Chapter Sixteen
Holy damned hell. Elliot’s fingers froze in their perch upon the keys of the pianoforte, arched and rounded into that perfect position that he had been taught years ago, and it was all he could do to restrain himself from performing an elated glissando.
Though his heart felt in imminent danger of beating itself straight through the cage of his ribs, he pressed his lips together and strove to arrange his features in a carefully neutral expression. Bland. Perhaps the minutest flicker of interest.
He’d been silent too long already, but what was he meant to say?
Subtlety, he told himself. He’d not exactly excelled in it thus far.
Too eager, and she might balk. If he let the silence linger as he had, she might assume she’d made a grievous error in judgment.
“I wouldn’t want to impose.” Damn. It was everything he could do to suppress the flinch that wanted to crawl over his face.
Impose? As if he’d arrived for tea too early?
“It wouldn’t be an imposition,” Kate said slowly. “We are friends, after all. And you said—you said it would be half an hour at least, before Richard and Rebecca returned.”
“Not quite half an hour any longer.” They’d been chatting and picking at the pianoforte at least half of their allotted time.
Still, Richard and Rebecca had known well enough what they had been doing, leaving them alone and unchaperoned.
Like as not they’d make their reappearance an excessively noisy one, just in the event that a sudden intrusion would prove unwelcome or inconvenient.
“But I suppose…” Careful, now. “Yes, all right. So long as you promise not to laugh at me.”
Kate’s brows pinched, puzzlement etching a crease between them. “Whyever would I laugh at you?”
“You frequently laugh at me.”
“Because—well—” Her shoulders, encased in that soft, pink silk, rose and fell in a helpless shrug. “You make me laugh. When you’re not determined to vex me beyond all reason.”
Most times, he made her laugh even then.
It wasn’t even difficult, usually. He’d long discovered the particular alchemy of Kate’s amusement, and often all it required was a single inane comment past the flush of her face, a teasing remark after her cheeks had puffed out in exasperation.
Sweeter than music and dearer than any other sound in the whole of the world; he had always loved the sound of Kate’s laughter.
“I won’t laugh,” she promised, her voice low and solemn. “So long as you promise not to laugh at me, either.”
He couldn’t help it any longer; his fingers tapped out the music of his racing heart upon the keys. A rippling scale, bright and effervescent, like good champagne gone to the head. “You’ll have to close your eyes, of course.”
“I will?”
“That’s how it’s done, so I’m given to understand.
” At least, he thought so. Which was damned convenient, as he wasn’t at all certain how much longer he could sit beside her pretending to be unaffected.
Even less certain that she would not be able to read the truth of his feelings for her upon his face.
“I see,” she said. A roll of her shoulders, and her breath puffed out, blowing that fashionable, dangling curl away from her face. She lifted her chin, turned a little upon the bench to face him…and closed her eyes. “All right. I’m ready,” she said.
Elliot wasn’t altogether certain he was ready.
His gloves were tucked away in his coat pocket.
If he donned them, probably they would conceal the alarming dampness of his palms. But they would also conceal the texture of her skin from the touch of his fingers, and he…
badly wanted to touch her. To stroke the downy softness of her cheek.
To brush away with his fingertips that charming little curl that always seemed to aggravate her so.
Perhaps even to feather his fingers over the pulse at her throat, just to see if it pounded to match his own.
No gloves. He had to know. Surreptitiously, Elliot swiped his palms on the legs of his trousers.
In the lamplight, Kate’s dark hair gleamed sable.
The fan of her lashes swept across her cheeks, tiny twitches of her eyes moving behind her closed lids.
She couldn’t see him just now, and that—that was ideal, considering he was certain he couldn’t keep the wonder off of his face.
He flexed his fingers in what was likely a futile effort to still the trembling of his hands and hoped, as he reached out to her, that she would not feel it.
She didn’t startle when his fingers touched the silky surface of her cheek, but her soft pink lips parted just a little. A swallow rolled down her throat, and her lids squeezed closed tighter. “I don’t quite know how to do this,” she confessed.
