Actually, that was precisely what he didn’t want to think about. Her thinking about him…in those ways with other women. “Right now, I’m more concerned you’re going to hit me with another—” A tightly packed missile hit him in the mouth. “—snowball,” he muttered, wiping the remnants of the latest one.
“You didn’t answer the question,” she said, as if seeking clarification on how he preferred his tea.
The minx didn’t miss a beat.
“I…” He yanked at his cravat, and stole a look about, glancing at the partially frozen Serpentine, at the barren elms, the gray sky, anywhere but at her smiling, knowing visage.
Collecting her skirts, she lifted them so they didn’t drag in the snow, and marched over. “I’m merely teasing! You needn’t worry. I’ve never been one to believe what is in the scandal sheets.” And then for horrifying good measure…she patted his hand.
Patted his damned hand.
Shame filled him. For the truth was, in all the matters the papers misreported on, in this they’d proven correct. “They aren’t wrong,” he said quietly, regret bitter on his tongue. Her smile slipped and she looked questioningly up at him. For their years of friendship, they’d never had lies between them. “I’ve been a rogue, Winnie.” And it was just one of the reasons he had no right to her. Nay, a reason Munthorpe would never support such a union.
“Trent?”
He forced himself to look at her.
“I know.”
That was it. Just two words: I know. “I am a woman, Trent,” she said as gently as if she were instructing a child. “I’m not some child with my head buried in the schoolroom, unaware of the world around me.”
Nay, she was a woman grown. And he despised thinking she knew exactly the manner of scoundrel he’d been.
They strolled further down the walking trail in a comfortable silence. Even when there’d been disagreements between them, there’d also been an ease to their every exchange.
Winnie dusted her palms together, as if to bring warmth back into her gloved fingers.
“Are you still a rogue?” That question emerged with a tentativeness he’d never known from the high-spirited young woman.
“I…” His mind raced. The actuality was, for the better part of five months he’d not been with a woman because this slip of a lady had occupied all corners of his thoughts and made the possibility of lying with another impossible. She prodded him with her assessing gaze. “It is hardly appropriate speaking about my behaviors.”
Winnie’s crimson eyebrows came together. “But it is all right to speak about my future husband?”
And said that way, the reality became even more…real… her and some pompous lord. Except… He looked over the crown of her head at a lone bird picking its way around the deadened earth, pecking at the ground. Except, the rub of it was, the future viscount her family would see her wed wasn’t pompous. He was a good, honorable, witty, likeable fellow.
Which made him ironically hate the man all the more. “This is different,” he said at last.
She stopped walking and forced him to a halt beside her. Folding her arms at her chest, she glared up at him. “How?”
“How?”
Then as though speaking to a child, she spoke, in slow, drawn out words. “How is it different that you should care about the man I love?”
Oh, God. She may as well have run him through with a rusty blade, drew it out, and then ran it through the same spot for good measure. “B-because…because…”
“And you look physically pained by the whole discussion,” she fumed, her breath stirring white puffs of winter air. She slashed a hand at the air. “You ask questions about my heart and the gentleman I love.” He gritted his teeth. Would she stop uttering those damned words? “I’m not permitted to ask questions about your heart.” Until her, he’d not believed he had that important organ. “Why should it matter to you who I wed and spend my life—”
And because he didn’t want to hear another blasted word about her heart and her future husband, Trent yanked her wildly gesticulating hand and drew her behind the towering, ancient oak. The trunk shielded them from her maid’s notice.
A startled squeak escaped her. “What are you—?”
He covered her mouth with his and took her lips in a hard kiss; tasting the soft, full contours as he’d ached for two years thirty-six days and a handful of minutes. And the taste of her was an aphrodisiac that he’d never have his fill of.
She stiffened in his arms. Then, with a soft moan, she twined her fingers like ivy about his neck and held on, meeting his kiss as though their mouths were meant to meld as one, as though she’d longed for this moment with the same hungering ferocity that had dogged him all these years. Trent slanted his mouth over hers again and again with intensity never appropriate for any first-kissed miss. He forced himself to gentle the meeting and teased the soft, gentle flesh with his.
