Chapter 13
How long had he ached to kiss her this way? Not some chaste brush of closed lips, but just this sort of hungry kiss. It was searing pleasure…feeling her mouth open to his questing tongue, tasting her, and sensing the moment when she awoke to her own passionate need.
Moaning softly, Emeline pressed her breasts against his chest in a way that made him long to strip away the layers of restrictive clothing. He felt her fingers in his hair, and her scent was an aphrodisiac. His sex, stiff, throbbing, confined in snug buff trousers, wanted only one thing.
Together, they sank down in the tall grass and wildflowers until they were lying entwined, face to face.
Hart drew back for one instant and saw the warm flush in her cheeks, the storm of desire in her violet eyes.
She seemed, under her gown and petticoats, to arch her hips against him.
Oh God. He stroked one hand up her side and was about to mold it to her breast when Monte began to bark.
“Curse it,” he said roughly. Turning his head, he saw the dog standing just inches away, his increasingly urgent barks now interspersed with low growls.
Just that quickly, Hart fell back to earth.
His heart thudded in his chest as he separated himself from Emeline and quickly helped her to her feet.
Monte, now silent, looked on approvingly.
Facing Emeline, Hart tipped her chin up with one long finger until her eyes met his. “I won’t even attempt to offer an excuse,” he said hoarsely. “Clearly, I must have lost my mind. Can you forgive me?”
“That’s not necessary, for I am quite certain I did not resist. Perhaps we both lost our heads, momentarily.” Lifting both hands to her tumbled ebony curls, she added, “And I’ve lost my hat as well, it seems.”
Hart looked back over one shoulder and spied her bonnet lying in the grass among the scattered wildflowers. Retrieving it, he watched as she donned it again and tied the ribbons firmly under her chin.
“Your flowers…” Gesturing toward the lost blossoms, he surprised himself by saying, “I will pick you some more.”
“Oh, it doesn’t matter.” Emeline smiled, but a shadow seemed to cross her face. She seemed to search his face for a long, disquieting moment, as if hoping to read his thoughts. “No doubt they would have wilted before we reached London.”
Remembering her unguarded joy when they arrived in this wooded glade just minutes before, Hart felt a stab of guilt. He had ruined it all. Indeed, perhaps now he had joined the ranks of lecherous “elderly” men who had forced themselves on Emeline during her two Seasons.
Handing Emeline up into the phaeton, he kept his tone light. “Right then. Monte will see to it that I deliver you home without any further diversions.”
In all his adult life, Hart had never made improper advances toward an innocent, gently bred lady. That sort of entanglement was the last thing he wanted, so what the devil had possessed him? And why did Emeline continue to appear so often in his thoughts…and fantasies?
The next day, when Hart received a note from his occasional paramour, Lady Valencia Brook, he accepted her invitation to visit her that evening. Perhaps he lusted after Emeline because too many weeks had passed since a woman warmed his bed.
Yet, that night, as Hart followed Valencia’s butler, Riggs, up to her ladyship’s bedchamber, he was skeptical that something so simple could cure what ailed him.
Riggs knocked discreetly at her door and disappeared down the passage. Hart entered, expecting to find Valencia clad in one of her filmy Parisian negligees, either curled on the settee or reclining on her great four-poster bed.
“Oh, lovely, there you are!”
He looked around, eventually locating Valencia’s shapely form bent over an open trunk. She was fully clothed, her hair pinned up into an elaborate series of black coils.
He blinked. “What are you doing?”
Valencia crossed the room, stood on tiptoe, and gave him a brief kiss. “I’m packing. Congratulate me, darling Jasper. I’m going to be married!” She leaned forward and he caught a whiff of the wine she’d been drinking. “Can you believe it? Horatio Stilton has proposed.”
His brows flew up. The man was sixty if he was a day, but he was also a very wealthy tradesman, and no doubt that security meant a great deal to Valencia.
“Don’t look so surprised. I like him, and he certainly seems to like me,” Valencia declared with a saucy smile.
“Oh, I don’t doubt that!”
“You needn’t take that tone. It’s not as if you wanted to wed me yourself!” she chided. “I adore sleeping with you, darling, but our tumbles in bed won’t buy new gowns or pay my staff.”
