An Improper Suitor
Page 24
He grinned. ‘They’ll just have to find someone else.’ Then, seeing the grimness in her face, the laughter faded from his eyes.
‘There will never be anyone but you,’ he said, roughly. His words carried the weight of an oath. ‘There never has been anyone, since I met you.’
She could no longer doubt him. The harsh glimmer in his eyes told her it was the truth.
She threw her arms around him and pressed her lips to his.
A long, dizzying moment later, he pulled her gently away. ‘I take it that was a yes,’ he said, his voice unsteady.
‘Yes,’ she said hoarsely.
‘About time,’ said Lady Bullfinch, emerging from behind a tree. ‘That was one of the most drawn out and incoherent proposals I have ever witnessed.’
‘You shouldn’t be too hard on my boy,’ said Lady Thorwynn, affectionately. ‘He hasn’t had much practice with proposals.’
Startled, Julia sprang to her feet, pulling up Lionel with her.
They were surrounded. Several figures on horseback had emerged from behind the trees. Her aunt Viola. Lady Gragspur, Lord Yarfolk, Nicholas, Miranda, Lord Benedict. And Amelia, who beamed wildly and jumped from her horse to embrace Julia tightly.
‘I’m so very glad you are going to marry Lord Thorwynn,’ she said, in Julia’s ear. ‘Now my mother will have to give up trying to marry him to me.’
‘Where do you want to go for your honeymoon?’ he asked, as they sat side by side in Lady Bullfinch’s drawing room. ‘To the Continent? I know you once said you would like to see the Alps. Were you serious about it?’
Touched that he remembered her wish, she drew his face to her for a kiss. She brushed her lips against his, savouring briefly the velvet softness of his. But when she started to move away he pulled her against him, so tightly she could hardly breathe. His mouth sought hers and their lips came together with a hunger that she thought would consume her, if it were not for the deep tenderness that rose to transform it. Of their own accord, her hands began their own exploration while his lips moved over her face and down the side of her throat.
She withdrew reluctantly from his grasp. ‘We have to stop,’ she murmured, her voice completely unsteady, her heart racing like a clock that had gone mad, ‘or before we know it, we’ll be half undressed on the carpet.’
He smiled lazily, ‘I don’t see what the objection can be,’ he said, his voice husky, his eyes darkened with need.
‘But—’ She faltered, gesturing with her hand to the door. ‘If they walk in on us—’
He slipped his hands under her hair, cradling the back of her head. ‘They’ll see exactly what they expect.’ His lips trailed down her neck, bringing delicious shivers down her spine. ‘Why do you think your grandmother left us to our own devices?’ She sputtered in laughing agreement, thinking how Grannie had wanted this for her. ‘She’s probably watching even now,’ he added, between kisses, ‘and reporting everything we’re doing to the others.’
She recoiled in horror, stared fixedly at the keyhole, and edged away from him.
Lionel threw back his head and laughed, a laugh charged with joy and tenderness. ‘I’m merely teasing,’ he said, drawing her towards him so that she rested her head on his shoulder. ‘I can see that I’m going to have to marry you quickly,’ he said. ‘You seem to be uncommonly afraid of being compromised.’ He stood up, took her hand gently in his and drew her up to stand next to him. He straightened out her clothes for her, and smoothed down her hair. ‘We’re not in a hurry, in any case,’ he murmured, planting a feather-light kiss on her lips and looking down at her with love glittering in his eyes. ‘We have a lifetime in which to indulge our needs.’
She smiled up at him, laughter bubbling up in her. ‘True,’ she said. Then she tumbled back down on to the settee and pulled him down on top of her. ‘But I’d like to start right now,’ she whispered, and threw all caution to the swirling wind.
Copyright
© Monica Fairview 2008
First published in Great Britain 2008
This edition 2011
ISBN 978 0 7090 9487 6 (ebook)
ISBN 978 0 7090 9488 3 (mobi)
ISBN 978 0 7090 9489 0 (pdf)
ISBN 978 0 7090 8620 8 (print)
Robert Hale Limited
Clerkenwell House
Clerkenwell Green
London EC1R 0HT
www.halebooks.com
The right of Monica Fairview to be identified as
author of this work has been asserted by her
in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and
Patents Act 1988