A Lord's Kiss

by Mary Lancaster et al.

  He tasted of wine and dark treacle. She wriggled closer and drew his bottom lip between her teeth. Ethan groaned, which sent a tickling sensation dancing along her skin. Emboldened, she teased his lips with the tip of her tongue. He opened for her slowly, as if uncertain of her desires. She teased and tempted, tracing the roof of his mouth, touching her tongue to his. He responded in kind and his fervor, gentle at first and then more demanding, became hers.

  Georgiana freed his hair from its queue and sifted it with her fingers before clutching it tight. Ethan gasped and dragged his lips along her jaw and down her throat to press a lingering kiss to the slight cleft between her breasts, which peeked above the line of her bodice. She used his hair to draw his head up and his lips to hers once more. This might be her one and only time to make a bad choice, her own choice, and she fully intended to take advantage of it. Nothing could come of it, but surely a lifetime of doing the right thing had earned her this much. Even if only for an hour.

  “Don’t,” he murmured against her lips. She froze and opened her eyes. Amusement shone in his eyes briefly, then a far more dangerous expression came over his exquisitely carved features. Desire… Admiration? For her? And, worst of all, the sort of understanding born of knowing what and why she kissed him.

  “Don’t what?”

  “Go back behind that proper, dutiful door. Stay here. With me.”

  He gathered her closer, his strong arms offering searing heat as they slid across her back and held her. Held her as if she might break or run away. In his arms she was cherished, at least she hoped that was the sensation creeping into her mind, into her heart. A strange, foreign sensation, but more welcome than any she had ever known.

  Ethan brushed a kiss across her forehead. He dotted kisses down her nose, to each side of her mouth, to her chin. He ran his thumbs across the lines of her jaw and trailed them down her throat.

  “Tell me what you want, Georgiana. Tell me and I will find a way to give it to you.”

  “Why, Ethan? I don’t understand.” She didn’t. A man who wanted to give rather than take. A man who asked the most ridiculous questions… Who do you want to be? As if he truly wanted to know.

  “You deserve your heart’s desire.” He kissed the corner of her eye and her eyelids fluttered closed. His words, a tempting benediction, chilled the breath in her lungs. Danger, the danger of impossible dreams, that was what he offered. She met his gaze. The light of the torches around the fountain touched the golden amber of his eyes. Everything in the world rose in those eyes, everything, and the strength to make it so. Everything she was never meant to have.

  “Kiss me, Ethan. Please.” She did not have to ask twice. He took her mouth in a kiss so powerfully gentle, so possessively tender, Georgiana wanted to weep. And she never wanted it to end.

  “Georgiana,” he whispered across her lips. “Sweet, Georgiana.” He shifted his hold as if to lift her into his lap.

  “Sweet indeed,” a familiar voice drawled. “When you’ve finished with the jade, Dorrill, I’ll take her off your hands.”

  An icy shock washed over her. She needed to stand, to run, to do anything to escape. Her body refused to comply. Ethan rose and set her on her feet behind him.

  “You owe the lady an apology, Freddy. I suggest you be about it.” The lethal blade of Ethan’s voice cut through the night. Georgiana shivered. She rubbed her hands up and down her arms and contemplated taking the path behind her out of this garden, out of London, out of England, if necessary. What had she done?

  Ethan shrugged out of his jacket and draped it around her shoulders. He touched a finger to her lips before turning to face Freddy once more. “Well, Freddy?” His hands folded into sinewy fists at his sides. “Offer Lady Georgiana your apology or I’ll beat it out of you.”

  “Ethan, no,” Georgiana said softly, horror creeping into her very veins. She heard voices on the terrace. This could not be happening to her.

  “Precisely,” Freddy replied, his mouth twisted in an ugly sneer. “Ethan, no I will not apologize to a wench no better than she ought to be. Parading herself as a grand lady and putting on airs when she’s nothing but a common—”

  Crack!