“Congratulations. I’m happy for you.” Surprisingly, Hart felt a surge of relief that Valencia wasn’t expecting him to bed her tonight. “I take it you’re moving to Stilton’s mansion in Berkeley Square?”
“Yes. We leave tomorrow and will marry in Paris, then return to Stilton House for Christmas.” She turned back to her packing, adding with a little pout, “I couldn’t go without telling you myself, darling…even though it seemed you might never visit me again.”
“What about this house? Are you going to sell it?”
“Yes!” She sent him a speculative glance. “Do you want to buy it?”
Hart paused to consider. “Actually…I might.”
Two long days passed without any word from Hart, and Emeline hardly knew what to do with her unexpected emotions.
They colored her dreams and woke her in the night with vivid fantasies of Hart, his mouth on hers while every other secret part of her ached for something she scarcely understood.
What would it be like? Her only clue lay in the long-ago night when she had stumbled into a stranger’s bed at Riven Court.
He had awakened her to sensual pleasure she had never before imagined, but he was a stranger.
In the darkness, she couldn’t even see his face.
Being kissed and touched by Hart evoked so much more than that shockingly unexpected interlude. And realizing that he would soon leave London made her heart ache for reasons she wasn’t prepared to examine.
On the third afternoon following the luncheon at Amity Park, Emeline and Louise walked home from the Reading Room along Oxford Street. It was cold and foggy, which seemed to heighten the smells of coal gas and horse excrement that infused the city air.
“Do you ever miss Lyme Regis?” Emeline asked as they turned south on Davies Street.
“I think of Miss Anning every day, but now I would rather be in London, even when it’s unpleasant,” Louise replied, smiling to herself.
She carried a leather folder emblazoned with her initials, a gift from her parents.
It held their research notebooks. Glancing over now, Louise adjusted her spectacles on her delicate nose and asked, “Do you miss our fossil hunting days, Em? I might remind you that you were always the one who urged me to break free of our limited existence there, to embrace new adventures and new people. Have you changed your mind?”
“No, I haven’t changed my mind. But I sometimes wish I had more control over the new adventures that come to me,” she said wryly.
They were passing Berkeley Square when a familiar voice called out, “By Jove, is that my little sister?”
Emeline turned to see Charles standing under one of the square’s great plane trees. She waved to him without enthusiasm, even as Louise’s entire countenance brightened. A few moments later, he was beside them.
“You must allow me to escort you the rest of the way to Chesterfield Street,” he proclaimed.
Emeline noticed that his tall, pale gray hat was immaculate, and he wore a purple aster in the buttonhole of his dark coat.
Turning to Louise, he doffed his hat. “Ah, Louise. How do you get on? Seeing you again is one of the great pleasures of being back in London.”
Emeline watched as her cousin’s cheeks pinkened. “Well, of course it is,” she said. “We are the best of friends, are we not?”
“Always.” He offered her his arm and reached for the leather folder. “Allow me to carry that case.”
Emeline walked behind them the rest of the way to their little house, trying not to worry about Louise. When they came in the front door and had divested themselves of their cloaks, Charles addressed her before they were even seated in the parlor.
“Word has it that you were a guest at Amity Park for the unveiling of Lord Melford’s artifacts. Is that true?” His tone was casual, but she knew him well enough to perceive that this was the real reason he had come with them.
Emeline sank into her favorite chair before the bow window, hoping that Dora would soon appear with tea. “Yes, I was there, but how did you hear?”
“Oh, I believe I had it from Sir Giles Peyton…” He paused as if searching his memory. “Yes, saw him at the club last night, and he told me. What was it like, Em? Peyton said Melford took such a liking to you, no other fellow could get near.”
Dora entered then with the tea tray, glancing over in surprise at their handsome guest. After directing the maid where to set the tray, Louise set about making Charles’s tea just the way he liked it.
“Ah, Louise,” he sighed after one sip. “You know me so well.”
Watching them, Emeline wished she could wave a wand and cause her besotted cousin to return to reality.
Surely there was only pain in store for Louise if she continued to moon over Charles, whose self-centered ways were bound to cause her grief.
Yet even as Emeline pondered this, she thought of her own tangled feelings toward Hart.
Each day, the cousins seemed to stray farther from their vow to pursue independence from men.
“Now then,” Charles said, turning back to Emeline, “I want to hear about the relics…and your new friend, Lord Melford.”