Chapter 17
“What two people are to each other,” she said to him, taking his hand, “is so often decided by everyone else before those two people themselves have a chance to consider.”
Adelaide, Chapter 14
Since the inn, Fitz had wanted to kiss the woman in front of him again more than he had wanted his next breath. The hitch in her breathing told him that maybe she had craved it too.
Why me?
The question hit him like a strike. He held her hands and her words like a caress against his skin and wanted to give her the truth. He really did. He wasn’t very good at the truth.
I’ve been writing to you for months, even though you don’t know it’s me.
I tumble head-long into deeper infatuation with you with every word you put down on paper.
I’ve never met a woman who makes my brain hurt so much from the way you make me think or my chest ache from the way you make me laugh.
And then when I hold you like this, it feels too real. Somehow it isn’t nearly enough.
That wasn’t half bad, but he hadn’t said any of that. She’d called his bluff though; teasing him, and toying with him. And now that mouth of hers presented a challenge.
He had stared at the single brown freckle next to her fuller upper lip more occasions than he cared to admit. Both of them had been forced to exert their best manners, but now he was alone with her again.
He teased her top lip with his own, trying to remember what it tasted like amidst the bed of her soft full lips. Like a sweet and piquant sprinkling of cinnamon against the ripe peach shade of her skin, the tartness of her berry-colored lips.
And then he did it. He pulled her tight against his chest, his lips closed over hers in a bone-melting kiss.
He hadn’t been wrong. Kissing her, taking the soft petals of her lips into his mouth, playing his tongue across hers, sipping the sweetness inside, felt like no indulgence he’d ever partaken of. He felt he could kiss her all afternoon and gorge on her sweetness, and it wouldn’t be enough.
Her tongue made little impressions against his, her body relaxed against his taut frame.
His arms tightened around her felt like the sole purpose that his arms had been made for.
She wasn’t close enough. His greedy hands gripped her waist, holding her close to him while she clenched the lapels of his jacket.
His mouth traveled a tempting path from her jaw to her earlobe, and down the slope of her neck.
When his lips started to parade lower, his hands tightened their grip. Then she pulled back in surprise. Her hand flew to her lips as if her envious fingers wanted to feel the places he’d kissed as well. His body and her fingers had the same ideas.
“Fitz,” she breathed.
“Princess,” he whispered, leading a wandering brown tendril that had escaped its fastidious coiffure to a hiding place behind her ear. He resisted the blinding urge to nip at that ear.
She cleared her throat and made an overly courtly bow. “Till tomorrow, my lord. I expect you bright and early at the hour of half-past two to call upon my brother and ask to court me.”
“What shall I bring you as an offering for your affections, my lady?” he asked as he straightened his clothes, anything to distract himself with to keep from kissing her again. “Flowers? Chocolates?”
She smiled at him as though it were an obvious answer, and he was a dim-witted pupil. “Books, of course.”
He crossed his arms at his firm chest and leaned his head to one side, “You’re not going to make this at all easy for me, are you?”
She leaned closer to whisper in his ear, “Easy? On you, Fitz? Never,” drawing out the last word. She pulled away to smile at him with her most amiable smile. There was something wicked about that smile too.
“You will win my heart through literature.” The game was afoot. He would win her heart. If he had ever had any doubt, today had proved what he had suspected: she had already stolen his.
“You’re here…to see Noelle?” Lawrence quizzically eyed his friend standing in the Pembrooke House foyer at the breakfast hour.
“Is that a problem?” Fitz replied, shrugging off his coat to the butler. He was feigning more confidence in the face of his friend than he felt.
“Don’t you mean…Moria?” Lawrence questioned, scratching his head.
“Well no, I meant exactly what I said. Can you try to keep up, please?” Fitz handed his fashionable hat to the butler as well.
“I thought you were courting Moria?” Lawrence said, narrowing his eyes.
