Chapter Thirteen #2
He jumped back then as if a snake had bitten him because the absolute last thing he needed was to have his entire face buried between her legs.
The moment he let go, she dropped back into her dangling position like a sack of potatoes with a grunt.
“I would have appreciated a little warning there, your grace.”
He raked a frustrated hand through his hair. “We need a better plan!” One that wasn’t the stuff of his erotic fantasies. “It’s your coat that’s stuck, so perhaps if you unbutton it, I can catch you once you are free of it?”
“An excellent plan that I can assure you I would have already tried if…” She wiggled her wrists to remind him that both her arms were pinned to the wall. “You’ll have to unbutton it for me.”
Things were going from bad to worse! “Right,” he said, not feeling the least bit right about having to undress her. “Right…” He stepped nearer again to reach up and found himself staring directly at her breasts jutting above him. Breasts that the damned line of buttons ran straight between.
Leo tried his best not to contemplate the twin temptations that lay either side of the buttons as he tackled them.
He had enough problems with gravity and his ridiculously clumsy fingers working against him.
Miraculously, he successfully undid the first two buttons after he was forced to wrap one arm back around her bottom so that he could lift her slightly again.
There were only two more and both were in the area that, as a gentleman, he wasn’t supposed to think about.
The only way he could to do that was to focus on something unpleasant.
And frankly, he could think of nothing more unpleasant than immediately tackling his cringe-inducing apology.
“While I’ve got you here…” His chuckle was about as false as his toes were cramped as they curled inside his boots.
“I … um … wanted to apologize for the other night.” Don’t shilly-shally.
This will be less painful if you just lance the boil and get it over with man!
“I had an odd moment when I helped you out of the carriage…” Although not anywhere near as odd a moment as he was having now.
“And I fear that was probably a little too familiar and might have caused offense.” The button directly between her breasts refused to budge, so he focused on that rather than gaze up at her to gauge her reaction. “I am thoroughly ashamed of myself.”
She was so silent that he risked glancing up and saw her face turned away as if she couldn’t even bear to look at him.
Then, utterly mortified and because the backs of his knuckles kept grazing her bosom and giving him more improper ideas, his patience snapped a little as he wrestled with the fastening in the hope that the heavens would take pity on him and end this torture.
“Who the blazes sewed these buttonholes?”
Her silence stretched some more, until she huffed. “You didn’t offend me. It was an odd moment all round which we both got too caught up in, so do not blame yourself solely for it.”
She’d been caught up in the moment too? Caught up in him?
What was he supposed to say or do about that?
Rejoice or let sleeping dogs lie?
Before his addled brain worked through that conundrum, she spoke, gesturing stiffly to the sky with her restricted mobility as best she could. “Let us blame the moonlight after an unexpectedly pleasant evening and never mention it again.”
“Yes. Good idea.” Except it didn’t feel particularly good. “We’ll pretend it never happened.”
“Not that anything particular did actually happen, your grace.”
“I suppose not.” A disappointment that he blamed entirely on the untimely arrival of his blasted mother.
“But you should also know that we somehow made the scandal sheets regardless, for which I am also dreadfully sorry.” He winced.
Partly at having to admit that inconvenient truth and partly because the damn button between her distracting breasts still would not budge.
“What did they say?” She did not sound pleased.
“Doting duke captivated by chaperone—although they were careful not to name either of us.”
“Where there any other dukes at that fundraising ball?”
“Sadly, no.” He had to bounce her a little in his arm to readjust his grip on her backside in case he dropped her again. “I fear the whole of Bath knows that the offending duke was me.”
“Oh dear.”
“Sorry.” And he was. Because in being so captivated by her he had, inadvertently, brought her unfairly under public scrutiny.
“While I am apologizing, I should probably also say sorry for my mother as well. She put two and two together when she caught us on the pavement having that odd moment and, because she revels in any sort of scandal, she assumed that we were … um…”
“About to be scandalous?”
“I am truly sorry, Miss Kendall.” The dratted button still would not budge and so, figuring that her coat was ruined by the spikes it was impaled on, he decided to take some of his many current frustrations out on the fabric, gave up on the buttonholes, and tried to rip her coat apart instead.
“Both for giving her that impression and for the merciless grilling you will doubtless get about it the first moment she can collar you alone.”
Rather than be rightly peeved at all the trouble he had caused her, she smiled. It was a wry and worryingly wistful smile. “All things considered, it is probably for the best then that my tenure as your social secretary has come to its natural conclusion, though I shall be sorry to leave here.”
That made him stop fighting with her coat to frown up at her. “There is no need for you to leave.” And he certainly did not want her to. “All this gossip nonsense will blow over as gossip always does.”
“It’s not so much the gossip—more that my services are somewhat redundant now that your mother is back to resume the chaperoning duties.”
“Ah … yes…” Embarrassed, Leo went back to war with the buttons.
“About that. I fear I wasn’t entirely honest with you when I first offered you the job.
You see the thing is…” Bloody hell, they should make armor out of whatever fabric this damned coat was constructed with, it is so unyielding!
“You know how my sisters are punishing me because I am keeping them here in Bath? Well, my mother is too because I might have, in the heat of the moment, said some things about her parenting that offended her, and so my dear mama is punishing me by going on strike.”
“Gracious.” He could hear the amusement in her tone. “What on earth did you say to make her withdraw her labor?”
“That she is a very lackadaisical chaperone. Which, in my stubborn defense, she is. Everything bad that has happened this season happened on her watch. Although I’ll concede that I shouldn’t have said that quite so bluntly nor claimed I could do a better job.”
“That is very noble of you.” She was laughing at him now and he couldn’t blame her. “I hope you have apologized. Hell hath no fury like a mother scorned.”
“I did—but alas, even after I admitted that I didn’t manage to do any better a job than she had without your help, she’s still spitting feathers about it.
Enough that she made a special point of telling me yesterday that she was still on strike as far as chaperoning the girls goes, because I apparently need to learn a valuable lesson.
Hence you are very much still needed as my sisters, as you know, are a nightmare. ”
“As mortified as I am by this”—she gestured to her predicament with a smile—“I am supremely grateful that it was you that found me tonight and not one of them. Your sisters would have definitely left me hanging.”
“Then you will take pity on me and stay?”
Before she could answer, one of the stubborn buttons chose that moment to finally give in. With only the final one remaining in the very center of her cleavage, Miss Kendall suddenly jerked downward causing that last bastion to pop too.
As her arms slipped rapidly out of the still impaled sleeves, she lurched forward, effectively smothering him with her breasts, and Leo staggered backward, trying to support her whole weight without falling.
“I’ve got you.” Which was true, albeit in the most ungainly fashion, because she was practically bent over his shoulder now and was gripping on to the back of his waistcoat for grim death.
He grunted and shifted position so that he could, with a great deal of exertion, attempt to lower her feet to the ground before they collapsed in a giggling heap against the wall.
“If I am staying, for the sake of our mutually dented pride and shattered dignity, let us never speak of this again, either, your grace.”
“Agreed. This whole debacle never happened.”
But, heaven help him, her lush body was still pressed against his.
Her arms were still looped around his shoulders and she was gazing up at him with amusement in her lovely eyes, so it seemed like the most natural thing in the world to close the scant distance between them and give in to the overwhelming urge to kiss her.
It was a soft kiss.
A much too short one.
A test.
One that she responded to by looping her arms tighter around his neck so that she could pull his lips immediately back to hers.
When she kissed him back, he gathered her closer and did the only thing that he was capable of—he reveled in her. Her taste, her touch, her obvious passion.