Her legs went weak and he guided her against the trunk of the oak. Winnie emitted a soft, breathless sigh and rogue that she’d accused him of being, he slid his tongue inside her mouth and stroked the inner recesses, learning all of her. Chocolate and honey. The innocent taste of her sucked at him until he wanted to lose himself in all of her.
Trent drew back to her whispered protestations and continued his exploration of her as he’d longed to. He shifted his attention to the graceful curve of her neck and pressed his lips to the wildly beating pulse there. A pulse that beat for him and not that bloody viscount or any other prospective bridegroom.
“I have longed to know your kiss.” Did those breathlessly whispered words belong to him or Winnie? He could no sooner set order to his thoughts than he could stop the earth from spinning. Except, if those words belonged to him, he’d have followed them with the hungering to lay her down and explore every satiny inch of her skin. Trent continued trailing his kisses lower, lower. He parted the fabric of her cloak and groaned. He’d ached to strip her bare and worship her velvety soft skin. With an agonized moan he touched his lips to the top of her décolletage. Winnie tangled her fingers in his hair and anchored him close to where her heart pounded.
“I love you,” she whispered.
And just like that the earth did, in fact, stop spinning. He wrenched away from the pliant woman in his arms and took in her flyaway crimson curls. Her flushed cheeks. Her full, wet lips. “Oh, God.”
“Don’t look like that,” she commanded, her tone breathless from their kiss.
Trent stared unblinking as her words ran through him and over him, and stole all possible reason. For years, his father, his mother, his brother, had treated him as the afterthought to Owen the heir and as such undeserving of affection or attention or even thought. The secret yearning he’d kept fully buried until this very moment was that he longed to be wanted for more than the pleasure he could give a woman.
“Winnie,” he said hoarsely, incapable of more than that. She loves me. Her words unleashed a dizzying lightness in his chest, even as with her next words, she jolted him back to the danger of her pledge.
“I love you,” she repeated this time urging him with her eyes to believe those words. Nay, welcome them as truth.
Then horror crept slowly in. Waves of panic lapped at his muddled thoughts. He’d kissed Munthorpe’s sister, against a tree, in Hyde Park. No honorable gentleman went about kissing his friend’s sister. Not when that same friend had been quite clear in his hopes and expectations for Winnie’s future match. Trent took a staggering step away. “I kissed you.”
She stretched a hand toward him and he recoiled. “I kissed you in return.” She let her hand fall to her side.
Trent continued backing away. He shot a frantic gaze about. If anyone had witnessed them—
“No one saw us.” He yanked his gaze back to her. A soft, tremulous smile pulled at her lips—at her very swollen, well-kissed lips. “Would it be so very bad if anyone did?” Her words emerged as a tentative whisper.
Desire coursed through him
. Trent slid his eyes closed. “Yes.” His blunt utterance came out harsher than he intended. Discovery would have resulted in a public betrayal of his friendship with Munthorpe and his entire family. “That was a mistake,” he rasped.
His words chased away that winsome smile that could light the whole of a gray, dreary London. “If it feels right, it is no doubt right.”
Those words tauntingly drawn from carelessly spoken words years and years ago drew a pained, broken laugh from his chest. “I was speaking about the bloody timing of your shot, then.” Not of ravishing her with kisses in Hyde Park.
She lifted her shoulders in a casual shrug that only made a mockery of his unsettledness. “It seemed to apply.”
How was she so calm when he was a bumbling mess of incoherent thought?
“No.” Trent ran a shaky hand through his hair. “No, it does not apply. You are…” He motioned to her.
Winnie raised a single eyebrow, a feat he’d also spent years attempting to teach her. A feat she’d mastered and now used against him. That long-ago memory stabilized his unsteady world. “You are James’ sister,” he hissed.
