Chapter Eight
Neville withdrew his lips, luxuriating in Millie’s satisfied sigh. Then, with each silent repetition of her name, Neville pressed another earth-tilting, mind-altering kiss against her crown. Millie. Millie. Millie.
He was a bowler’s ball pitched with spinning precision, and she was the cricket bat that just cracked him across his side, sending him wide. He closed his eyes, buried his face in Millie’s hair, and then held on tight.
Eventually, he would be caught.
Would she then slip away? Might he never have the chance to embrace her again?
He hadn’t the time to answer, because she, too, was in movement. She wound her hands tight in his shirt and lifted her shoulders against his chest. He rocked with her gently in the darkness, moving as if his desire to hold her, to keep her, and to protect her were a song.
But the inner melody he heard was not entirely fit for a lady. Especially one with whom he had not yet reached any sort of understanding. The kiss had implied a change between them, but, given the circumstances, he wasn’t sure he could trust the implication.
Dear God, what was he doing?
He had no excuse for himself. None. Men in fine fettle might claim they had a limit to the provocation they could resist, but any man of honor would outlast temptation he knew was wrong.
Even if Millie had proven a masterful batsman, Neville now understood her “teasing” had been na?ve all along, if not completely innocent.
He’d taken his first blow when she’d said she’d recognized him by his shoulders.
His ungentlemanly, impossible-to-stuff-into-a-stylish-silhouette shoulders his valet was forever bemoaning. Millie had called them distinctive. And then, while he’d still been reeling, she’d knocked him again.
I convinced myself you wanted me as much as I wan—
That had been one devil of a near-confession!
If she thought her attraction equal to his own, she’d been right not to finish her sentence. Because want was a rickety, insubstantial word, incapable of capturing his bodily demands, demands he was, even now, panting hard to outrun.
Then, if those two things had not been enough, next came the perfect ping.
Will you kiss me properly, Auggie? …with a slight, chaste tremor in the upward inflection.
Properly!?
Oh, yes, he’d complied—tenderly and with herculean restraint. What kind of monster would have denied her a wish? But—good God—to then suffer a sweet, satisfied thank you as if her perfect straight drive hadn’t just changed the game?
Clearly, he was being punished for all his wrongs.
And yet, he still sinned.
Right now, instead of nestling beneath his chin, quietly fulfilled, she should be shaking him. Knowing Millie, she would smack him, too. If, that is, she’d any idea how improper the carnal need her almost-admission and that pure and “proper” kiss had unleashed.
He’d protested her use of madman, but he was doused in lunacy now. Lunacy. Lust.
Why, if he weren’t a true man of honor, if he cared for her just a little bit less—
Hell.
The brief contact between their mouths sizzled in his veins, a water-doused fire, a wish—no, a gift. A gift he’d longed for, but never truly believed could ever be his. But the “gift” was only an illusion created by shock and worry and need.
He’d let discipline slip.
But he hadn’t yet fully fallen.
He summoned all that was left of his self-restraint and then pulled himself away.
“Don’t.” She clung to his shirt.
“I must.” He wished he could see her eyes, but he could not.
Earlier, he’d agreed with Harris and left the gas lamps unlit.
There’d been too much risk such a bright glow might seep into the royal box just beyond the door and thus be seen by anyone in the pit, or in the boxes on the theater’s opposite side.
But he could have argued for a chamber stick or lantern.
As it was, he could not see Millie at all. And, if he couldn’t see her, how was he going to convince her not to return to Willard? Leaving early would increase the gossip among the ton, but she must go. His heart broke for her yet again.
She seemed almost her usual self, hardly aware that her whole world was on the verge of crumbling, on the precipice of a massive shift.
“I am so very sorry, Millicent.”
“Because you kissed me?!”
“No!” Although he shouldn’t have done so. “Well, yes. That, and—”
“I asked you,” she reasoned. “Twice, because you didn’t do it the right way the first time. Willard didn’t bother to ask me at all.”
“Willard kissed you?” A surge of white-hot rage stole his breath. God in Heaven, when?
“Not kissed, exactly,” she continued before he could ask. “He pushed his mouth in my face—”
He wasn’t just going to kill Willard, he was going to rip him slowly, limb from limb.
“—so I’m not sure kiss is the right word.” She made a sound of revulsion. “More of a…a flattening, if that makes sense.”
Her tone was so frighteningly conversational, he was chilled. “When?!”
“Just now. In the box.”
