CHAPTER 10 #3
“This very evening,” he said, “on the way here, I tried to kiss Miss Hunt—the only time I have ever taken such a liberty. She told me not to be foolish.”
“Perhaps,” she said, smiling despite herself, “she felt embarrassed or frightened.”
“She explained herself at greater length when I questioned her,” he told her. “She said that kisses are unnecessary and foolish between two people who are perfect for each other.”
A slight breeze was causing the branches overhead to sway and admit faint bars of moonlight to play over his face. Claudia stared at him. Whatever had Miss Hunt meant? How could they be perfect for each other when she did not want his kisses?
“Why are you going to marry her?” she asked.
His eyes moved to hers and stayed there. But he did not answer.
“Do you love her?” she asked.
He smiled. “I think I had better say no more,” he said. “I have already said too much when the lady ought to be able to expect some discretion from me. What is it about you that invites confidences?”
It was her turn not to answer.
His eyes were still on hers. Even when the moonlight was not filtering through the trees, the darkness was really not very dark at all.
“Would you be embarrassed or afraid,” he asked her, “if I tried to kiss you?”
She would be both. She was quite sure she would. But it was a hypothetical question.
“No,” she said so softly that she was not even sure sound came from her lips. She cleared her throat. “No.”
It was a hypothetical question.
But as he lifted one hand and touched his fingertips to her cheek while his palm came beneath her chin, sighing as he did so, Claudia realized that perhaps it was not.
She closed her eyes and his lips touched hers.
It was a terrible shock. His lips were warm and slightly parted. She could taste the wine he had drunk and smell his cologne. She could feel the warmth of his hand and of his breath. She could hear the nightingale singing and someone far away shriek with laughter.
And all her insides reacted in such a way that afterward she marveled that she had remained on her feet. Her hands clenched into tight fists at her sides.
It lasted for maybe twenty seconds—maybe not even as long.
But her world was rocked to its very foundations.
As he lifted his head and lowered his hand and took a step back, Claudia firmly repossessed herself of her equilibrium.
“There, you see?” she said, her voice sounding unfortunately brisk and overcheerful. “I was neither embarrassed nor afraid. So there is nothing inherently embarrassing or fearful about you.”
“I ought not to have done that,” he said. “I am so sor—”
But Claudia’s hand shot up, seemingly of its own volition, and she watched herself place two fingers firmly across his lips—those lovely warm lips that had just kissed her own.
“Don’t be,” she said, and her voice was a little less forceful now.
It even shook slightly. “If you are sorry, then I will feel that I ought to be too, and I am not sorry at all. It is the first time I have been kissed in eighteen years and will probably be the last time for the rest of my life. I do not want to be sorry, and I do not want you to be sorry. Please.”
He set his hand over hers and kissed her palm before lowering it to hold against the folds of his neckcloth. Even in the darkness she could see that his eyes were alight with laughter.
“Ah, Miss Martin,” he said, “it has been almost three years even for me. What sadly deprived mortals we are.”
She could not stop herself from smiling back at him.
“In fact,” she said, “I would not mind at all if you were to do it again.”
She felt oddly as if someone else were speaking through her lips while the real Claudia Martin looked on in shocked amazement. Had she really said what she had just said?
“I would not mind either,” he said, and they gazed at each other for long moments before he released her hand and wrapped his arm about her shoulders while the other came about her waist. Claudia curled her own arms about him for lack of anywhere else to put them. And she lifted her face to his.
He was large and hard-bodied and very, very male.
For one moment she really was frightened.
Mortally so. Especially as he was no longer smiling.
And then she forgot about fear and everything else too as she was engulfed in the sheer carnality of being slowly and very thoroughly kissed.
Her body bloomed beneath his touch and she was no longer Claudia Martin, successful businesswoman, teacher, and headmistress.
She was simply woman.
