up at him, her arms around his neck, her fingers somehow twisted in his hair. “I am being careful.”
It was a moment—just a moment, that was all. A moment Wilfred wished he could freeze in time and look at, every day of his life, at his leisure.
Then Irene pulled away. “You are a terrible shot, Teddy. Have this!”
Perhaps it was an hour later, or perhaps two. Wilfred had been amazed that the Chances had stayed out playing with snowballs, the younger girls creating snow angels, until the sun kissed the horizon and their mother declared it was time to go inside for hot tea and cake.
“No exceptions,” the viscountess said firmly as her son stomped inside and her husband walked in hand in hand with his youngest daughter. “Come on, Gwen, you know your nose goes a tremendous shade of red if you catch a cold!”
Wilfred was still chuckling as he and Irene, the last two to go in, dropped the snowballs they had been preparing to throw. “I do not think I had any idea just how violent Gwen was!”
“Oh, everyone is taken in by her,” Irene said calmly as they stepped into the back hall.
Somehow, they were the only two still there.
Several damp and dripping coats, scarves, and gloves were all the evidence that anyone else had been here, though Wilfred could hear the clink of china and the happy muffled chattering of the rest of the family coming from the drawing room door, which was closed.
It had been closed. The viscountess opened it and peered at them. “Tea and cake, you two!”
“I’m going to have to go upstairs to change, Mama. My gown is sodden,” Irene said, spreading out her skirts. “I won’t be long.”
“I may have to change too,” Wilfred said ruefully, thinking of the moment when Michael had grabbed him from behind and the two of them had fallen into a snow-covered bush. “But please, do not wait on our account.”
“I’m afraid I was not going to.” Irene’s mother smiled, reminding Wilfred just how similar she and her daughter were with her expression. “Get dry, then come downstairs, you two. Don’t be long!”
The door closed, and they were alone.
Wilfred tried to smile as he looked at the woman he loved.
If he had been prescient enough to truly admit his feelings for Irene this year—truly admit them, without hiding behind the excuse he had given when he had kissed her all those weeks ago…
why, then he could have been celebrating Christmas with the Chances as their future son-in-law.
As it was, he had not been brave enough, and now Irene had made it perfectly clear that she saw him as naught but a brother.
Being her brother would have to suffice.
That was, unless anything came of Mrs. Lymington’s confrontation at the coffee house, and the two of them were forced to be married to protect Irene’s honor and…
No. He was grateful nothing seemed to have come of it.
Grateful. Irene would not want to be forced into marriage, not even with him. Perhaps especially not with him.
“Here, let me help you,” Wilfred said instinctively before he could stop himself.
He had moved before he could halt his fingers. Irene had been struggling with one of her hairpins, which had gotten tangled with her knitted scarf, and Wilfred was now mere inches away, his nose almost touching her own, as his fingers delicately untangled the metal from the wool.
Wilfred swallowed hard as his body stiffened at her proximity.
Do not think about how easily you could kiss her right now.
Do not think about how you’re breathing her air, and one day, should her reputation remain intact and she decide to marry, you might never be able to again.
Do not think about how your fingers could trail down to her neck and lift up her chin…
“Th-There,” he said hoarsely, allowing the sodden scarf to fall to the ground.
When he met Irene’s gaze, it was to see to his utter surprise that she had wet her lips. Or was that just a trick of the light, daylight fading and casting them in shadows, this private intimacy of their own?
“Wilfred,” Irene said softly in barely a whisper.
Hot, urgent need sparked through him, but Wilfred forced it down. “Yes?”
She was going to ask him to step backward, he just knew it. Or suggest he help her with removing her pelisse. Or inquire about whether or not he had purchased her a present. Or—
“Kiss me,” Irene whispered.
Wilfred did not need a second invitation. Spearing his fingers through her hair and dislodging so many pins that her light-golden curls cascaded damply down her back, Wilfred claimed the lips of the woman he loved and poured into that kiss all the passion and need he had been fighting for so long.
And she—she responded. Like a dream he had barely allowed himself to indulge in, Irene tilted her head, parting her lips to give him entrance as her hands found their way around his neck and pulled him closer.
Euphoria roared through Wilfred and his manhood stiffened with aching ardor as the kiss deepened and somehow became more than a kiss; it became a promise, one that he wanted to make to them both.
That this would not be the last kiss they would ever share.
Eventually, Wilfred had to stop. The temptation to push Irene back two steps so that she was pinned up against the wall, unable to do anything save receive his pleasure, was too great.
He let go. He stepped back. And he hated that he had done so.
“I-I am sorry,” he managed to breathe.
Irene’s face had been unreadable but was now an open book. It was not a happy book. “Why?”
How could Wilfred explain it?
Because he had overstepped a boundary, once again, that he had promised himself he never would again?
Because he had muddled the waters once again, confusing his own mind and body and making it impossible for her to understand what he truly meant?
Because if one of her family, any of them, save, perhaps Michael, had stepped into the back hall at that moment, they would be forced into a marriage to save her reputation, trapping her into a marriage with a man who adored her but whom she clearly did not want like that?
Though… Though the thought finally struck him: she had asked him to kiss her.
Perhaps it was a shame no other Chance had discovered them.
They’d escaped mention in the gossip rags, but surely, kisses in the hallway were not something even the trusting viscount and viscountess could ignore.
