A Lord's Kiss

by Mary Lancaster et al.

  “A man like me?” To all appearances, Captain Dorrill’s demeanor was calm, his smile sincere.

  “I simply meant a man accustomed to less tame entertainments,” replied the dandy, a short, slight, red-haired man of no more than twenty. “One does not need cutlery when dining with savages and cutthroats, does one?”

  “Of course not. One only has need of a sharp cutlass.”

  “A cutlass?” The young buck paled and swallowed hard.

  “To cut one’s meat and dispatch those who make pests of themselves whilst one is dining.” Captain Dorrill chose a knife from those arrayed alongside his plate, speared a roasted potato, and devoured it in one snap of his even, white teeth. “Especially in the company of beautiful ladies.”

  The red-haired gentleman executed a brief bow and back peddled away from the table. Georgiana wanted to let out a very unladylike whoot! of delight. From their expressions, Eleanor, Abigail and Emmaline did, as well.

  “I don’t see any ladies,” one of the dandy’s cronies muttered none too quietly. “No better than they should be, the lot of them.”

  Captain Dorrill erupted from his chair and in two strides had the young man dangling from his neckcloth. The din of conversation and clinking dinnerware faded. The September breeze rustled the leaves of the ancient trees and ruffled the tops of the hedges and other shrubberies. The birds continued to give voice to their song. Georgiana ignored it all and slowly rose from her chair. She sensed her friends did, as well.

  Her eyes, however, did not leave Captain Dorrill’s face, which was drawn into the hard lines of a controlled fury. She took a step toward him. Her feet had lost their ability to raise themselves above the firm cushion of the plush lawn.

  “P-put him d-down,” the red-haired buck stammered. “You’ll kill him.”

  “One of those notions has enormous appeal,” Captain Dorrill said evenly. He loosened his grip slightly and allowed his captive’s toes to touch the grass.

  “What do you expect from the only man in London Addington could find to court a cit’s cast off?” the third dandy asked snidely.

  “Oh, dear,” someone, Eleanor perhaps, murmured.

  In a deft blur, the captain dropped the second dandy, who collapsed in a heap, and punched the third man in the nose. Georgiana’s skin flushed hot and then cold. She’d found Ethan’s movements elegantly brutal, and the sensations they set off in her body, disturbing.

  “Get up,” Ethan growled, looming over his victim, who was bleeding all over his dandified finery. “Get up, you bilge rat.”

  “You bwoke my nose,” the man whined as he scooted across the grass in an effort to escape.

  “I’ll break something you value far more if you don’t stand up, you—”

  “Ethan, please,” Eleanor said softly.

  “Captain Dorrill?” Georgiana reached his side and covered his clenched fist with her fingers. “Let it go.”

  He turned to her, his amber eyes nearly gold in the light of the afternoon sun. A long, deep breath raised and lowered his broad chest. He lowered his arms to his sides and inclined his head. “As you wish, my lady.”

  “You two, yes you,” the Duchess of Mitford commanded, pointing at the red-haired dandy and his friend, who was still trying to straighten the neckcloth by which he’d been hanging moments ago. “Take him”—she pointed at their bleeding companion—“and be on your way. You can inform your grandmothers you have received your last invitations from me. Bess Rhys-Colton produced a useless scapegrace of a son. I don’t know what made me think her grandson would be any better. Thomas, do speed them along.”

  “Of course, Your Grace.” The duchess’s footman lifted the fallen dandy from the grass, none too gently, and led the three young men in the direction of the drive, where a fleet of carriages awaited.

  The formidable peeress turned her attention to the remainder of her guests. She had but raised her lorgnette halfway to her face before the Venetian breakfast resumed as if nothing had happened. Georgiana was suddenly weary and near to tears. She’d asked Captain Dorrill not to court her. She’d never imagined how awful his courtship might be. How wonderfully, terribly, awful it might be.

  “I wish to go home,” she entreated Abigail quietly. “Can you take me home?”

  “Of course, Georgie.” Her sister began to gather her reticule and shawl.

  Captain Dorrill stood, hands clasped behind his back, his expression unreadable.

  “Lady Georgiana, I don’t believe Captain Dorrill has seen my yew maze,” the duchess announced. She took Georgiana’s arm and tucked it through the captain’s. “It would please me if you show it to him.”

