“You’ll just have to make room for me in those plans.” He reached up and brushed his thumb across her lower lip. “And for this.”
“I suppose…” she started to say, but somehow his thumb was in her mouth and she was sucking on it and stroking it with her tongue.
She could feel him growing hard again inside her. Hadn’t one of Aunt Alice’s books said something about men needing a rest period?
“I think you need some convincing,” Perry said.
Cecily nodded. She couldn’t remember what they’d just been talking about but she was willing to go along with whatever he suggested.
Chapter Seventeen
Cecily pulled her knees up to her chest inside her father’s old coat and turned her face up to the sun. If she had been thinking ahead, she would have brought along something to eat when she sneaked out of the house. Her parents were whispering again. They had been whispering ever since they returned home from Amelia’s house party and it seemed worse than ever today. Cecily planned to stay outside for as long as it was light enough to see her way home.
At least she had a book to read. If she bothered to take it out of her pocket. Byron had lost his charm of late. Cecily much preferred to lose herself in her own imagination, especially now that she knew what to imagine. She hoped that would be enough for the next two years until she would come into her inheritance. She knew it was entirely possible that nothing of any interest at all would happen during those two years. Certainly nothing interesting had happened in the two years preceding Amelia’s house party and the excessively interesting things that happened there.
And nothing had happened during the past two weeks. She had had no word from Perry and she began to think she never would. He was probably back in London, going to parties and the theater, surrounded by women who truly were everything Cecily had pretended to be during the house party. Had tried to pretend to be. She didn’t fool herself that she’d been successful. She was just Cecily Bettencourt from Yorkshire. No more mysterious than her father’s sheep.
But she’d had an adventure. She had helped break up a spy ring. Or at least a spy duo. She had lived out one or two of her fantasies. She knew what sorts of things were out there in the world waiting for her. And if Pericles Munk didn’t want to experience them with her, that was fine. Just fine.
Something off to the right caught Cecily’s attention—not so much a sound as a disturbance in the solitude. A man came striding over the crest of the hill, his gloved hands swinging at his sides. His hair was long and unruly. His coat was open at the collar and when he got closer she could see that the skin that showed there had just the slightest sheen of sweat—manly but not unpleasant.
He smiled when he saw her and when he reached her he stretched out on his side next to her.
Cecily could not look at him. She would not. She wasn’t about to let him know how pleased she was to see him, not when she hadn’t even admitted to herself how disappointed she was by the two weeks of silence. Then she remembered her parents whispering. So he hadn’t been silent after all.
Well, she still wasn’t going to deign to look at him.
“Don’t you know what happens to young ladies who wander the countryside on their own?” he asked.
Cecily ventured a glance in Perry’s direction. There was a wicked gleam in his eyes.
“I’m not afraid.”
“But anything could happen,” he warned.
“Let it.”
Perry laughed and wrapped his arms around her. “Unfortunately, it’s too blasted cold for anything to happen out here. What are you thinking, lounging about in this blizzard?”
Cecily laughed and looked up at the clear sky. “You’re too used to London drawing rooms. You need toughening up.”
“I bought you some books while I was in London.”
“Did you bring them?” Cecily sat up, anticipating a present.
“And risk your mother’s upstairs maid finding them in my baggage? I have more sense than that. I’ll give them to you when we’re married.”
“I don’t recall saying I’ll have you.”
Perry sat up. “Just think of the books,” he whispered to her. “You won’t even have to hide them. We can sit up all night looking at them. We can try everything in them. Every illustration. Every description. And believe me, these books have some very detailed descriptions. Step by step. I picked them with you in mind. It nearly killed me, looking at those books and thinking of you.”
“Oh.” Cecily’s brain had stopped working. She was imagining firelight and a big, rumpled bed and a book open on a pillow.
“What do you think?”
“I think there must be worse foundations for a marriage. Are you sure you didn’t bring any books with you?”
“Maybe just one,” Perry admitted. “It’s my engagement gift to you. We’ll have to find someplace more private than this to look at it. And warmer,” he added with a shiver.
“I know a few places.”
“I’m sure you do.”
Cecily jumped up and held her hand out to him.
“I think I’m going to enjoy being engaged to you,” she declared.
“I just hope I survive it.”
About the Author
Trinidad West is just about the last thing she ever expected to be—a suburban mom raising her kids in the town she grew up in. She is old enough to remember when the high-tech sprawl that surrounds her was still full of orchards and fruit-packing plants, and color televisions were pretty special.
Trinidad enjoys men, dogs (the subject of her earliest attempts at writing) and, well, really, who has time for long walks on the beach? When she’s not writing Romantica®, she’s copyediting technical books or trying to avoid housework.
Trinidad welcomes comments from readers. You can find her website and email address on her author bio page at www.ellorascave.com.
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Also by Trinidad West
Claire’s Hostage
Passionate Spirits
Sorcerer’s Daughter
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