by Claudia Dain
“And I, Lord Iveston, can’t think that dragging innocent young women into quiet rooms to kiss them can possibly suit a future duke.”
Iveston blinked. The white smudges of outrage around his mouth faded away and his expression once again veered toward being pleasant and even amused.
“Only one woman, Miss Prestwick. As to her innocence, I believe that is something of a mystery.”
“It is no mystery to me, Lord Iveston,” she said, pulling her glove up firmly. Iveston noted the movement and grinned. Typical. “And it is no concern of yours.”
“I fear that is untrue,” he said. “I cannot possibly endorse a match with the Duke of Edenham if your innocence is in question.”
“It is not in question!”
“It is if I say it is,” he said, smiling pleasantly, as if he had not just said the most hideous thing imaginable.
“What are you implying, Lord Iveston?”
“Only that as I am conspiring with you to snare Edenham on the wrong side of the altar, that it would be good form for you to be honest about your innocence.”
“I am being honest!”
“I’m afraid I require the particulars, Miss Prestwick. I must, for my own honor, make my own judgment upon what might be the meandering quality of your innocence.”
He was enjoying this. It was perfectly obvious from the very lurid gleam twinkling from his very blue eyes. She smiled with all the stiff formality of a duchess and sat down upon a gilded chair. Iveston sat in a matching chair with a most amused expression.
Amused, was he? Well, if he wanted particulars, perhaps he would not be amused for very much longer.
There was a strange satisfaction to be found in that. She was going to enjoy this. Meandering quality, indeed. She was certainly more innocent than he was.
“As you require particulars,” she said, “I will most cordially provide them, under the stipulation that our agreement is intact.”
“Did I say otherwise?”
“You threatened otherwise.”
“I am certain I did not.”
“Are we to argue about this as well, Lord Iveston? Such a row over a simple affirmation does look so suspicious.”
Iveston stared her down. She stared him down in return. She had a brother. She knew how this game of male domination was played, and she was quite accustomed to winning it. George was no Iveston, true, being far more amiable in general and more specifically inclined to want her happiness. Iveston only wanted particulars.
“I never engage in rows, Miss Prestwick,” he said, studying her from beneath his golden brows.
“How lovely for your duchess. Your marriage will be most convivial.”
His golden brows rose fractionally. “I am not at all certain that is what I desire most in a marriage, Miss Prestwick. I think I may prefer a more spirited relationship.”
“I can’t think why this is any of my concern, Lord Iveston.”
“I think you can, Miss Prestwick.”
And then, quite beyond all decency, Iveston reached out and took her hand in his. She allowed it. She was merely being convivial, that’s all.
Looking with some curiosity at her arm, she watched as his hand slid up it by slow degrees. It sent a shiver across her breasts and up the back of her neck. She suppressed it admirably. Iveston’s gaze was also on her arm, his blond lashes sparkling gold against the deep azure of his downcast eyes. And then his hand slid down her arm, slipping her glove down, down, over her wrist and to the midpoint of her hand, her fingers and thumb still trapped within.
She shivered again. She did not suppress it, not admirably. Not at all.
He lowered his gleaming blond head and kissed the base of her thumb. With an open mouth. With heat and teeth. And then his eyes lifted to hers, bold blue and burning like a cloudless summer day.
She gasped.
He smiled.
She pulled her hand from his mouth, from his heat, from his assault.
He released her.
“Another innocence breached,” he said softly, studying her face. “You look none the worse for it.”
“I shall judge what is the worse for me, Lord Iveston, not you. You are very casual about robbing women of their innocence, I must say. At this pace, you will find yourself married very soon.”
“Do you think so?” he asked, smiling. “I cannot see it. I am very careful, you see, as to how and where I capture an innocence.”
“But not upon whom, I gather,” she snapped. “As I have no interest in marrying you and you have none in marrying me, your … activities seem very misplaced. I can’t think why assaulting me is so very entertaining for you.”
