by Mary Balogh
She was curiously, and perhaps foolishly, unafraid. She could feel his breath warm against her face.
“What brought it so nearly out of lurkdom this morning?” she asked him.
But he merely smiled at her and lowered his head to brush his lips over hers again, and then to taste them with his tongue before reaching inside to the soft flesh behind them and so right on into her mouth.
She lay very still, as though moving might break the spell.
If this was a kiss, it was unlike anything she had ever experienced with William. Totally unlike. It was carnal and sinful and lustful and, for the moment at least, quite beyond her power to resist. She could smell the daffodils. And him. And temptation.
And danger.
The hand that had been against his cheek went to the back of his head, her fingers threading their way into his thick, warm hair, while the other hand went to his waist, beneath his riding coat. Even through the remaining layers of his clothing she could feel the hard maleness of his muscles and the heat of the blood pulsing through him.
He was all raw masculinity—something quite outside her experience.
He was dangerous. Terribly dangerous.
But her mind simply refused to answer the call to defend her, and she became all physical sensation—shock and wonder and pleasure and pure lust. And a feeling of fright that enticed her more than it repelled.
His tongue explored her mouth. The tip of it touched the roof and drew a line along the ridge of bone there and sent such a rush of pure desire shivering through her that she reacted at last. She set both hands against his shoulders and pressed him away.
Far more reluctantly than she ought.
He did not fight her or show any other sign of savagery. He lifted his head, smiled slowly, and then sat up before pushing himself to his feet. When she sat up too, he reached out a hand to help her up. It was still gloved.
“One ought to be a perfect g-gentleman even when one encounters enchantment in the grass,” he said. “But at the same t-time, one feels the need to p-pay homage to it with a kiss. Life is full of such thorny c-contradictions and conflicts, alas. G-Good day to you, Mrs. Keeping. I have probably frightened away your artistic m-muse for today, have I? Perhaps you will find it here again tomorrow. Or perhaps I will f-find you here before it does. Will I?”
She gazed steadily into his keen, mocking green eyes, over which his eyelids remained half-lowered. What was he saying? Or asking? Was he making an assignation with her?
What type of woman did he think she was? And was he justified, considering the fact that she had not screeched with outrage or smacked his face as soon as it came within one foot of her?
She could still taste him. She could still feel him on her lips. Her mind was still almost numb. That secret, feminine place inside her still throbbed. And she knew that his kiss had been one of the most memorably glorious experiences of her life.
How much more pathetic could she be?
“The daffodils will not live forever,” he said.
“No,” she agreed.
But she would never paint them if she could not be alone with them, her mind placid and composed. Would she come back? And what would be her motive if she did? To paint? To see him again?
He did not wait for any further answer. He stooped to pick up his hat, inclined his head to her before putting it on, and strode away in the direction of the route around the lake.
He was by far the most masculine man she had ever encountered—or kissed. But then, she had only ever been kissed by William before today, and kisses from William had been more in the nature of affectionate pecks on the cheek or forehead.
Oh, dear, she felt like a novice swimmer suddenly plunged into the very deepest part of a turbulent river.
She touched the fingertips of one hand to her lips. They were trembling—both the fingers and her lips.
4
Vincent was still in the music room when Flavian opened the door quietly and stole inside. He was at the pianoforte, playing something with plodding care. The dog cocked his ears and had a good look without lifting his head and decided the intruder was no threat. The viscountess’s cat—Squiggles? Squabble? Squat?—had commandeered one side of the sofa. Flavian lowered himself to the other side, but the cat was not content with simple symmetry. It padded across the cushions, paused to give him an assessing look, made its decision, and took up residence on his lap, a big, curled-up blob of feline warmth. There was nothing to do with one’s hands but stroke him between his ears.
Flavian had had pets galore as a boy, none as a man.
The plodding stopped, and Vincent cocked his head to one side.
“Who came in?” he asked.