  “Your Grace,” Georgiana started. “I don’t think—”

  “I am a firm believer in a woman’s ability to think for herself and to do so in a far superior fashion than most men.” The elderly lady, far stronger than her years implied, shoved Georgiana and Captain Dorrill toward the maze behind the rear terrace of Mitford House. “But every now and again, it behooves a lady not to think at all. Run along now.”

  Georgiana stormed toward the terrace, the captain’s long strides easily keeping pace no matter how quickly she walked. Decorum and lady-like behavior had fled the moment every one of the duchess’s nearly one hundred guests had stopped in stunned silence to watch the scandal in the making with Georgiana at its center. She and her escort crossed the terrace without a word between them, until they reached the steps leading down into the maze.

  “I realize you are in a state, Georgiana,” he said as he hauled her body against his. “But we’ll negotiate the maze far better if neither of us has a broken leg.”

  She gazed up into his face, a storm of heat and confusion suffusing her entire being. “What on earth are you talking about, Captain?”

  “I thought we agreed you would call me Ethan.” He splayed a hand across the small of her back and pulled her closer still.

  “We never agreed to that. And I have not given you permission to call me…” She dropped her eyes to his lips, the bottom one full and too lush for a man, the top one lean and drawn as if by an artist’s hand. And both of them curling into a knowing grin.

  “Georgiana? I’m certain you did,” he murmured mere inches from her cheek. “Perhaps it slipped your mind. Now.” He straightened and indicated the stone steps. “As you have calmed yourself, shall we descend into the maze at a pace more conducive to reaching the bottom upright and intact? I am not strong enough to naysay Farnsworth’s mother.” He started down without her.

  “Calmed myself?” Georgiana glanced back toward the rest of the party and then to the entrance of the maze as Captain Dorrill—Ethan, drat it all—disappeared inside the first turn. “Calmed myself,” she muttered and stomped down the steps. She followed the direction he’d taken. “I would not have cause to calm myself if you had not engaged Lord Freddy Finch-Hutton in a bout of fisticuffs in the middle of a Venetian umpff―” She turned the corner and ran directly into him. “Breakfast.”

  He gripped her elbows to steady her, drew her arm through his, and turned to escort her through the maze. “Fisticuffs involves two people, my lady. Lord Freddy hardly raised a hand, let alone a fist. I suppose one might call it a bout of fisticuff.”

  “He is heir to an earldom,” Georgiana said, suddenly overcome with the desire to laugh. An image of Freddy flailing about with one fist came vividly to mind.

  “I have little use for a man whose sole occupation is waiting for someone to die in order that he might become important.” They came to a dead end. Under his breath, he hurled some distinctly improper imprecations down on the duchess’s yew trees and turned Georgiana back to retrace their steps.

  “I didn’t say Freddy would be useful. I said he would be an earl,” she said as they entered an open area of the maze. Here, hidden completely from view, stood a fountain with a statue of three Grecian maidens, water flowing into the base of the fountain from the urns they held tilted. Ethan stopped before the fountain and indicate
d she should sit on one of the curved benches around the beautiful monument to The Muses.

  The captain stood before her and propped one booted foot on the bench next to her hip. His lips curled into a half-smile. “Are you saying you find all earls useless or merely Freddy?”

  Georgiana could not stop herself. The taut muscles of his calf and thigh, accented by the skin-tight fit of his buckskin breeches and black leather boots, drew her gaze like a compass—up to his lean waist, across his broad chest, to his shoulders molded by the light wool navy fabric of his new morning coat. The thick mane of his burnished gold hair had begun to escape the thin ribbon he’d used to tie it back into the long queue that shone against the dark hue of his coat. She swallowed and raised her head.

  “Whether I find Freddy useless or not does not matter,” she finally said. “You cannot go about drawing the cork of every gentleman in London who…” Georgiana looked away. Too much. She’d said too much. The tender touch of calloused fingers beneath her chin forced her to meet his gaze once more.

  “How many, Georgiana?” His voice, a deep, dark river of comfort, flowed over the blade of some lethal promise of rage. Rage on her behalf.