She went on as if the floor hadn’t dropped out, as if her fists in his shirt weren’t the only reason he was not in free-fall, too.
“He’d backed me between the curtain and the door, so I don’t think anyone else saw the insult. I wasn’t even sure what was happening, to be honest. I was entirely focused on his knife.”
Neville’s entire body went taut. “His knife? I am going to kill him.”
She made a scoffing noise. “I don’t see why you should risk the rope when you just talked me out of the same.”
She didn’t, did she?
“He doesn’t matter,” she added.
“Oh yes, he does.”
“Why?” She let go of his shirt. “Because you think he tainted me?”
“No!” He restrained himself from uttering a vile oath.
He knew so much she did not. She was ignorant of Willard’s past with Asquith. Ignorant of John’s present trouble. Ignorant of the several young ladies whose downfall he’d caused.
Of course, she wouldn’t know, would she?
He lightened his voice and asked, “Don’t you think it’s reasonable for me to be angry?”
“Upset, perhaps.” She paused. “But as his insult was to me, why should you want to kill him?”
“Hell!” He ran his hand through his hair.
“You’re cursing a great deal tonight.” She actually sounded amused. “Not like you at all, Neville.”
“Just tell me Willard didn’t truly harm you…or cause you pain.”
“Embarrassment, perhaps.” She stopped. “In retrospect, I was quite frightened. Too frightened to feel much at the time.”
He really didn’t think he could breathe.
She went on, “If I hadn’t spotted the guard outside, I don’t know what I would have done. And I probably would have immediately asked—”
“One moment, please,” he interrupted. That last part hadn’t made sense. He and Harris had decided to ask Lady Sarah to find Millie and use whatever excuse she thought best an excuse to bring Millie to the retiring room.
But if all had gone as they had planned, Sarah would be here, too. She was not. But perhaps she was waiting just outside the door? “Where are Lady Sarah and Lady Eltenham?”
“I haven’t any idea.” She sounded not only completely confused but stunned. “Before the guard mentioned Lady Sarah, I didn’t even know Harbury’s sister was here tonight. Pity I didn’t run into her in my mad dash through the corridor.”
Mad dash?!
“And as for Lady Eltenham, she left the box at the start of intermission.”
Lady Eltenham left the box? Millie’s chaperone left the box? “Your chaperone left you in a box full of young, unmarried men?”
“No,” she said as if this was obvious. “Willard had already ordered them out.”
Neville yanked his hand through his hair. Millie’s position had just become so, so much worse than even he had imagined. Not—he forced himself to calm—as bad as it could have been.
But bad. Did Millie have any idea how close she had come to—
He slammed the door on that thought.
If she didn’t, he would not burden her with his terrors now.
“Lord Willard was quite… put out after I slipped away,” she began again, her tone maddeningly conversational.
“Not at all his usual self. His father is going to be livid when he hears how he tore through the crowds in the corridor. I wonder which made him angrier—that I thwarted his plan to have his lackeys catch us kissing, or that I took his knife just before I escaped?”
Neville emitted a choking noise.
“He must have grabbed ten or more ladies while searching for me in the crowd.”
Neville’s head bowed in utter defeat. “What am I going to do?”
“Interesting question,” she said, her tone shifting from conversational to considering. “Although I think the question applies to us both. We’re in a bit of an awkward situation, aren’t we?”
Neville snorted. The situation was more than awkward.
No one had caught Willard compromising her as he must have planned. But, earlier, everyone had seen Millie with Willard. And, by her own account, a mass of people in the hall knew Willard did not know where the lady he had been escorting had gone.
The implication was that she’d been alone with Willard, but had left, possibly even with one of the other young men.
Perhaps if Lady Eltenham could be found, she could be persuaded to say Millie had been in her care the whole time. But God only knew what had happened out in the corridor since she’d entered the royal retiring room.
In fact, shouldn’t the play have resumed by now? He didn’t hear any actors or music. Instead, milling voices leaked in from both the hall and the theater proper.
He should have paid more attention to what was happening in the rooms beyond. Instead, he’d—
He grunted in self-disgust.
The only possible ray of light was that Millie hadn’t been caught with Willard. If she had, her fate would have been in his hands now.
Still, her options were few.
Though she didn’t seem to be aware, soon, far too soon, she’d have to make a choice. Willard—if he offered. But, no, Neville really would kill him first. Banishment—a permanent separation from her sisters, the people she held most dear. Or…Or…
Another answer crystalized out of nothing, cold, clear and immutable.