“Me,” Flavian told him vaguely and ungrammatically.
“Flave? Stepping voluntarily into the music room? While I am in it, practicing a Bach fugue at considerably less than half speed so that I can get the notes and the rhythm exact?”
“Squeak? Squawk? S-Squid? What the deuce is the name of this cat?” Flavian asked.
“Tab.”
“Ah, yes, I knew it was something like that. Tab. He is going to be l-leaving cat hair all over my breeches and coat. And he is quite unapologetic about it.”
Vincent turned on the stool and looked almost directly at him in that disconcerting way he had of seeming very unblind.
“Blue-deviled, Flave?” he asked.
“Oh, not at all,” Flavian assured him, waving a hand airily toward the pianoforte, though Vincent would not see it. “Play on. I thought I might c-creep in here without disturbing you.”
Fat chance. Vincent, who for a few months after his near-encounter with a cannonball on the field of battle had been as deaf as he was blind, could now hear a pin drop at a hundred yards—on thick carpet.
“This has something to do with last night?” Vincent asked.
Flavian set his head back and gazed at the ceiling before closing his eyes.
“Play me a lullaby,” he said.
And Vincent did and brought him near to tears. Flavian liked to tease Vince about his playing, especially on the violin, but really he was quite good and getting better all the time. There were a few minor accuracy and tempo issues, but the feeling was there. Vince was learning to get inside the music, to play it from the inside out.
Whatever the devil that meant.
And what in the name of thunder was enchanting about an unfashionably clad, not particularly young, not obviously beautiful woman, who was idiotic enough to stretch out on the grass of a meadow so that she could see the world as daffodils saw it, and then did not have the sense, when interrupted, to hop to her feet and run like the wind for home?
She really was quite ordinary. She was tallish and slender with hair of a nondescript brown and unimaginative style. Her face was pleasing but hardly the sort to turn heads on a crowded thoroughfare—or in a half-crowded ballroom. He would surely not have noticed her at that autumn ball if Lady Darleigh had not asked him to dance with her so that she would not be a wallflower. And what had that request said about Mrs. Keeping? He would not have noticed her on the village street the day before yesterday if it had not been nearly deserted. He would not have noticed her this morning if she had not been . . . lying among the daffodils.
Looking all willowy and relaxed and . . . inviting.
Devil take it, she was not ordinary.
He ought not to have kissed her. He did not make a habit of kissing respectable females. There were too many dangers involved. And this particular respectable female happened to be the friend of his hostess here at Middlebury Park.
He ought not to have kissed her, especially in his present mood, but he had.
And actually, in retrospect, he knew she had one feature that was definitely out of the ordinary, and that was her mouth. He could have lost himself on it and about it and in it for the rest of the morning and beyond if a bird had not squawked quite unmelodically from a cedar branch and broken his concentration—and if sh
e had not pressed her hands against his shoulders at the same moment.
Dash it all, he should not have kissed her. He would not have noticed her mouth if he had not touched it with his own. And now he craved . . .
Ignore it.
She ought not to have been there at all, trespassing on private property. Though she had told him, had she not, that she had permission, and she was the viscountess’s friend. He had been speechless with rage when he first spotted her. He had walked all that way because he needed to be alone, and there was a damned woman there before him, taking a nap in the middle of the morning and looking damnably picturesque as she did so. He had almost turned on his heel and stalked away before she saw him.
It was, of course, what he ought to have done.
But he had paused first in order to assure himself that she was not dead, even though it was perfectly obvious that she was not. And then he had just stood there, thinking, like a nincompoop, of fairy tales. Of Sleeping Beauty, to be precise.
Anyone who believed his head had mended while he was at Penderris needed his own head examined.
He had told her, in so many words, that he would go back there tomorrow. If she was wise, she would barricade herself inside her house tomorrow and every day thereafter until he was long gone from Gloucestershire.
Would she be foolish enough go back?
Would he?
There had been sunshine and springtime and daffodils all about her. . . .
