The hall boy jumped up from his chair at once, blinking sleepily and trying not to show it. “Your Graces.”
Edie pressed her lips together, for she feared smiling at such a moment would embarrass the boy and give the show away. She ducked her head and stepped through the doorway without looking at him.
“We’re off to bed, Jimmy,” Stuart told him as he followed her toward the stairs. “Put out the lights down here, will you?”
“Yes, Your Grace.”
“Familiarizing yourself with the names of the staff, I see,” she commented, as they started up the stairs to the second floor. “I suppose even the hall boys and kitchen maids are on your side by now.”
“Sally, the scullery maid, suggested I visit Mrs. McGillicuddy.”
“The village witch? Whatever for?”
“A love potion, of course. To soften you toward me.”
“Lovely.” She groaned. “The entire staff thinks you’re the poor spurned husband, and I’m the unforgiving wife?”
“No. I believe they think I’ve got my work cut out winning you over because I’ve been gone so long.”
She thought he was probably sugarcoating things a bit, but she didn’t pursue the point as they turned down the corridor toward their rooms. At her door, she turned to say good night, but he spoke before she did.
“So what exciting thing do you have planned for us tomorrow?”
“I’m glad you mentioned that. I would like to take Joanna to the Wash for a picnic. She likes to paint there, and she probably won’t have any more chances before . . .” Edie paused, trying to ignore a forlorn little pang around her heart. “Before we leave.”
“Edie, even if you do leave—which I’m not accepting for a moment, by the way—you and Joanna are always welcome to come back. Joanna can still go to Willowbank. It’s a fine school. You could live . . .” He paused and took a deep breath. “You could live in London, bring her here for holidays.”
The ache in her chest deepened. “I don’t think that would be a good idea, Stuart. It would be hard on her and painful for me.”
“Would it be painful? Then why go?”
“Tonight’s rather proof of why, don’t you think?”
“No. What I think tonight proved is that you are a vibrant woman, capable of deep passions despite what happened to you. You are also my wife, you will always be my wife, and even a legal separation won’t undo that. No matter what happens between us, you are free to come and go from Highclyffe anytime you please. This is your home. As far as I’m concerned, it will always be your home.”
She didn’t point out how impossible it would be for her to come and go from a place she loved when she would no longer be part of it. “Yes, well,” she said, desperate to change the subject, “going to the Wash is an all-day excursion, so we’ll miss our usual walk in the grounds, I’m afraid. By the time we finish dinner, it will be dark, and there’s only a new moon tonight, making it too dim to see our way. But we can still do your exercises after dinner. Would that be all right?”
“That depends. Am I invited on this picnic?”
“Of course. I thought to make my two-hour session part of it.”
“Yes, but those two hours are compulsory. What I want to know is if you want me to come. Is that something you would like?”
She shrugged, trying to seem offhand about it. “It might be nice. Joanna likes you. And you do have excellent taste in picnic baskets.”
“I accept your invitation, then. And since you have such faith in my talents with picnic luncheons, I shall arrange the menu with Mrs. Bigelow.” He smiled, his gaze roaming over her face. He lifted his left hand as if to touch her, but then let it fall.
She took a deep breath. “Right, then. I shall see you tomorrow. We’ll start at nine o’clock.”
“Don’t go in yet. Stay a moment longer.” When she hesitated, he spoke again. “Hands behind my back, I promise.”
He set aside his stick, and clasped his hands behind him, but the move only brought his upper body closer to her. “Since we’ve been talking tonight of what we like, there’s one more thing I’d like before we part.”
Edie’s heart thumped hard against her ribs. Her fingers clenched around the doorknob beside her hip, so tightly they ached, but she didn’t open the door to duck inside. “And what is that?”
“I should like to kiss you good night.”
Her heart thumped again, harder and more painful this time, anticipation added to apprehension and alarm and everything else she’d been feeling today. “We didn’t finish our chess game. You can’t claim a kiss for it.”
He chuckled. “Perhaps not. But I’d like to kiss you anyway.” He paused, then said softly, “Would that be all right?”
“N—” She stopped in the midst of her automatic refusal, then reconsidered for no reason at all, and amended her answer. “I don’t know.”
“Shall we find out?” He bent his head, moving in infinitesimal increments, giving her plenty of time to turn her face away or refuse him. She didn’t move. She didn’t say no.
“If you kiss me,” she whispered instead, “it doesn’t count.”
“I know,” he said, and pressed his lips to hers.
Edie froze at the contact, her back against the door, the knot of fear inside her hot and tight, pressing her chest. Her eyes wide open, she watched his close, saw his lashes come down, opulent, coffee brown lashes against bronzed skin. With his mouth on hers, she inhaled through her nose and caught the scent of sandalwood soap.
Stuart, she thought, and the hard, tight knot inside her opened a little, like a fist unclenching. Her hand lost its death grip on the doorknob and fell to her side. Panic eased back far enough for a new and different awareness to take its place.