Wilfred fought down the urge to kiss her again while knocking over an umbrella or something to gain their attention.
That would hardly be a very gentlemanly thing to do.
“You…asked me,” Wilfred said in a wonder.
Precisely why he had said that aloud he did not know, but it caused a deep-red flush to stain Irene’s cheeks. “I did.”
“You… You asked me to kiss you,” he said, his mind unable to take in the fact that nonetheless was undeniable. “Why?”
It was his turn to ask and Irene’s turn to stand there, unable to explain. And his mind whirled with desperate hopes and expectations that he knew could never be realized as he waited for her to speak.
“Because… Because…” Irene stammered, color still heightened and fingers now twisting together before her. “Because I… You kissed me before.”
Wilfred cleared his throat, snow still dripping from his greatcoat. “I did.”
“And you said that you loved me,” she continued in a low voice.
Much against his will, Wilfred dragged his eyes away from the woman whom he did indeed love to check that the door to the drawing room was still completely closed.
It was. That did not assist him in formulating a response, but at least it meant they would not be overheard.
“I… I did. I did say that,” he said, his voice slightly hoarse.
This is the moment. If he did not reveal, for a third time, his true affections now… Well, then, he would not deserve her. He just had to make sure she truly understood.
Wilfred inhaled deeply. “I told you then that it had been too much whiskey, and in a way it had been. I had intended to tell you of my affections, of my…my devotion to you in a much more coherent manner and the whiskey—”
“‘Devotion’?” Irene’s eyes were wide.
But she had not moved.
“Devotion,” Wilfred said slowly, taking a step closer to her until he was but an inch from her.
“I cannot lie to you any longer, Irene, nor myself. I am devoted to you in a way I shall never be to another. My love for you, the love not for a friend nor for a sister but as a woman, as a woman whom I hope to make my wife, it is strong and true and has been present for…for too long to go unspoken.”
Her eyes were wide, her lips parted, and perhaps it was his imagination, but it appeared that Irene’s breathing was irregular.
And she had not moved.
“And I know you cannot love me as I do, that your feelings for me are warm but not ardent in the way I adore you, Reeny,” Wilfred said, his words almost stumbling over each other in his desperation to get them said, once and for all.
“But you needed to know. You should know how adored you are. You should know how I would kiss the very stones you walk on. And you should know I would do anything—anything—for you, even though you do not return such feelings.”
There. He had said it.
Wilfred rather felt as though he had run a thousand leagues. His lungs were tight, every inch of him ached—though that could of course be due to repressing the need to kiss Irene senseless—but he had said it.
Everything, almost, that he felt. Everything he wanted her to know. Everything Irene needed to know about his affection.
Irene swallowed. “Don’t call me ‘Reeny.’ And I am in love with you, too.”
Wilfred winced. “I am sorry, I know. I keep trying not to fall into the habit of calling you that, but it was your name for so…so…”
Only then did his mind catch up with him.
Wilfred blinked. “I-I beg your pardon?”
“I didn’t realize how much, how I loved you, until—it was all too late and I knew, or I thought I knew you loved another,” and somehow Irene was babbling and he could not catch hold of her meaning. “So I thought I would retreat. I would make it clear that I did not mind that you did not return—”
“Wait, ‘return’?”
“—thought I was doing the right thing, for I knew I wanted you, but the sensations, these desires, they were so new and I did not know how to tell you—”
“Reeny.” Wilfred clasped her hands with one hand and placed a finger from his second on her lips.
Irene looked up at him, a flash of annoyance mingled with the embarrassment. “You know I don’t like that nickname.” She swallowed. “What about Miss Fletcher?”
“Forget about Miss Fletcher. I’ve already forgotten about Miss Fletcher. You love me,” Wilfred said, half-bewildered, half-ecstatic.
She flushed, glancing down at their intertwined hands as she murmured, “Yes.”
“But not as a brother,” he insisted, using that same finger to lift up her chin, claiming her gaze with his own.
Irene’s smile was nervous, but her boldness saw it through. “No. I want to take you to my bed, Wilfred. That sort of love.”
That sort of love.
There was only one adequate response to such a thing. Slowly, almost reverentially, Wilfred lowered his lips to hers. Irene lifted her face up, clearly eager for his touch, and he groaned low and dark as his tongue met hers, their kiss a passionate embrace full of understanding.
It could not have been true. Yet it was true: she loved him. She loves me and wants me clearly as much as I want her.
That thought, which flashed through Wilfred’s mind, was enough to spark a greater heat through the kiss.
Somehow, her pelisse was unbuttoned and Wilfred’s hands were around her waist, pulling her closer, needing to be tighter, but it was impossible and her hands were removing his scarf and unbuttoning his cravat and—
“Wilfred,” Irene said, breaking the kiss.
Wilfred was breathing so hard, he could see stars. “Yes?”
“We should go upstairs.”
It was not disappointment exactly that filled him at her remark. She was right; their clothes were absolutely soaked with snow. They would catch their deaths if they did not get into dry clothing.
Still. It was a shame to halt such a passionate moment of kissing with such a statement of banal reality.
“I suppose so,” he said with a sigh.
Irene arched an eyebrow and flushed as she said, “Well, that’s not quite the response I was expecting after I invited you upstairs to ravish me and ruin me for all other men. But fine. We don’t have to.”