“Why would you think that?” Fitz shot back, breathing in the smell of bacon and biscuits and coffee that made his mouth water.
He’d never known his friend to ever stand on ceremony, but he wished the other man would offer him refreshment.
Not only because of the mouthwatering aroma, or the fact that he’d been so determined to prove to her that he was serious that he’d left before breaking his fast; but he’d love just a glimpse of her, pink-cheeked and startled as he entered the breakfast room accompanied by Lawrence.
It was decidedly out of the question, but he wanted it nonetheless.
“Don’t sell me a dog, Fitz. If you’ve been flirting with her and…more than flirting…behind my back, without my approval…”
Fitz held up a staying hand. “Easy, chap. I’m serious. I want to court Lady Noelle. Properly. I’ll speak to his lordship first for his approval, obviously.”
“You want to court a girl properly? You…want to court my bookish sister properly?” Lawrence stared at Fitz as if he were a fish that professed an unslaked desire to learn to climb trees. It couldn’t be that unimaginable, surely.
“As her older brother who cares for her, you ought to be able to concede that she’s marriage material and of a marriageable age. She’s pretty, she’s accomplished, she’s clever, she’s a Pembrooke. I could do far worse.”
“That’s just the problem. That’s all true, but could she say the same for you? I’m not so sure that she couldn’t do far worse than the ‘Libertine Lord’.”
God, in all his jest, chose this as the moment for the Earl of Westmoreland to enter from his morning ride and overhear. “Noelle is thinking of marriage…to a ‘Libertine Lord’? I can assure you she won’t receive my approval.”
Hang it all, Fitz thought.
“Good morning, my lord.” Fitz made an appropriate bow. “My apologies for calling so early.”
The Earl checked his watch, “No need for apologies, I always take my ride at half past 6. Will you join us for breakfast?”
The Earl was immaculately groomed, hair only slightly disheveled from his morning ride in Hyde Park. God, he was intimidating. On the other hand, his younger counterpart was still in his dressing robe, woolen slippers likely handmade by one of his sisters peeking out from underneath a silk banyan.
“There’s a matter I’d like to speak to you about,” Fitz explained.
The Earl looked to his younger brother who gave a noncommittal shrug. “Very well, join me in the library.”
Just as Lawrence was en route to abscond to the breakfast table, his elder brother gripped him by the back of his robe, hands seizing on his belt. “You’re not escaping this one, L.”
“But,” at Lawrence’s rebuttal, The Earl raised an eyebrow, “the breakfast is ready.”
Fitz tried not to laugh as Lawrence retreated before he could ask him to make him a plate as well.
“Anyone care for a biscuit?” Lawrence cut through the tension between Fitz and the Earl to speak.
Fitz looked around him before Lawrence shut the door on a glimpse of Noelle in the hallway.
The library had been plunged into complete silence until Lawrence entered to find Fitz sitting opposite the Earl in front of the hearth.
The Earl shook his head, and Fitz, the hungry would-be suitor across from him, followed his lead.
Fitz heard the words as though they were coming from above him and he was below water. “Five minutes, as promised. Now, what did I miss?”
“Your friend, Viscount Ludlowe, has asked to court your sister Noelle. Not Moria.”
Jasper was like an elder brother to Fitz too.
Assuredly, it wasn’t such a stretch that he would take a fancy to one of the Pembrooke sisters; but clearly Jasper wanted to intimidate him the same as he would any prospective suitor.
But why had they all assumed it would have been Moria?
Her appearance at Fitz’s masquerade had proven that none of them really knew her.
“So you really are serious?” Lawrence questioned Fitz.
“You didn’t believe me earlier?” Fitz shot back, eyeing the plate of food in Lawrence’s hands.
“I asked you what this was about, Lawrence. Some warning might have been helpful.” His brother added.
“I think I’ll just return to the breakfast room.” Lawrence made to escape, standing from his chair.
“Don’t. You. Dare.”