The kiss was strangely light. No force in it, no pushing, no demands, just a warm caress against her lips. She closed her eyes, and her other senses came at once to the fore. Only their mouths were touching, but she could feel the warmth of his body like an imprint, almost as if he were pressed fully against her. Beneath the sandalwood, she detected other scents—earthier, deeper scents that were uniquely him. She heard the rustle of her silk dress and the hard thud of her own heartbeat as she stirred against the door.
His tongue touched the closed crease of her mouth. At once, she brought her hands up between them, an instinctive reflex, her palms flattening against his chest to push him away. He stilled and drew back a little. The heavy satin of his waistcoat was smooth against her palms. Beneath it, she could feel the rise and fall of his breathing, and the strength in his hard muscles.
“I’d like to kiss you again, Edie,” he said, his lips brushing hers as he spoke. “Would you like it?”
She felt suspended, caught between forces of equal power and impossibility. She hung there for what seemed an eternity while he waited, unmoving, his breath warm against her face. She didn’t know if she would like it, but she knew she did not want to be afraid of it. She nodded, a stiff, quick little jerk of her head.
He smiled against her mouth, tilted his head and kissed her again. Pleasure rippled through her limbs, bringing heat.
His tongue touched her lips again, and she realized what he wanted. She opened her mouth. He tasted lush, like peaches and port, and when his tongue touched hers, she heard a moan come from her own throat, a moan that was not a protest of any kind. It wasn’t like any sound she’d ever made.
He stirred in response, and for a brief moment, he pressed closer, but when she stiffened, he eased back, pulling her lower lip between both of his. He sucked gently, as if her lower lip were a piece of candy, and as he did, it evoked what she’d felt when he sucked her fingertips—as if he were pulling sensation from every part of her body—up her legs, along her spine, across her belly. She moaned again, and overwhelmed by sensation, she arched up closer to him. But then, her hips
brushed against his hard arousal, and she was jolted back to reality. She tore her mouth from his and shook her head violently, flattening back against the door, pushing him. “Stop,” she gasped. “Oh, stop.”
He pulled back at once, straightening away from her. His breathing was hot and quick, but so was hers, mingling together in the quiet corridor. His eyes were smoky in the dim light, and when they looked into hers, she saw the desire in their depths.
She stared back at him, wordless, all her senses in tumult. Her lips tingled. She felt giddy and terrified and glad and miserable all at once. She couldn’t seem to catch her breath.
“Good night, Edie,” he said. He leaned forward, pressed a kiss to her forehead, and turned away. Taking up his stick, he started down the corridor to his own rooms.
She didn’t turn to watch him go. She pressed her fingers to her tingling mouth and closed her eyes, listening to his footsteps and the tap of his stick as he walked away. She heard his door open, but by the time she turned her head to look at him, he was already gone. The door clicked softly behind him.
Edie didn’t go into her own room. Instead, she stood there for a while, her fingers pressed to her lips, and she wondered if all a man’s kisses were supposed to feel like that.
Chapter 16
HAD ANYONE EVER asked Stuart to name all the girls he’d kissed in his lifetime, he could have offered a reckoning of some sort, but he’d kissed a great many, so the accuracy of such a list would probably be open to question. And had he been asked to provide details of any of those kisses, he’d have described each one the same way: a lovely prelude to better things.
Kissing Edie, however, was something he knew he was going to remember for the rest of his life. The first brush of her lips, so seemingly chaste, and yet, it had sent arousal pulsing through him in an instant. His hands behind his back, so damnably frustrating, and yet, so erotic it had made him dizzy. The taste of her, so sweet, making him fear that without her kisses in accompaniment, peaches and port would never be quite the same again.
He’d known he wasn’t kissing a virgin in the literal sense, but he knew it was his kiss that had awakened carnality inside her for the very first time. She, who had experienced only the sordid side, was now coming to know the blissful side, because of him. That had been his first goal all along, and an obsession from the moment he’d learned of the brutality committed on her. But now that that goal had been achieved, he was a bit awestruck in consequence, rather as he’d felt the first time he’d ever seen an African sunset or watched a gazelle run across the plain.
As he lay in his bed afterward and stared up at the ceiling, each breath he took recalled the scent of her hair and skin. Each time he licked his lips, he tasted peaches and port. Each time he closed his eyes, he saw her face, lips puffy from his kisses and her eyes wide with astonishment, and each time he formed the picture, it caught him up and held him tight, and he knew: This was what Fate had been trying to show him five years ago.
He hadn’t expected anything like this. He’d come back thinking simply to make a life with the woman he’d married, and during the voyage home, he’d harbored hope that it would be a happy union, with sweet lovemaking and the children that usually came along with that, but that was as far as he’d allowed his expectations to go. Oh, he’d been wildly attracted to her from the first, no doubt about that, but his attraction hadn’t been allowed to deepen, and he’d been away half a decade without any real knowledge of what he’d been missing. Now he knew, and it was so shattering that he didn’t sleep a wink.
By morning, his mind had carved every exquisite detail of that kiss into his memory, his body ached with unsated lust, and he began to fear that even his heart might be in jeopardy.
He wasn’t quite sure if the next six days would drive him to the brink of heaven or the brink of hell, but he had the feeling he might come to both before it was all said and done.
