“The Peninsular War—” Tamsin began
“Took a saber at Vitoria, what?” Simon explained helpfully. “Hell of a thing.”
“Indeed it must have been,” Mama said, not unfeelingly. “And indeed it were best for you to rest quiet and recover yourself after such an injury. So best to end things with my daughter here, yes?”
“If you say so, ma’am.” He was the picture of helpful concession.
“I do.” Mama was nothing if not emphatic. “Though it is a shame—you do have a lovely sort of face.”
“I like yours, too, ma’am. And your daughter’s. She’s a lovely sort of young woman. A credit to you, ma’am.”
“Thank you. You’ve manners, I’ll grant you that, Cathcart,” Mama admitted. “But keep your distance from my girl. For your own sake, as well as hers. Do I make my self clear?”
“I think so, ma’am.”
“Then back to your spot here in the library.” She shooed him toward the fireplace. “Or the conservatory with the rest of the potted plants,” she muttered more unkindly under her breath as she towed Tamsin out the door.
As soon as they were alone, Tamsin pulled from her grasp. “Stop it, Mama. I won’t have it.”
“I’ll tell you what you won’t have, my girl—any more of that fellow.” She reeled Tamsin into a sheltered nook beneath the stair. “You’re too intelligent for this to be an accident, Tamsin. And I’m too intelligent not to see your ploy for what it is.”
If Tamsin had thought she felt breathless and foolish before with Simon, it was nothing to the way her mother’s stare made her feel—small and stupid. “And what is that?”
“You think you can eat your cake and have it still—you think you will manage this witless Simon Cathcart into agreeing to marry you. That he won’t object to your salons and studies and books and biographies of Bess the Bitch, and who knows what else. But who is to keep you—who is to pay for you to take tea and talk? Not your father, I can tell you. He’s barely got a penny set aside that’s not to go with the entailed estate, you mark my word. You’ll have nothing to live on nothing. Nothing.”
Mama’s face was white with the stark truth of her words. “Mark my words, Tamsin, and think hard.”
Chapter 9
The new day dawned so clear and so cold, the wind off the Thames drove all the way up to Simon’s snug retreat on Hampstead Heath—whence he decamped from Cathcart House after his rout at the Worcester ball—and rattled its way under the sash of his bedchamber window. He would have closed his eyes and burrowed back under the covers to dream about the divine Miss T and her even more divine haunches, if Mahoney had not come bearing a tale of mischief.
“Note for you, Colonel, delivered by an urchin who didn’t even wait to be paid.”
“What kind of self-respecting urchin doesn’t wait for a vail,” Simon groused.
It was rhetorical question, but one that his self-respecting batman felt bound to answer. “One sent from Cathcart House, sir?”
That fact got his attention. “Really? My aunt hardly seems the sort to employ urchins.” Simon resigned himself to his fate and threw back the covers. “But the ways of the female mind are mysterious and deep and likely forever unknown to us mere men.”
Mahoney handed him a heavy robe. “If you say so, sir. The note doesn’t appear to be from her ladyship, the countess, but merely forwarded by her.”
Simon breathed a sigh of relief and reached for the steaming cup of coffee in Mahoney’s other hand. His aunt was one of the few people he had trusted to tell about the house in Hampstead, his secret bolt-hole to retreat to and be himself away from the prying, judgmental eyes of Society. “So who is it from?”
“My guess would be a determined, enterprising lass.”
Ah. There was only one determined, enterprising lass he wanted it to be—the sprightly, determined lass who had literally stood up for him last evening.
No one—not his uncle or aunt, the Earl and Countess Cathcart, nor even the Duke of Wellington, for whom he had fought and bled for many long years—had ever objected to the characterization of him as “Simple” Simon. Tamsin Lesley stood alone in his regard. And his attraction.
Simon took the missive and cracked the seal. “Right in two, Mahoney. Brilliantly determined, and sublimely enterprising.” The note of course, was from the determined Miss Lesley.
“What’s the reccy, sir? So I know what kind of clothes I’m to put out.”