Lawrence breathed a long sigh and sat down on the sofa, propping his slippered feet on the table in front of him.
“Do you have any thoughts on the prospect of Lord Ludlowe courting our sister that you’d like to add to this discussion?”
Lawrence looked at his friend, who despite the ire of the Earl and the thick tension of the room, looked relaxed and confident. “Noelle is a lovely girl, but the Viscount is…equally quite an aspirational match for her, and a poor one.”
Fitz raised an eyebrow. He didn’t see Lawrence’s point and thought as his friend, he’d have counted on his support.
“A handsome, well-revered viscount is rather a reach for a…bookish and eccentric girl like Noelle. Maybe not for Moria, the two of them would have made a most amiable match…But also, well, the two of them couldn’t be more different.”
He fought with how to argue just how wrong Lawrence was on several accounts.
Neither Fitz nor the Earl were quick to speak, so Lawrence continued. “I was not aware that Lord Ludlowe was in the mind to take a wife at present, and would like to know the nature of his intentions before agreeing to allow his courtship of Noelle to continue…to begin, that is.”
The Earl looked to Fitz. It was Fitz’s turn to set them at ease, to speak on his own behalf exactly what he wanted.
Cool and relaxed, Fitz explained with a wave of his hand, “I’m about to turn 5 and 20. I own property. I have taken my seat in the House of Lords. I’m soon to receive my inheritance. Marriage is not out of the question. Noelle would make an excellent viscountess.”
Lawrence let out a disbelieving, pfffft sound.
The Earl ignored him as though he were a fly buzzing at his ear.
“Will you treat her and this family with respect, Fitz? I will not have you toying with her to raise your standing all for you to spurn her for some other girl when your courtship no longer suits your aims.”
Fitz leapt to his feet in outrage. Of the scores of ladies he’d met, not one was all the traits Noelle embodied: clever, compassionate, determined, maddening…all with those hazel eyes and that mouth made for sin.
It was with honesty that he clarified, impassioned: “My Lord, I would never do that. You should know that of me.”
His fists clenched and his jaw thrummed.
“I have nothing but the utmost respect for this family, I always have; at times more than my own. I’m quite taken with Noelle and in my estimation, if one of us were to end the courtship,” he looked down, swallowing nervously, “It would be her, because I wasn’t up to her… standards.”
The Earl scrutinized the younger man’s features and asked the question Lawrence appeared to also be thinking. “How long have you held a tendre for Noelle?”
Shit. He honestly couldn’t answer that question, even for himself.
Fitz sat back down in his chair, looking down at the steeple he made of his connected fingers.
“Well, that’s hard to say…we’ve always been…friendly to one another,” he cracked his knuckles simply to have something to do with his hands, “I’ve always admired her intellect and curiosity.”
Fitz leaned back in the chair and crossed his arms, stalling for time, “When I offered her dancing lessons, back at Brookevale Park, I didn’t realize how much I would enjoy her…”
he raked a hand through his hair, “her wit, her sense of humor, the way she challenges me. Then when we danced together, at the debut ball, I found her rather enchanting. I’d like to court her to see if I might be a dance partner for her for life.”
Lawrence scoffed and rolled his eyes, almost choking on a bite of bacon.
The Earl sent his younger brother a glance that said “get it together,” before standing to lean an arm on the mantle.
The clock next to the Earl ticked off the seconds, Fitz swallowed his nervousness as the room grew interminably silent.
What if the Earl refused, and all of Fitz’s plans were for naught?
Lawrence held up a sausage roll, seemingly as a peace offering, and Fitz took it.
The Earl cut through the tension like a well-honed blade. “If I allow you to court Noelle, there will be chaperoned outings and visits. It will be on her terms, which means they will also be on my terms.”
“Yes, my lord.” Fitz said reverently.
“You may go,” the Earl spoke, and the young viscount made a deliberate bow before exiting. He’d just had Jasper’s blessing, he thought, and now he had a lady to court.