Winnie turned up her palms. “Being his sister has no bearing on my love for you.” She scowled. “Will you stop wincing every time I say I—” He flinched. “Love y—eep. Where are we going?” she demanded, as he guided her by the forearm and led her back down the path to respectability.
“Home.”
“I’m not a child.”
Lust surged through him and his shaft hardened at the memory of her silken skin and plump lips and—“We are leaving,” he bit out. “You are returning home and to the blasted Countess of Weston’s bloody Christmastide celebration.” And wedding to your damned paragon.
Wisely, for the first time in all the years he’d known her, Winnie fell mute. With stilted silence between them, they arrived at the carriage. A short while later, he set the conveyance into motion. Fury all but poured off an angrily quiet Winnie. He kept his eyes trained forward.
Yes, but soon the lady would be off to the countryside and when she left in her bloody carriage to make a blasted match with one of the estimable guests present there, Trent at the very least knew she tasted of chocolate and honey and he’d been the first to taste those lips. That would have to be enough.
Chapter Six
He’d kissed her.
Seated at the windowseat overlooking the quiet London streets, Winnie dangled one leg over the side and distractedly swung it back and forth. All these days she’d spent believing he’d seen her as nothing more than a bothersome younger sister had been ripped apart by one outing in the park.
A grin pulled at her lips and Winnie touched her fingertips to her mouth, which still burned from the memory of his kiss. Ceasing her distracted swinging, she wrinkled her nose. Granted, the horror stamped on Trent’s face before he’d stormed off was better served one who’d removed his mouth from a cold, slimy trout he’d plucked from the river, but he’d kissed her. She sighed. And surely there was more there if Trent had kissed her so?
“What has you grinning, scamp?”
With a startled shriek, she tipped sideways and fell to the floor in a loud, painful, and undignified heap. Her brother stood framed in the doorway. At her prolonged silence, he cocked his head. “You startled me,” she mumbled and climbed indignantly to her feet. She smoothed her palms over the front of her purple skirts.
“I see that,” he drawled as he entered into the room.
Her earlier annoyance fled. “You were to go riding today. With Trent?” Her heart gave a funny little leap. She cast a glance over her shoulder, out the crystal windowpane for hopeful signs of the tall, powerful man who’d owned Winnie’s heart for nearly all her life.
James yawned and continued over. “We’re meeting at our clubs, instead.”
She frowned. Blast and damn. “But—” She’d known as much, but part of her had secretly hoped he’d come to see her. Then, her profession of love would have sent any reputed rogue into hiding. “He…”
Her brother narrowed his eyes and studied her a moment. “He what?” His usual affable mask fell, replaced by a protective brother’s concern.
Swallowing a curse, she feigned a smile. “Nothing. It was merely he’d promised to take me to the Frost Fair and I was very much looking forward to going.” She propped her hands on her hips. “Since my own brother couldn’t be bothered to accompany me.”
And just like that, he was restored to unsuspecting brother once more. James ruffled the top of her head. “Bah, nothing there but shops and child’s games.”
“Where is your sense of excitement, James? It is nearly Christmas. And there is ice for skating and—”
Footsteps sounded in the hall outside the doorway. They looked as one, as the butler appeared. “Lord Trent Ballantine.” Her heart skittered a beat.
A charged quiet descended as Trent looked between brother and sister. Then he locked his gaze on Winnie. At the hot, powerful stare he trained on her, her breath caught.
James broke the silence. “Ballantine, splendid timing.” He inclined his head. “It seems you promised to relieve me of my brotherly responsibilities and see Winnie to the Frozen Fair.”
“Frost Fair,” Winnie whispered. She clutched her skirts and tried to make sense of the frozen planes of his harshly beautiful face. If he’d been a rogue fleeing her profession of love, why was he here even now? Those actions did not belong to a man who did not desire more with her. Or mayhap he’s merely being polite, you silly goose…
“I say, you two are rather peculiar,” James said, alternating his stare between them. “I don’t think I remember a time when the both of you were ever this—quiet.”