  Freddy Finch-Hutton lay sprawled half in the fountain. A dark stain spilled over his chin onto his cravat. Ethan grabbed his shirt front and hauled him out of the water only to punch him and let him drop again. Freddy staggered to his feet and raised his fists, weaving back and forth on his feet.

  “Come on, you bwoody piwate. Fight me wike a gennleman.”

  A completely uncalled for urge to giggle came over Georgiana. Until those voices came around the corner and her entire world went to hell. She dropped Ethan’s jacket on the bench and stepped around and away from him.

  “What the devil is this?” the marquess roared. Arrayed behind him, it appeared the entire dinner party had adjourned to the gardens.

  “A simple misunderstanding, my lord,” Georgiana offered with a curtsy. She caught Ethan’s grave expression, the slight hint of puzzlement in his eyes.

  “This common wuffian should not be awwoud decent people.” Freddy edged closer to the marquess. “He attacked me for no weason.”

  “Lady Georgiana, come away with me,” the marchioness insisted. She took Georgiana’s arm and tugged her toward the house. “Your mother would never forgive me if I allowed you to fall to harm. Let the gentlemen deal with this.”

  “But, your ladyship…” Georgiana’s voice faltered. Ethan stared at her expectantly. She’d done all she could to dissuade him. All, but this. “Of course, your ladyship. It is all very upsetting.” She held Ethan’s gaze, unwilling to be a complete coward.

  “I suggest you take your leave, Captain Dorrill,” the marquess ordered, the other gentlemen muttering in agreement. “Lady Georgiana has been misinformed as to your character. You are here as her guest and you have abused her kindness by attacking your betters. Leave now, or I shall have you removed.”

  Knives of shame and anger lodged beneath her ribs and worked their way to Georgiana’s heart.

  “Lady Georgiana?” Ethan inquired, his tone dark and cold as a country night.

  “Please go…Captain Dorrill. My friends will see me home.” She forced herself to follow the ladies back toward the terrace.

  “Your friends. Of course.”

  She turned back to see him striding through the gardens toward the mews. He’d not even been allowed the dignity of leaving by way of the front door. The baron and one of the other gentlemen helped Freddy back up the path. The rest of the party trailed behind them. Georgiana stood and watched until there was only emptiness and darkness where Ethan had been. She felt a bundle of fabric being pressed into her hand.

  “Come along, my dear,” the marchioness said. “I’ll have a word with Finch-Hutton. His mother is a friend of mine.” She put her arm around Georgiana and guided her along the empty pathway and up the terrace steps. “She raised a terribly spoiled son, but she knows it. No harm will come to you.”

  Georgiana clutched Ethan’s jacket to her chest. No harm.

  ***

  She’d stayed for hours after that. The gentlemen stood about the drawing room discussing the efforts of cits, merchants to rise above their stations in life. They’d assured Freddy Finch-Hutton he’d been the victim of a sneak attack. Had he been punched by a gentleman, he’d have certainly won the day. Of course, the men only conversed with him after the marchioness had called him aside under the pretext of seeing to his “wounds.” After which, Freddy had given Georgiana a wide berth. The women had avoided the subject utterly, all the while snatching sideways glances at her to look for cracks in her façade. They found none. She’d smiled and joined conversations about the latest styles in gowns and who had redecorated their townhouse for the third Season in a row.

  Only now, as the marquess’s carriage conveyed her home, did Georgiana allow the tears burning her throat and eyes to fall. Ethan would never understand, which was just as well. She didn’t under
stand herself. Her father had squandered their entire fortune long ago. She and Mama survived by the kindness of her brother-in-law, Daniel McCormick. There was nothing to repair the estates. It fell to Georgiana to make a successful, aristocratic marriage to save the family name. Money wasn’t enough. Love was out of the question.

  Ethan Dorrill was out of the question.

  Who do you want to be?

  How dare he? How dare he ask such a question and start her mind down a road she never allowed herself to travel? It hurt, damn him. She caught a sob behind her hand and bent double at the pain of dreams undreamt. A gentleman’s jacket offered cold comfort when all she wanted was that man’s arms about her once more.