  “How many?” Her voice barely there, she stiffened her spine, but did not lean away from his touch.

  “How many men have insulted you? How many have dared? I will see to them all, Princess. Simply name them.”

  She gave a bitter laugh. “I am not a princess, only a simple lady, daughter of a bankrupt duke, and you would need an army.”

  “I would raise an army to silence them. I have fought for far less worthy causes.” His gaze never wavered, the lines of his face as beautifully drawn as the Muses watching over them. An Achilles with grey-green eyes and a voice like molten sin.

  “I pay them no mind, Captain. Neither should you. I have grown accustomed to it.” Her attempt at flippancy fell flat.

  “Accustomed to insults? Accustomed to being told when you might dance the waltz, when you might do anything at all? Why? Why would a woman like you allow yourself to grow accustomed to anything save your heart’s desire?” Ethan curled his hand around to cup her face. He brushed his thumb across the crest of her cheek. With his other hand, he untied her bonnet and pushed it off her head. It landed in the grass behind her with a quiet shusssh of ribbon and straw.

  “A woman like me?” She was falling, falling into the depths of his eyes. Falling into the rough velvet of his touch.

  “Glorious,” he rasped and bent to touch his lips to her temple. “Strong.” He brushed the opposite temple. “Brilliant.” He kissed her nose. “Dangerous as hell.”

  “Dangerous?” she breathed across lips a hairsbreadth from her own.

  “Absolutely.” He cradled her head between his hands and before she had a chance to breathe, seared his lips to hers.

  Chapter Five

  She raised her hands to his wrists and Ethan feared she meant to push him away. She would have to, for nothing and no one on earth had the power to stop him from sinking into the lush ocean that was Georgiana’s kiss. Slowly, inch by inch, she stood, her fingers tightening and her body pressing his in a provocative brush of fabric and heat. He drew his palms down either side of her neck, across her shoulders and down her arms to lace her fingers with his. All the while he made a sensuous study of her mouth—her soft, delicate lips—the hot interior of her mouth, tasting of raspberries and wine—her tongue, tentative at first and then curious and finally winding with his own. A jolt of primitive desire raced to his groin and nearly took him to his knees.

  He hadn’t intended…

  He’d only wanted a simple courtship. He’d meant to conduct a simple courtship.

  She made a little sound in the back of her throat.

  He released her hands and wrapped his arms around her, lifting her even closer. She threw her arms around his neck to keep from falling. Falling. She was in no danger. Ethan was, the sensation of diving off the top mast into the warmest Mediterranean Sea, that was kissing Georgiana. He slanted his lips across hers in several forays, allowing them both just enough time to catch a breath before submerging them again.

  She stroked his hair free of its queue and ran her fingers through it, beneath it, to caress the back of his neck, eliciting shivers against which he had no desire to fight. Her breasts, small and perfect, teased the muscles of his chest. Her heart pounded against him. He dragged his kiss along the sharp curve of her jaw, down the front of her throat, where her pulse fluttered so swiftly he feared it might fly from her skin.

  Hands fisted in his hair, Georgiana gasped. “Wh-what are you doing?”

  “If you have to ask”—he nipped the tender skin at the base of her throat—“I am definitely out of practice.” Her skin, soft and intoxicating, tasted of honey and smelled of jasmine and sunlight.

  “We shouldn’t.” She tilted his head up and kissed him with erotically clumsy passion.

  After several moments, he broke the kiss and raised one hand to run his thumb across her chin. “Why not?”

  “I don’t know.” She clasped his wrists to stay him. “Why are you courting me? Why are you kissing me?”

  “I don’t know.” He stared into her blue eyes. He didn’t know. Not anymore. Something in her voice, in the determined jut of her chin. I pay them no mind, Captain. Neither should you. He had to kiss her. To offer her the solace no one offered him when he suffered the scorn and condescension of Society, the rancor and cruel manipulations of his grandfather. He hardly knew her, and yet he knew her as well as he knew himself.

  “Liar,” she whispered. She pressed her hand to the middle of his chest and gently but firmly pushed him away. “I don’t need your pity, Captain. I’ve had quite enough of pity and poor dear’s, thank you very much.”