“I have something of an idea.” His throat felt tight, his voice imbued with a strange raspy rumble. Her skin was so much softer than he could have anticipated, so warm beneath his fingers. He leaned in—
“Just once,” she murmured, her voice so low and soft that he suspected the words had been intended only for herself. “Just this once.”
God, no. He knew already, with just her face cradled in the cup of his hands, that it could never be only once. He hadn’t even kissed her yet, and already he knew he would want to do it again. And again. Forever. For the rest of their lives.
She did not yet know the same. But perhaps, if he could do this properly—competently, for all his inexperience—then she might begin to consider it.
There. The lightest of brushes just at the corner of her mouth.
He felt her lips part as she drew in a breath. A note of confusion permeated her voice as she said, “You missed. Have you got your eyes closed?”
Elliot’s shoulders shook with a bout of silent laughter that he forcibly swallowed back, lest she imagine he was making sport of her. He drew back an inch or two. “I haven’t missed. I’m only…taking my time.”
She gave a restless little wiggle, her jaw tightening beneath the pressure of his fingers. “How much is left?”
“Enough.” That was a lie. However much time remained, he had the distinct feeling it would never be enough.
In an attempt to draw her mind away from the potential of discovery and to soothe the anxiety that put a rather rigid set to her shoulders, he said lightly, as if this were nothing more than some intellectual curiosity to be satisfied, “Do you mind? It’s difficult to kiss you when your mouth is moving. ”
A fractious little dip of her brows. “I think you’re meant to,” she said, and to his relief that iron-set stiffness relaxed enough for her to lift one shoulder in an awkward shrug.
“Talk, I mean. They do that in romantic novels, you know.” Her cheeks glowed pink in the lamplight, a hot flush of color washing over her face.
He could feel it under his fingertips, the sultry heat of her skin rivaling his.
“Flattery, or—or something like that,” she whispered.
“Just for future reference, you understand.”
For the woman he was going to marry, he supposed she meant. “What sort of flattery?”
“I suppose it will depend on the lady.” The ungloved fingers of her right hand smoothed over her skirts, gripped a handful of them.
He wondered if they were half so clammy as his had been, if her fingers had trembled like his.
“Miss Applegate is very pretty,” she ventured.
“Surely you’d have no trouble thinking of something flattering to say to her. ”
Elliot wondered if she knew her lips had tightened just a little as she’d uttered the words. If she knew that she had sounded just the tiniest bit jealous.
He leaned in again. Whispered, “You smell like…Mrs. Norris’ walnut pastries.”
Kate’s brows twitched in consternation even as her breath puffed out on a reluctant laugh.
He’d always been able to make her laugh, even at the worst of times.
Maybe especially then; when she most needed the relief of humor to tear her away from her worries, even if only for a few moments. “Elliot,” she chided. “Be serious.”
“I’m serious a great deal more of the time than you believe me to be, Katie. Put your hands on my shoulders.”
Her hands gripped the fabric of her skirts tighter, pressing wrinkles into the fragile pink silk. “Why?”
Because he wanted her to touch him. To know what it felt like. How long had he imagined this, exactly? How many times across how many years? How many nights spent alone in his cold bed, longing for her? “Because that’s how it’s done,” he said.
A deepening furrow between those magnificent, expressive brows.
“But how do you know? I thought you said you had never.” If she had noted the trespass of his hands—which still framed her face—toward the nape of her neck, then she chose not to mention it.
Still her eyes remained closed, as if to open them might bring an end to it all too soon.
“Men talk,” he said. “Amongst themselves, in private places. I’ve heard a few things. And I read a great deal, besides. Your hands, Katie.”
The confusion that settled over her face was adorable.
She lifted her hands from her lap and reached out to him.
Found his chest. Her fingertips first, perching lightly, hesitantly, with the same uncertainty as she had had when she had laid them upon the keys of the pianoforte.
Could she feel the pounding of his heart beneath them, or had the wool of his coat concealed it?
“I don’t think I’ve read anything of the kind,” she said, her voice gone whisper-soft as she let her hands creep up toward his shoulders. “I believe I would have recalled.”