  The carriage turned onto her street and she swiped her hands across her face. She smoothed the jacket over her arm.

  “You are being foolish, Georgiana,” she said out loud. “You asked him not to court you. You have done all in your power to dissuade him. You really had no choice.” The carriage drew to a halt before her door. One of the marquess’s footmen let down the steps and opened the door. The other had already gone to her family’s front door to knock. With murmured thanks, she stepped past their butler and hurried up the two flights of stairs to her bedchamber. She burst into the room and slammed the door behind herself so precipitously that poor Alma shrieked and dropped her embroidery in the floor.

  “Good Lord, milady, you gave me a start.” She hurried to Georgiana’s side. “What is it? What’s wrong?”

  “Why should anything be wrong? It is after two in the morning and I am simply tired and ready for this day to be over.” She sat down on the side of her bed, Ethan’s jacket still pressed against her middle. “Nothing more.” Please let Alma believe her and leave her to the unreasonable grief wrapped around her like an ugly shawl.

  “Pull the other one, milady. It’s got bells on it.” Alma folded her arms across her chest.

  So much for the impertinent maid letting matters be. “Captain Dorrill and I had a falling out. He won’t be calling again.” Saying it out loud did not make it any easier to accept.

  “Does he know that?”

  “Of course, he does.” Georgiana stared at the maid, who was smiling the oddest of smiles. “Why are you smiling?”

  “Come with me.” Alma locked the door that led to the corridor and crossed the room to Georgiana’s dressing room door. She motioned to her and put her hand on the door latch. Georgiana placed Ethan’s jacket on the bed and followed Alma into the dressing room. A large, beautifully ornate chest she’d never seen before sat in the middle of the dressing room floor.

  “What is this?”

  Alma drew a sealed note from her pocket and handed it to her. “The chest was delivered after your father left for his club. The men who delivered it were given strict instructions to bring it straight to your bedchamber and vales were sent along to make double sure no one below stairs said a word to the master about it.”

  Georgiana broke the seal on the note.

  Georgiana,

  Matthias has informed me a lady likes to receive gifts. He suggested tin soldiers or perhaps a spyglass (of which I have acquired quite a few recently.)

  I thought perhaps these might be something more to your tastes.

  Ever your servant,

  Ethan

  The note fluttered to the floor as Georgiana knelt before the chest and threw the lid open. Inside she found books, volume after volume bound in rich, burgundy leather. Books by Jane Austen, Sir Walter Scott, Horace Walpole, and Ann Radcliffe. Perfectly lovely books by her favorite authors and on the front of each cover, in the right-hand corner, Princess Georgiana in small, gold-embossed letters.

  “Oh,” she half-sobbed. She sat on the floor and stroked the spine of Mansfield Park.

  “He knew your papa would sell them for money for gambling or worse. Hidden in here, the master will never find them.”

  Georgiana rose on her knees and placed the book she held back in the trunk. She ran her fingers over the spine of each and every beautifully bound volume. Treasures. He’d given her entire worlds, places to escape to when the weight of her life grew too heavy. Her favorite places. Her favorite people. And he’d done all he could to ensure her books, her dearest friends, might never be lost to her again. Her gift to him in return?

  “Please go, Captain Dorrill.”

  “Who do you want to be?”

  She knew.

  “Alma, I need your cloak,” she declared as she swiped at her eyes. Georgiana pushed to her feet, closed the trunk, turned the key in the lock and tucked the key into her bodice.

  “My cloak?” Alma asked as they worked together to push the trunk to the back of the dressing room. “Why do you need my cloak?” She trailed after Georgiana, who went to the table beside her bed and fished in the drawer for the coin purse she hid beneath her Book of Common Prayer.

  “I must return the captain’s evening jacket.” She scooped up the jacket and fixed her maid with an expectant stare. Alma studied her for a moment, huffed, and then dashed across the room to the door which led to her own small chamber. She came out in moments, shaking out the heavy, drab grey, hooded cloak she wore against the winter cold.

  “How will you get there?”