  “Pity?” The word did not penetrate the fog of lust and some other strange sensation he could not identify until she shoved past him and marched around the corner of the maze. “What the devil? Georgiana, wait.” He ran his hands through his hair. “What did I do?” he muttered. He spotted her bonnet behind the bench, snatched it up and went in search of the woman who’d doused his head in an inferno of confusion and his cock in a bucket of ice water. “Georgiana, you cannot leave me in here. Wait.”

  “I can and I will,” she answered, her voice drifting back from a forest of towering, perfectly trimmed, thick-as-treacle yew trees.

  Ethan lengthened his strides. At the next turn in the maze, he followed the direction he’d last heard her. His reward? A dead end. He retraced his steps and took the opposite path. “Pity?” he muttered. “Pity? I’m the one who wrenched a shoulder wriggling into this damned coat. I’m the one who has to worry about my cock popping up like a damned porpoise every time I look at that damned woman. Inexpressibles, my arse. These breeches do nothing but express.” He stopped at a T in the maze and adjusted himself. “And they chafe like the devil.” He threw back his head and bellowed, “Lady Georgiana!”

  “Leave me alone, Captain. I am perfectly capable of making my way home without your escort.”

  “My escort? I will be stuck in here until Christmas unless you come back and escort me out of here.” He slapped her bonnet against his leg and took the path he hoped she had taken.

  “Perhaps by then you will have given up on this ridiculous courtship. Good day, sir.”

  Ethan came upon a sudden open area where a statue of Diana, arrow notched and pointed in his direction, stood on a pedestal. No less than five narrow, tree-lined alleyways led out of the little grotto. He glanced up at the statue of the goddess of the hunt and subsided onto the base of the statue. “If my attentions are so terrible a woman attempts to lose me like an unwanted puppy rather than endure my courtship, I beg you shoot me now, madam.”

  Pity. He did not pity Lady Georgiana . He understood her. The eldest in her family, like him, she’d tried her best to look out for her sister. Unlike him, she’d continued to do so long after her efforts became useless and unappreciated. Nothing she’d
endured had made a difference in the end. Ethan had no sooner stepped into the Duke of Addington’s study than the man began to negotiate a price for his daughter’s hand in marriage. Rumor had it, Daniel McCormick, who had courted and then jilted Georgiana, had paid the father’s debts and supplied the household with an income once he’d married Georgiana’s sister. And still the family lived on the edge of ruin because of the patriarch’s profligate ways.

  She was not an object of pity in his eyes, but one of admiration. Ethan had tried to save Ash and Margaret from their grandfather, but once the old man had threatened their futures, Ethan had crumbled and done as he was told. He’d abandoned them to Thomas Dorrill’s cold, cruel upbringing and gone to sea. He’d escaped. How could he explain to his younger brother that being sent to sea as a cabin boy was nothing compared to the fate Thomas had intended for Ash? How could he tell Margaret all these years away at school were a blessing compared to the workhouse where their grandfather vowed he would abandon her and Ash unless Ethan did what the old bastard commanded?

  Ethan had been under no delusions when Thomas demanded he court and marry the duke’s daughter. He’d read the gossip columns and consulted Sir Stirling James. Georgiana had submitted and endured Season after Season in London. Her father had paraded her through the ballrooms and myriad social events like a prize heifer. Ethan wanted to beat the man to a bloody pulp. He’d admired Georgiana before he even met her. And now… Now he wanted to win her, not simply to appease Thomas’s obsession with a connection to the nobility, even if that noble was a duke without a feather to fly with. He wanted to win her because a woman like Georgiana, who stood with defiant serenity in the midst of Society’s sly glances and condescending airs, had the courage to face anything. She was magnificent. Suddenly, it was very important for him to convince her to see that magnificence for herself.

  “Dammit all,” he growled as he shot to his feet. “She left you to die after one kiss. God knows what she’ll do if you marry her.” Ethan went to each of the five avenues leading out of the little grotto in turn. They all looked the same—each led to yet another path going God knows where. He climbed up onto the base of the statue and wrapped his arm around the stone huntress to secure his perch. From this vantage, he peered over the tops of the hedges and spotted the rear of the house and the terrace steps. Steps Georgiana determinedly climbed. She then crossed the terrace as if marching to war. This did not bode well for him.