“Can’t you?” he said in a low voice, his gaze quite intense of a sudden.
He was such an unpredictable man. His poor future wife would be positively exhausted in trying to keep abreast of him and on top of his many moods.
That unfortunate confluence of words, entirely unintentional on her part, caused a most violent fluttering deep within her.
“You are a most illogical man, Lord Iveston. I don’t suppose you realize that, do you? You ask for one thing and do another. You are angry and suspicious, demanding proofs and explanations, and then without a word of warning become most peculiarly … playful.”
“Playful,” he repeated, pulling her glove from off her hand and wrapping it up into a very sloppy ball of fabric. “You think me playful?”
“Very,” she said. “George gets like this sometimes, often when the weather has been wet for days and he is feeling cloistered. He behaves much as you are now. My conclusion, which I’m certain you must agree with, is that it is important for a man to get out, to walk about, to stretch both his legs and his mind. I am certain you will feel the better for it. George always does.”
“You’re comparing me to your brother,” Iveston said. He seemed rather put out by the comparison.
“Of course,” she said placidly. The look on his face was delightful. He looked nearly miserable.
“I am supposed to believe that your brother does to you what I have done?”
He looked perfectly dejected. As well he should, playing about when she had a duke to catch. Really, Iveston had become so distracted and it didn’t do her a bit of good. Of course, as he had become distracted by her, she wasn’t as annoyed as she ought to have been, but there was no reason to tell him that, was there?
“Lord Iveston, can you be such an innocent? Is kissing the hand of a woman a mark of something dire and dangerous? I am more sophisticated than that.”
It was truly something to behold. Iveston looked quite fully angered. His jaw clenched. His mouth flattened into a grim line. His eyes blazed hot and then shuttered against her.
She could hardly keep from smiling at him. He was such fun to bedevil, and naturally, being a man, he had no idea how entertaining he was, particularly if she discounted the effect upon her of his kisses, which she should, and did, and would purge from her memory until she was married to Edenham and could safely indulge in a proper nostalgic appreciation for a kiss that was so seductive and compelling as to cause her heart to flutter and her pulse to skip. But that was for the future. For now, she kept her fluttering to herself.
“I believe you, Miss Prestwick. You are entirely sophisticated. Perhaps to an unflattering degree,” he said, his hands lying against his thighs, looking relaxed when he had no business looking relaxed. Hadn’t he just insulted her? “Why don’t you tell me how thoroughly sophisticated you are?”
“I shall do just that, Lord Iveston. My innocence and my sophistication are in question. I shall defend them both.”
“I don’t see how you can effectively defend them both.”
“You shall,” she said smoothly, putting a finger into the hem of her remaining glove and toying with it. Iveston’s eyes blazed, his look riveted to her arm. Delightful fun. “On the occasion of my twentieth birthday, I decided with extreme forethought that it was time that I was kissed. Properly kissed by an imp
roper man.” Iveston sat forward on his chair. His hands did not look nearly as relaxed as they had done. Penelope resisted a sigh of pleasure and continued on. “At Timperley, the Prestwick estate, there was employed a certain groom of quite handsome appearance. I always found him to be extremely amiable and so it was that,” she said, shrugging, “I arranged for him to kiss me.”
Iveston’s eyes had gone quite wide and his breathing appeared to have stopped. Oh. There. He seemed to have got hold of himself and gulped in a ragged breath.
“Arranged? How did you arrange?”
“Oh, Lord Iveston,” she said, “you must know how simple it is to lure a man into a simple kiss. A look. A smile. A quiet stable. It took very little effort on my part at all.”
And then she smiled and tugged on her glove.
Iveston looked ready to strike something. Since he couldn’t strike her, it was all quite entertaining.
“As I have never kissed a man, I had no idea it was so simple. I take your word for it.”
“Thank you,” she said. “Shall I continue? You did say you wanted details.”
“There’s more?”