“Flave.” The voice spoke softly.
“Huh?”
“I am sorry to wake you,” Vincent said. “I could tell from your breathing that you were sleeping. But it seemed ill-mannered to leave you alone here without a word.”
He had been sleeping?
“I must have d-dozed off,” he said. “R-Rude of me.”
“You did ask for a lullaby,” Vincent reminded him. “I must have played it better than I thought. I expect Sophie has gone to the lake by now. I should join her and the others there, but I am going to steal half an hour or so in the nursery instead. I don’t suppose you would care to come with me?”
Flavian was comfortable where he was. The cat was warm and relaxed on his lap. He could easily nod off again. He had not slept much, if at all, last night. But Vince wanted to show off his infant. He would not say it in so many words, of course. He knew very well that infants bored most men.
“Why ever not?” Flavian said, sitting up while the cat got to his feet, jumped down from the sofa, and went to stand by the door, its back arched, its tail pointing straight at the heavens. “Does he look like you?”
“I have been told he does.” Vincent grinned. “But, if memory serves me correctly, babies look simply like babies.”
“L-lead on, Macduff,” Flavian said, cheerfully misquoting.
And who would have imagined, he thought later, that he would spend a good hour of this particular morning, which he had started in such a . . . savage mood, in the nursery with a baby who looked like a baby and with the child’s father, who behaved toward his son for all the world as if he were besotted? And that Flavian would actually feel soothed by the experience? And that he would read through two children’s books written by Mr. and Mrs. Hunt—Vincent himself and his wife—and illustrated by the latter? And that he would chuckle over the stories and pictures with genuine delight?
“These books are p-priceless, Vince,” he said. “And there are more to come, are there? Whatever gave you the idea of having them published? And how did you go about it?”
“It was Sophie’s idea,” Vincent told him. “Or, rather, it was Mrs. Keeping’s. Have you met her? She is the sister of Miss Debbins, our music teacher. She and Sophie are as thick as thieves. Mrs. Keeping took one look at the first story, which Sophie had written out and illustrated, and remembered that she had a cousin—her late husband’s cousin, actually—in London who she thought would like it. She sent it to him, and it turned out that he is a publisher and did indeed like what he saw and wanted more. So we are famous authors, and you really ought to bow down in homage before us, Flave. He wanted to publish the stories under just my name—Mr. Hunt—to protect Sophie’s sensibilities. Can you imagine anything more asinine?”
Yes, Flavian thought. Yes, he had met Mrs. Keeping three times. Once at the ball last October, once on the village street two days ago, once in the daffodil meadow beyond the cedars this morning. And he had kissed her, dash it all.
“I have j-just salaamed three times,” he lied. “It is a pity you couldn’t s-see me, Vince. I looked suitably worshipful.”
“You were on your knees when you did it, I hope,” Vincent said, his hand stroking over the almost bald fair head of his son.
He would not go back tomorrow, Flavian decided as he turned to the window to watch Ben make his slow, ungainly way up from the lake with the aid of his canes, the viscountess beside him, while Lady Harper walked ahead of them with Hugo’s wife. Ben was laughing at something Lady Darleigh was saying, and the ladies were looking back, smiles on their faces, to discover what the joke was.
Everyone at this particular gathering was so damnably happy.
Len had been dead for a year, and they had not spoken in more than six years before that. They never would now. Velma had been left with a daughter and was returning home to Farthings.
Mrs. Keeping had laughed when he told her he was going to write a sonnet about meeting her among the daffodils.
She should always laugh.
* * *
Sophia came calling during the afternoon, Viscount Darleigh with her, as well as Lord and Lady Trentham and Lady Barclay.
Lord Trentham was a fierce-looking giant of a man, his wife a small, exquisitely pretty lady who smiled a great deal and was warmly charming. It seemed odd, considering the fact that he was one of the Survivors, that it was she who walked with a heavy limp. Lady Barclay was the one female member of the club, having been present, Sophia had explained to Agnes, when her husband was tortured and killed in the Peninsula. She was a tall lady of marblelike beauty, though she had kind eyes.
