Chapter 2 #4
Or perhaps they did. She knew nothing. She did not know enough. She only knew that Edward Linfield had grown blurred in her memory, and that the kiss she had asked for to discover her future no longer mattered, because the future had just presented her with someone entirely unexpected.
Arden drew back a little; he kept his forehead grazing hers. She felt his breath grazing her lips with great pressure.
‘Eveline… for the love of God…’
Her name had just sounded very different from the way he usually pronounced it. Like an involuntary confession? What exactly was he confessing to her?
Eveline was certain that this man did not know either how to come out unscathed from what had just happened between them.
‘Do not stop. I want you to kiss me again,’ she whispered, now without any formality at all.
Perhaps she should not have said it. A sensible lady would have remembered the party, her brother, the terrace, the guests, and the fragility of every feminine reputation.
No. Eveline had spent too long without feeling alive, and she was not willing for that to end so soon. She wanted more. More kisses, more intimacy, more new sensations that threatened to overflow her.
Arden closed his eyes for an instant.
‘You do not know what you are asking of me. You must stop me.’
‘Not yet. Kiss me again.’
That destroyed him. He had no willpower or discipline left that could draw him away from her.
Arden’s mouth returned to hers with less patience than before.
Eveline received him without quite knowing how she ought to respond to this new urgency.
She was learning as he kissed her, feeling the anger transform into another kind of trembling.
Her fingers climbed up his lapels and clasped his neck more tightly.
He told himself that this had to end once and for all. He repeated it when Eveline’s back grazed the wood of the gazebo. He could not claim her right there! Ah, but he wanted so badly to lift her skirt and—
A little more and he would stop. Yes. That was what he would do. He would kiss her a little more, despite his own arousal being agonizing, and he would stop.
Good God! It was horrible when he realized he did not know whether he would ever be able to stop. His desire for her was becoming impossible to hide, and he did not want that moment ever to end.
And even so, knowing the enormous mistake he was making, he did not pull away until he heard a loud clearing of a throat behind him.
Not one.
Two.
The sound was so polite, so discreetly horrified, that it proved more devastating than a shout.
Arden went motionless. For a second he did not breathe. Eveline’s mouth was still a sigh away from his, her fingers still closed at his nape, and the silence falling over the garden was the closest thing to a social execution.
Then, very slowly, he drew his hands from her waist and took a step back. He turned to face his audience and left her well sheltered and protected behind him.
Eveline took an instant longer to grasp what was happening.
Nevertheless, before he stopped looking at her, she read Arden’s face, for she knew it too well.
Never more aptly said than in that moment.
The desire had vanished beneath a layer of fierce control; he had just buried it with a speed that would have been admirable were it not that they were both utterly ruined.
His jaw had tightened and his gaze had turned away from her with the speed of lightning, but not before she could glimpse the panic reflected in his eyes.
Eveline looked over his shoulder and felt all the blood freeze in her veins.
Oliver was there.
And he was not alone.
Alice stood at his side, pale, with a hand resting on her husband’s arm. Behind them had stopped Mrs. Pritchard, two of her daughters, the local physician, and a gentleman of mature years. Farther off, at a middle distance, other guests were missing none of it either.
For a moment, no one spoke.
Oliver looked deeply put out. Astonished too. His eyes moved from Arden to Eveline, from his sister’s swollen mouth to his best friend’s rumpled lapels.
Alice opened her mouth, but said nothing.
Eveline could not move, because Arden kept her firmly by the wrist so she could not escape. Flee where? Even in hell she would already be damned for her deeds.
It was then that the Earl of Arden did what men did so well when disaster could no longer be avoided.
He took command of the situation. He raised his chin with the serenity of a condemned man who had just chosen the manner of mounting the scaffold, and his smile took on a false cheer.
‘You arrive just in time,’ said Nathaniel in a very clear voice. ‘You may congratulate us. Lady Eveline has consented to become my countess.’
Oliver did not blink at the announcement.
Alice brought a hand to her chest.
Mrs. Pritchard let out a disconcerting sound, prompted perhaps by the joy of possessing a piece of news capable of feeding three parishes. Her daughters imitated her for the same reason.
The rest began to murmur.
That was the beginning of the end. It reeked of scandal. Eveline knew it. And the worst of it was that she herself had walked into the wolf’s mouth.
God, what a disaster!