If she had a single merciful bone in her body, she’d stop the carnage right now. But she didn’t. So she wouldn’t. She hadn’t had this much fun in years.
“Of course there’s more, Lord Iveston. You can’t think that I would be so slipshod as to arrange to be kissed and leave it at that. No, I wanted to be taught, to be tutored, to be inspired.”
Iveston looked quite white about the gills. Both sides. A clear white spot had appeared just below each ear. Well now. Perhaps she could tell him enough so that his white-tinged anxiety wound into a snake of outrage. And all of it true, mind you. She was no deceiver. Far from it. She was the most forthright woman she knew, not that she knew any forthright women at all. It did seem to be a most telling failing of her sex.
“Inspired to do what?” Iveston asked softly.
“To be honest, I wasn’t quite certain at the time. But now, having been inspired, I am. I wanted to be inspired by passion so that I could inspire it in others, my future husband, to be precise. I am not certain I have mastered it, of course, but I did try, and I do think the duke should applaud my efforts to please him, don’t you?”
Iveston was nodding, a most peculiar gleam in his eyes. He crossed his legs and leaned back upon the narrow confines of the gilded chair and said, “I can’t wait to hear every detail, Miss Prestwick. I see that we are no longer alone, but I trust that won’t keep you from continuing your tale?”
“My tale? You don’t believe me?” she asked, noting as well that guests were drifting into the drawing room from the single door to the reception room. A cursory glance revealed the Lords Penrith and Raithby, Lady Paignton, and her brother George, among others.
“I believe you have been kissed. By whom, I dare not guess.”
“There’s no need to guess. I’ve told you plainly. It was a groom at Timperley.”
“And his name?”
“I have no idea. If I ever knew, I’ve forgotten it completely. We weren’t cordial, Lord Iveston. We merely kissed, among other things.”
Iveston uncrossed his legs. “Among other things?”
The room was a bit noisier, the crowd growing. But that was to be expected at a soiree and she was doing nothing at all scandalous, merely having a pleasant and entirely public conversation with the Marquis of Iveston. It was the perfect setting in which to torment him, though why she should want to was a bit of a mystery to her. As he was so available and as it was so simple a thing to do, she did it. And not a bit of her story was a tale, either. No, it was a history. Her history. Let him choke on it if it suited him. She almost hoped it did.
“I think the best thing is to start at the beginning, don’t you? So much less confusion that way. And as you did ask for details as to both my innocence and my obvious sophistication, I think proceeding logically and thoroughly through every essential moment is to be preferred. Now then,” she said, without waiting for his approval of her plan, though given the look on his face, she did wonder if he could form a coherent word at all, “I was approaching my twentieth birthday and truly do believe that something special, some remarkable moment should mark the passage. Call it a rite, if you will.”
“I suppose a rite is precisely what it was,” he said. “Very nearly clinical, I should think.”
She leaned forward in her chair and said with some animation, “That’s it precisely. I did think exactly that. Of course, once he began kissing me, I realized how foolish a thought that was.”
Iveston, from looking almost benign, looked properly alarmed again. She preferred him that way. Agitation suited him. His agitation suited her. Why, she could not have said.
“I can’t think why you’re telling me this, Miss Prestwick,” he said, his eyes glittering.
“How absurd. I’m telling you because you asked for details, Lord Iveston. I am providing you with details. Actually, I find it enjoyable. I haven’t, for obvious reasons, been able to tell anyone about it. I should like another person’s perspective, and as you are a man, your perspective will be most interesting to me. I wonder,” she said softly, staring at him, “if we shall see things in the same light.”
“I hardly think so. As I am a man.”
“Yes,” she said slowly. “You are a man.”
Something turned over, a wet flopping in her knee joints. Not that wet, wobbly feeling again. Not now. She had him very much where she wanted him. Though where she would want him in a quarter hour was far from certain. But she did, indeed she was nearly certain, want him somehow.