  Georgiana shook her coin purse. “I will take a hackney.” She pressed a finger to Alma’s already protesting mouth. “I will be fine. You will keep my secret?”

  “I always do. Are you certain, milady?”

  “No, but I am going anyway.” Georgiana donned the cloak, put up the hood, hugged Alma briefly, and slipped out the door. She made her way down the corridor to the inset door that led to the kitchens. Their lack of a full complement of servants worked to her advantage. No one slept before the kitchen hearth and no one heard the squeak of the kitchen door as she closed it behind her.

  The night air seared her lungs. Pulling Alma’s cloak more tightly about her, she hurried to the back gate and along the little lane that ran behind the mews of the row of townhouses. Her prayers were answered. A hackney coach stood at the corner, waiting for a fare. The driver saw her coming. By the time she reached the coach, he was off the bench and had the steps down and door open.

  Hat in hand, he bowed. “Where to, my lady?”

  “Grosvenor Street.” She pressed a sovereign into his hand and scrambled into the coach, Ethan’s coat clasped to her stomach.

  “Right away, my lady.”

  She settled into the squabs, her quick breaths sending little clouds into the dimly light interior of the coach. The conveyance was old, but surprisingly clean. It listed to one side as the driver mounted the box and set his horse in motion with a single word. Only now did she truly contemplate what she was doing. What was she doing? She lifted the jacket to her face and drew in the scent lingering in the folds of the soft fabric. Sandalwood. A hint of smoke. And the scent she’d forever only associate with him. She had not meant to hurt him. She’d simply wanted his courtship of her to end before…

  Before she began to believe him. Before she began to count the hours until their next meeting. Before she began to hope her life might be her own. With him. The man who had thanked her, with a hint of a smile playing about his lips, for the singular redecoration of his home. He’d thanked her without a word of recrimination or a single question. He’d ridden in Hyde Park with her every morning and tried his best to hide the slight limp he’d acquired from being unseated, dumped and trod upon by his horse. He’d attended events she found tedious without a single complaint.

  “Please go, Captain Dorrill.”

  She’d played her part too well. She’d convinced him to leave and not look back. It was the one thing she’d set her mind to from the moment he’d declared his intentions. It was the last thing she ever thought he’d do.

  The carriage turned onto Grosvenor Street and the driver slowed his horse to a walk. Georgiana peered out the window and saw the lamp lit on the far corner, right in front of Ethan’s house. If she were seen, she’d be ruined.
If she told the driver to turn around, no one would ever know.

  She would never know.

  She knocked on the roof of the carriage. The driver pulled his horse to a stop. In mere moments, he stood at the open door of the carriage, ready to hand her down the steps. Georgiana hesitated. She stroked the newly tailored jacket. With a deep breath, she put her hand in the coachman’s and alit from the hackney.

  “Thank you,” she said softly.

  He tugged his forelock, climbed back onto the box and turned his horse back the way they’d come. She watched until the carriage disappeared around the corner, squared her shoulders, and marched the short distance to Ethan’s front gate. Checking the position of the hood of her cloak, she strode up the walk and banged the door knocker twice. The sound carried like gunshots down the empty street. She winced. Apparently, there was more to this middle of the night assignation business than she’d read in the romance novels she’d borrowed from the lending library at Hatchard’s. She’d reached for the knocker again when the door opened just enough to reveal a shocked and puzzled Townsend. In his pirate uniform, no less.

  “Can I help you, miss…”

  Georgiana pulled back the hood enough to allow the light from Townsend’s single candle to illuminate her face.

  “Lady Georgiana?” The butler stepped back with a bow and waved her in before securing the door quickly behind her. “It is very late, my lady. Did you come alone? I don’t—”

  “Is he awake?” the words came out in such a rush she surprised even herself.

  “Yes, my lady.”

  The parrot, which had been dozing on its perch at the bottom of the stairs, awoke in a rustle of feathers and a few muttered words. Townsend glared at the poor creature.

  Georgiana drew a steeling breath in over her teeth. “Where is he?”

  “I believe he is in the library.”