THEY WENT TO the Wash the following day as Edie had arranged, and Stuart was glad Joanna and Mrs. Simmons were with them, for he badly needed their presence to regain his equilibrium.
An irony, that. Both he and Edie had assumed Joanna would be her shield against him, not the other way around. But he knew a kiss wasn’t enough to make Edie fall into his arms, not by a long way, and even if that blessed event did happen in the next five days, his desire for her might remain unsated for much longer than that. Stuart knew he would need all the control he could muster. Nothing like the added presence of a fifteen-year-old girl and her elderly governess for making a man remember his propers.
They set out blankets and a canopy on a nice stretch of grass along the cliffs above the shore, and Stuart was grateful for that, too. Being out in the open like this, there was little privacy for stealing kisses. Although they could not be observed by anyone on the beach below, the grassy knolls around them offered little protection from the eyes of anyone coming down to the shore from the fields or the village. These were Margrave lands, but the locals were free to come anytime for fishing, bathing, or boating, and though Stuart didn’t care much if people saw him kissing his wife on his own lands, he suspected Edie would never relax enough in such a situation to give him the chance to try.
Still, if he thought he could get through an entire day with her without having his resolve tested, he was mistaken. They had just finished lunch, and Joanna, who had spent most of the morning painting, decided she wanted to spend her afternoon in a different way.
“I want to go down to the shore and look for shells,” she announced. “Can we go?”
“May we go,” Edie and Mrs. Simmons corrected her in unison, causing Joanna to heave a long-suffering sigh.
“May we go, then?” she asked, and when Edie nodded, Joanna jumped to her feet and turned to him. “Stuart, you’ll come, too, won’t you?”
But he shook his head. “I’m afraid not, petal. Walking on sand’s rather a rough go for me.”
“Oh, sorry.” She flashed him an apologetic smile. “I forgot about that. Well, if you can’t come, then Edie should definitely stay and keep you company.”
Stuart almost smiled at the conspiratorial wink she flashed in his direction, but he wasn’t sure he appreciated the matchmaking assistance. He was trying to resist temptation, after all. Still, Edie was bound to go off with her sister anyway, so he supposed what tempted him wouldn’t matter.
His wife, however, surprised him there. “You’re right, Joanna. I believe I will stay behind with Stuart. Mrs. Simmons, you’ll go with her? And take Snuffles, too,” she added.
“Of course,” the governess said, and moved to rise from the blanket.
Stuart set his wine on the tray beside him and stood up, offering the governess his hand to help her up. He waited until she and her charge had taken the dog, wandered down the hill, and disappeared over one of the sandy knolls that lined the shore before he settled back down on the blanket opposite his wife.
“So, here we are.” He leaned back, resting his weight on his arms, and he made a great show of looking around. “All alone.”
She took a sip of wine. From beneath the brim of her wide straw hat, she glanced toward Edward, who stood white-gloved and at attention nearby, then past him to where Roberts was lounging by the landau. “But we’re not alone.”
In that moment, Stuart proved his utter lack of willpower when it came to his wife. “Edward?” he called, without taking his eyes from her face.
The footman stepped forward at once. “Your Grace?”
“Why don’t you and Roberts go for a walk?” he suggested, smiling as he watched a hint of pink come into Edie’s cheeks. “Take an hour—no, two—and see a bit of the countryside. It’s a fine day, and you don’t have many chances for an afternoon off.”
“Yes, Your Grace. Thank you, Your Grace.”
Edie stirred, looking a bit uneasy as the footman and driver wandered down toward the beach and
vanished from sight. “You didn’t need to send them away. In staying behind with you, I didn’t mean to imply anything by it. I simply thought we might talk a bit, that’s all.”
“Yes, well, I’m rather an optimistic fellow.” He moved a couple inches closer to her, his left leg sliding along hers. The move pushed her willow green skirt up along her ankle, and even though it revealed nothing to his gaze but a bit more of her shoe, that didn’t stop him from conjuring a picture of slim, pretty ankles beneath beige leather. “I’m hoping for more than conversation.”
She looked down at the glass of wine in her hand. “You presume a great deal.”
“I said I’m hoping for more, Edie,” he said gently. “I don’t presume that I shall obtain it.”
“Still, you are very sure of yourself when it comes to women.”
That made him laugh. He couldn’t help it.
She blinked, seemingly taken aback. “What’s so amusing?”
“I’m never sure of myself with you,” he confessed. “Oh, I put on a good show, I daresay. A man has his pride, after all. But I haven’t ever been sure of myself with you, not after you shredded me to bits at Hanford House and declared you didn’t find me the least bit attractive. There,” he added, making a wry face as he reached for his glass and took a swallow of wine. “Does that make you feel better?”
“Not really, no. For even if I believed you, which I don’t, it would still put you miles ahead of me. I’ve no experience of men at all—at least,” she added with a grimace, “no good experience.”
He swallowed hard at the reminder, but she spoke again before he could reply.
“I didn’t mean to bring that up.” She gave a sigh. “My point is that I never feel as if we’re on equal footing.”
“That’s because we’re not.” He sat up, set aside his glass, and spread his arms wide. “I’m completely at your mercy.”
How to Lose a Duke in Ten Days Page 22