She felt the breadth and hard muscles of his shoulders, and one of her hands twined into his thick, warm hair. With her breasts she felt the solid wall of his chest. Her thighs pressed against his. And between her thighs she felt a sharp throbbing that spiraled up inside her right into her throat.
Not that she analyzed each sensation. She merely felt them.
When he opened his mouth over hers, she opened hers too and angled her head and clutched his hair as his tongue came inside her mouth and stroked over every soft, moist surface.
When he backed her against the trunk of a tree a mere foot or so behind her, she moved with him, and then she could lean against it while his hands roamed over her breasts and her hips and her buttocks.
When he pressed against her and she could feel the hardness of his arousal, she parted her legs and rubbed against him, wanting nothing more than to feel him inside her, deep inside. Ah, deep.
Yet not for one moment did she forget that it was with the Marquess of Attingsborough that she shared this hot embrace. And not for one moment was she deceived by any illusions. This was for now. Only for now.
Sometimes now was enough.
Sometimes it was everything.
She knew she would never be sorry.
She knew too that she would suffer heartache for a long time to come.
It did not matter. Better to live and hurt than not to live at all.
She felt his withdrawal as soon as he gentled the embrace, kissing her mouth softly and then her eyes and temples as he spread a hand over the back of her head and then brought her face against one of his shoulders, drawing her away from the tree trunk as he did so.
And she felt both sorrow and relief. It was time for them to stop this. They were in an almost public place.
She felt the tension of sexual incompletion gradually drain from her body as she wrapped her arms loosely about his waist.
“We will agree, will we,” he said after a minute or so of silence, his mouth close to her ear, “not to be sorry for this? And not to allow it to cause discomfort between us when we meet again?”
She did not answer immediately. Then she lifted her head, released her hold on him, and took a step back. As she did so she very consciously donned the persona of Miss Martin, schoolteacher, again, almost as if it were a garment stiffened from disuse.
“Yes to the first,” she said. “I am not at all sure about the second. I have the feeling that in the cold light of day I am going to be very embarrassed indeed to come face-to-face with you after tonight.”
Good heavens, now that she could see him in the semidarkness, it already seemed both incredible and very embarrassing indeed—or would seem.
“Miss Martin,” he said, “I hope I have not…I cannot…”
She clucked her tongue. She could not let him finish. How humiliated she would be if he said the words aloud.
“Of course you cannot,” she said. “Neither can I. I have a life and a career and people dependent upon me. I do not expect you to turn up on Viscount Whitleaf’s doorstep tomorrow morning with a special license in your hand.
And if you did, I would send you on your way faster than you had come there. ”
“With a flea in my ear?” he said, smiling at her.
“With at least that.”
And she smiled ruefully back at him. How very foolish love was, blossoming at an impossible time and with an impossible person. For she was, of course, in love. And it was, of course, quite, quite impossible.
“I think, Lord Attingsborough,” she said, “that if I had known what I know now when I stepped inside the visitors’ parlor at school to see you standing there, I might have sent you away then with a flea in your ear.
Though perhaps not. I have enjoyed the past two weeks more than I can say. And I have grown to like you.”
It was true too. She really did like him.
She held out a hand to him. He took it and shook it firmly. The barriers were being set up between them again, as they absolutely must.
And then she jumped, her hand convulsing about his, as a loud crack broke the near silence.
“Ah,” he said, looking up, “how appropriate! The fireworks.”
“Oh!” she exclaimed as they both watched a streak of red arch above the trees and sink down out of sight again, roaring as it went. “I have so looked forward to them.”
“Come,” he said, releasing her hand and offering her his arm. “Let’s go back into the open and watch them.”
“Oh, yes,” she said. “Let’s.”
And despite everything—despite the fact that something that had hardly started had also ended here tonight—she felt a deep welling of happiness.
She had spoken correctly a minute or two ago. She would not have missed this short stay in London for all the enticements in the world.
And she would not have missed knowing the Marquess of Attingsborough either.