Chapter 3 #2
“You are the most beautiful girl I’ve ever seen.”
She tried to laugh, but it came out strangled. “I am too short,” she said, shaking her head.
“No, in fact, you may be a bit too tall,” he said. “But otherwise, you are everything that is alluring. To me.”
She could feel herself blushing again.
“We have not met before. I mean, I have not seen you before,” she said and gulped. “Giles.”
He smiled. “I do not go to the theater much. Even last night, I scarcely counted that I was there since I paid so little attention to the stage. There were far greater delights to be had by observing the contents of the box on my right.”
He had been looking at her all night.
“But, during the Season, I saw you at no balls?”
He sighed and ran his fingers through his long, dark locks. “Although I receive many invitations, I am not often in London. I am much occupied by other affairs. My estate, for one.”
The hurt and the pain came back into his eyes. How she longed to banish that look.
“I am glad you did go to the theater last night, Giles.”
“And were you glad of my note to you?”
“I would not be here if I were not.”
His arms had been crossed over his chest as he leaned on the tree, but now he reached forward, almost lunging at her, and pulled her to him and bent his head down and found her mouth with his.
Her first kiss.
His hard, muscled body against hers, his arms crushing her into him. The feel of his lips. So warm as the kiss grew more possessive, more demanding. She felt his tongue probing at her mouth.
She did not know what to do. So many sensations, one of them fear that she would do something wrong and he would laugh at her. Or walk away.
She knew so little.
His tongue grew more insistent. She gasped as he pulled her head back with his large hand on her golden Grecian knot, his fingers laced into her hair.
As she gasped, her lips parted, and his tongue entered her mouth.
Such intimacy, such closeness. Warm and wet and powerful.
He lapped at the inside of her mouth, and she wondered what his mouth might do to other parts of her body.
Like her neck.
She could feel something hard pressing into her abdomen as he backed her against a tree.
It was his phallus, she knew. Her sister Mary had explained that part to her, and her own mother had sat her down for a talk a year ago, but Arabella could not abide to listen to her mother discuss the details of such things.
Oh, why had she not paid more attention? Why had she not asked more questions?
One of his large hands held her breast, and then he pushed himself away.
“I must see you again, Arabella. Meet me here tomorrow at the same time. But now I must go.”
He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and walked away quickly with a strange stiff-legged gait, quite unlike the swagger with which he had approached her.
She searched the ground under the trees thoroughly, but she never found her other glove.
She went home and wanted only to be by herself, in her room, so she could think on her first kiss.
It had happened. It was here. Love. And he was the picture-perfect hero for her.
Big, dark, and brooding. And so passionate, so wanting.
He would not stand on propriety and introductions.
He saw her and wanted her and kissed her. That was how it should be.
The next day was quite different.
Again, she lied to her mother and found a way to leave the house alone and go to Hyde Park. How fortunate she had been so guileless with her mother in the past. No one would suspect Arabella of lying in order to go and meet a man.
Giles was already in the little grove of trees and had spread a blanket on the ground.
“I have prepared a picnic,” he said and smiled.
He had prepared a picnic. For her.
Giles helped Arabella to sit on the blanket and then came to recline on his side next to her, up on his elbow.
The picnic turned out to be some wine in a jug.
Arabella drank a little to be polite—he had gone the trouble of bringing some glasses—but she did not usually drink wine in the middle of the day.
“You mentioned an estate, Mr. Fortescue,” she said. “Where is it?”
“Giles,” he said sternly.
“Giles,” she said softly and ducked her head.
“When you do that, Arabella, when you whisper and look away from me, I long to kiss you.”
He was going to kiss her again, she thought.
But he didn’t.
“It’s in Northumberland,” he said and drank more wine.
“So far away.”
“You see why I am not often in London.”
“Yes, I see.”
Giles sighed and brushed a dark lock of his hair behind his ear. “I have been through so many difficulties of late, I dreamed of escape. So I came to London, hoping to lose myself in the diversions of the city.”
There it was again—the wounded look in his eyes that contrasted so strongly with his broad shoulders, his towering size, his strong jaw.
“And have you managed to lose yourself?” she asked.
His mouth smiled, but his eyes still looked like they were in pain. “Even better, Arabella. I have found you.”
“What have been your difficulties, Giles? Can I help you?”
“You can only help me by giving me your company, your smile. I would never weigh you down with my burdens. You,” he reached up and ran a knuckle across her cheek, “are so beautiful, and that beauty is a balm to my soul.”
Surely, he would kiss her now. But he did not.
“Tell me of the amusements you pursue in London, Arabella. Which are your favorites?”
The minutes flew by as Arabella spoke of museums and balls and Bond Street, and then she found the hour was so late that she had to leave immediately so as not to raise suspicion. And except for that stroke of her cheek and handing her down to the picnic blanket, he had not touched her.
He bowed to her as she was about to leave the grove of trees.
“Tonight,” he said. “Meet me outside your stepfather’s house at half past ten o’clock.”