“He was very nicely tall, as you are,” she said, putting them back on the track. They had fallen off it somehow, hadn’t they? “His hair was brown, though, and his eyes a very unremarkable shade of blue. Nothing like yours. Your eyes, Lord Iveston, are quite …” Remarkable? Arresting? Compelling? No, no, that would not do.
“Blue?” he said softly, a smile working its way around his mouth.
He had a very nice mouth, quite elegant. Everything about Lord Iveston was elegant, from the shape of his head to his … to his … her eyes traveled down the length of him, past his shoulders to his lean waist and narrow hips, over his long legs to his well-defined ankles.
“Yes. Blue. Very,” she said.
“Are you comparing this man to me?” he asked.
Her gaze jerked up from her contemplation of his legs.
“Naturally not. I’m comparing you to him,” she said.
“And how do I compare?”
“I would hate to make a precipitous judgment, Lord Iveston. I’ve only kissed you once, haven’t I?” she said.
To judge by the look on his face, it was exactly the right thing to say. He did not look the least bit pleased. Yet he did not excuse himself. And neither did she. They could have parted at any time. The room was filling. They were engaged in a perfectly inappropriate conversation in a perfectly appropriate fashion. To merge into the crowd and part would have been natural. And horrible. She did not want this to end, and so she stayed. And so did he. That meant … something.
“And he kissed you?” Iveston prompted.
“More than once,” she said. “If you will allow me to tell it, you will discover all. I do find myself losing my way in this history with all these interruptions and objections.”
“I would not have you lose your way, Miss Prestwick,” he said quietly, looking deeply into her eyes, “unless you lose it with me.”
“That sounds utterly scandalous, my lord.”
“Perfect, then,” he said, his very blue eyes twinkling with a very seductive gleam.
She responded first by slipping her bare finger into her glove and teasing it down her arm to her wrist. Iveston’s eyes watched the action obsessively. And then she inched it back up. He could not seem to look away. She got a great deal of satisfaction from that.
“I first noticed the groom on a summer afternoon; I can’t recall the
month,” she began. “He looked very much like any other groom, until he loosened his shirt. Upon seeing his throat exposed, a hint of curling brown hair on his chest, I wondered. When he saw me watching him and smiled, I ceased wondering. He was the perfect specimen upon which to conduct my practice of the amorous arts.”
Iveston was staring hard at her, his breath quite shallow, his hands no longer relaxed upon his legs. Instead, he looked something very nearly enraged, but not quite enraged. Something else of a likely nature. Something hot-blooded.
“It wasn’t until the autumn that I finally was able to arrange things between us.”
“You initiated it?”
“But naturally. It was my idea, though he was very willing to accommodate me. Did you doubt it?”
“No.”
Iveston looked quite savage suddenly. She would not have thought he had it in him. He was one surprise after another. She didn’t enjoy surprises as a rule, but in this instance, it was most, most satisfying.
“It was the hunt, you see,” she said, her voice lowered, her gaze holding his. “We had guests; they were out upon the field. The dogs were all out, the stables nearly deserted. Having the stables to ourselves, that decided it, of course. I approached him. He seemed to understand what I wanted of him.”
“Yes,” Iveston said, his eyes nearly glowing in their intensity.
“He led me into the hay and then, quite delicately and with exquisite gentleness, he kissed me.”
“Once.”
She shook her head. “All afternoon. The sunlight sparkled through the hay, dusting his skin. I untied his shirt and kissed his throat, the start of it all, really. His throat. There was something about it, some primitive grandeur.”
Iveston lifted his chin and twisted his neck against the white restriction of his cravat.
“All afternoon? An afternoon of kisses with a groom on your father’s estate,” Iveston said. “Only kisses? Hours of only kisses?”
“He kissed very well. Much can be accomplished by kissing.”
Iveston nodded once, his gaze flickering over her face. It was very nearly like a kiss, a string of kisses played out upon the air, not touching her skin, but touching her heart.