Viscount Ponsonby had not come with them.
“Miss Debbins,” Viscount Darleigh said to Dora after they had all drunk tea and conversed on a number of topics, “I have come to beg you to save my guests from the exquisite agony of having to listen to me play on the harp or violin for longer than a few minutes at a time. I must offer them music, but my own leaves something to be desired, despite the fact that I have you for a teacher.”
“And mine would please no one but a doting mama if I were eight years old,” Sophia said.
“Will you come to the house tomorrow evening as our honored guest?” the viscount asked. “To play for us, that is?”
“And to dine first,” Sophia added.
“You would be doing us a singular favor, ma’am,” Lord Trentham said with a frown. “Vincent has punished us with his violin during previous years and set cats to howling for miles around.”
“The trouble with your teasing, Hugo,” Lady Barclay said, “is that those who do not know you may not understand that you are teasing. You play remarkably well, Vincent, and are a credit to your teacher. We are all, including Hugo, exceedingly proud of you.”
“We will, nevertheless,” Lady Trentham said, “be delighted to hear you, Miss Debbins. Both Sophia and Vincent speak highly of your skill and talent on the pianoforte and on the harp.”
“They exaggerate,” Dora said, but there was a flush of color in her cheeks that told Agnes she was pleased.
“Exaggerate? I?” Lord Darleigh said. “I do not even know the meaning of the word.”
“Oh, will you come?” Sophia begged. “And you must come too, Agnes, of course. Our numbers of ladies and gentlemen will be equal at the dinner table, for once. What a dream come true that will be as I arrange the seating. Will you come, Miss Debbins? Please?”
“Well, I will,” Dora said. “Thank you. But your guests must not expect too much of me, you know. I am merely competent as a mu
sician. At least, I hope I am competent.”
Dora, Agnes knew as she smiled at her, would be over the moon with excitement for the next day and a half. At the same time, she would probably suffer agonies of dread and self-doubt and have a disturbed night. It would worry her that she must play for a group of such illustrious persons.
“Splendid!” Viscount Darleigh said. “And Mrs. Keeping? You will come too?”
“Oh, she must,” Dora said hastily just as Agnes was opening her mouth to make some excuse. “I will need to have someone to hold my hand.”
“But not while you are playing, it is to be hoped,” Lord Trentham said.
“But of course Agnes will come too,” Sophia said, clapping her hands. “Oh, I shall so look forward to tomorrow evening.”
She got to her feet as she spoke, and her fellow guests rose too to take their leave.
No one seemed to notice that Agnes had not given an answer. But it was not necessary to do so, was it? How could she possibly refuse? It was an evening for Dora, and she knew that, though her sister would suffer in the anticipation of it, it could also be one of the happiest evenings of her life.
How could she, Agnes, spoil it?
“Oh, Agnes, dearest,” Dora said as soon as they had watched their visitors walk away along the village street, “ought I to have said no? I really cannot—”
“Of course you can,” Agnes said, slipping her arm through her sister’s. “Imagine, if you will, that they are all just ordinary people, Dora—farmers and butchers and bakers and blacksmiths.”
“There is not a single one of them without a title,” Dora said with a grimace.
Agnes laughed.
Yes, and one of them was Viscount Ponsonby. Whom she really ought not to want to see again. Her only previous experience with combating churning emotions had come last October, and she’d found it neither easy to deal with nor pleasant. And on that occasion he had not even kissed her.
One would expect to have learned from experience.
* * *
George had been having the old nightmare again, and with increasing frequency. It was the one in which he reached out to grasp his wife’s hand but could do no more than brush his fingertips against hers before she jumped to her death over the high cliff close to their home at Penderris. At the same moment he thought of just the words that might have persuaded her to return from the brink and live on.