That seemed to snap Trent to the moment. Immediately in place was his lazy half-grin. “You’ve other responsibilities to see to that preclude you from joining your sister and I at the Frost Fair?” He would join her. Despite his mad flight from her yesterday morn, he’d returned. Surely that meant something.
Red splotches filled her brother’s cheeks and he glared at Trent.
She wrinkled her brow. “Do you have somewhere to be, James?”
He tugged at his cravat. “Just business to see to before we take our leave for the holiday.” He coughed into his hand. “Well, then, I expect you two are off to the Frozen Fair.”
Winnie and Trent spoke in unison. “Frost Fair.”
He held out his elbow. “Wee Winnie?”
Through the years she’d come to appreciate the expert he’d become at needling her. As such, his childhood moniker was meant to rankle. She arched an eyebrow. “I’m no longer a child, Trent.” And the kiss they’d shared indicated he knew as much, too. As did the guilty flush on his cheeks. Taking mercy, Winnie forced herself to a sedate pace and made her way to him. She placed her fingertips along his sleeve. The muscles of his forearm jumped at her touch and she cast a glance upward.
His facial muscles momentarily contorted, and then smoothed, so she might as well have imagined that reaction. “You are certain you do not wish to join us?”
She reflexively tightened her fingers. How did James not hear that entreaty when it fairly seeped from Trent’s eyes and coated his words?
Her brother snorted. “I shall leave you two your fun, and thank you for seeing to the responsibilities as chaperone.”
A strangled sound came from Trent’s throat.
“Are you all right, man?” James asked, eyeing his friend more closely. “I say you aren’t at all yourself.”
“Fine,” he said, his tone gruff. He inclined his head, and then with jerky movements, guided her from the room. Usually possessed of a smooth elegance, Trent lurched through the halls at a clip. She hastened her steps to match his frantic pace.
“Would you slow down?” she panted as they turned at the end of the corridor.
He stiffened but adjusted his steps, moving at an even pace that matched her smaller strides. They reached the corridor and several servants rushed forward with
their cloaks. And as they took their leave with murmured thanks, this day may as well have been the day prior—except with one kiss—all had changed. They had changed and she’d never have them go back to the way it had been before when she’d been nothing more than Wee Winnie to him.
When he handed her atop the carriage bench, he did not unceremoniously throw her as he’d done yesterday but rather assisted her with a gentleness that sent warmth through her. After her maid was settled upon the back of the curricle, he set his team into motion.
With the streets largely empty, the carriage rolled along briskly through the cobbled streets. The cool wind hit her face and she closed her eyes and turned her face up to the sky. Breathing deep, she allowed the purity of the clean winter air to flood her lungs. It sent a giddy happiness through her. A smile played at her lips, and she opened her eyes. Nay. It was him. Her skin pricked with the sense of being studied. She moved her gaze upward.
Trent studied her through thick lashes. “Yesterday should not have happened.”
For a moment, she thought she’d merely imagined those harshly whispered words. She tipped her head.
“In the park,” he offered needlessly. She knew very well what he referred to.
“I don’t—”
“You are James’ sister,” he hissed and then drew in a steadying breath. He shifted his focus back to the streets before them. “What happened was a fleeting moment of…of…”
Winnie narrowed her eyes. “Of?” she snapped.
“Madness.”
Yes, that dizzying loss of control and euphoric joy melded with a hope of forever certainly felt like some form of insanity. “If that is madness, Trent, then take me to Bedlam now and let me never go.”
He cursed blackly one of those curses he’d taught her long ago, to her mother’s shock and chagrin. “You do not know what you are saying. I am a rogue.”
“You were a rogue,” she shot back.
“I’m still a rogue.”
That pronouncement devoid of emotion stabbed at her heart. He spoke with such a cold matter-of-factness, she rubbed her arms.
Her Christmas Rogue Page 7