The few short lines from his characteristically to-the-point young lady asked him to yet another rendezvous. “It seems I am going ice-skating, Mahoney—on the Serpentine River in Hyde Park. So make of my wardrobe what you will.”
The terse Munsterman let out a low whistle. “Oh, there’s a lass behind that outing, and no doubt.”
“No doubt at all, my good man.” Simon was nothing if not scrupulously honest with his servant—because there was no lying to a man who had stood by him at his worst, and prompted him to be his best through three arduous, bloody campaigns.
“I should advise two pairs of wool socks, sir.”
Simon took a long sip of the blessedly scalding morning brew. “Just like the old days in the Peninsula?”
“Aye, sir. They do say courting is just like going soldiering.”
“Do they?” Simon wasn’t courting. He was just having fun, helping a lovely young woman he had come to admire. And like. And find delightfully attractive.
But clearly he was doing something very like courting, if he was rigging himself out to skate. Something…risky.
“It might be so, Mahoney—I reckon it’s nearly as dangerous.” Because there were two glaring problems with such a plan—he would have to ice skate. And he would have to ice skate with her. And keep his hands—and other, more tender parts of his body, like his reckless heart—to himself. “I’m not even sure I remember how.”
“I shouldn’t let that bother you, sir. They say it’s like riding a horse—or a wife. Once you begin, you’ll remember how soon enough to get on.”
There was nothing for it, of course. “While you’re dispensing socks and dubious advice, Mahoney, I also stand in immediate need of a pair of ice skates.”
Miss Lesley, the efficient, practical minx, had arrived at the frozen Serpentine ahead of him, and already wore her skates. And her delightful spectacles, which glinted in the winter sun. But as she was seated on a bench next to a bevy of other cloaked and swansdown-wrapped young ladies, Simon waited until she had glided away from her escort before making his approach.
Mercifully, Mahoney’s prognostications proved correct, and within a few strides, Simon was gliding along like a Dutchman, tipping his hat as he came up beside Miss Lesley. “What ho, Miss T. Grand day for it, what?”
“Colonel Cathcart!” She came to a neat, controlled stop, as if she had spent countless winters skating on Somerset’s ponds.
Oh, how he liked the competent ones.
“Thank you so very much for coming, Colonel. I thought such an outing—without my mama—might provide a better chance to talk and arrange things.”
“Simon, please. At your service, Miss T.”
“Why don’t we—” She gestured for them to skate along, in the opposite direction from her friends, keeping a goodly distance apart from him until they were well out of range. “Thank you for meeting me yet again.”
“Apologies I can’t seem to get you sufficiently ruined, Miss T,” he offered in bluff, idiot mode. “Sorry my efforts at a convincing embrace were not up to snuff.”
“It was not your embrace that was not up to snuff,” she consoled as she glided along. “As determined as I am to be ruined, I fear my mother is equally determined to keep me from being declared so.”
Simon said the first simply natural, and simply stupid, thing that came into his clearly damaged head. “I fear your mother could find us naked in a snow bank, with you riding my cock and whipping me like a racehorse, and still say nothing.”
Miss Lesley stumbled and Si
mon just barely kept her from going down and cracking her knees against the ice. “Your pardon, Miss T. Shouldn’t have said that, what?”
But he had said it. It was likely the crassest thing he had ever said—and he had lived amongst soldiers for years on end. Perhaps all this playacting had actually gone to his head, and he was becoming as mad an idiot as they said.
Because lovely Tamsin Lesley had gone as pale as a candle in one breath, and then burst into flame on another—spots of high color radiated from her cheeks.
“Well, yes, exactly,” she stammered before she regained some of that marvelous, governess-y aplomb. “But should that happen, even my mama would be forced to give way.”
Oh, how he liked her.
Liked her self-possession. Loved her dry sense of humor.
“I should bloody well hope so.” Because if he was mad, he was mad for her. And growing madder by the minute.
“While I hope such extremes won’t be necessary”—she resumed their conversation where she had left off—“I have come to the conclusion that you were in fact right, Colonel—it is kissing that we want.”
“Right ho!” Perhaps he wasn’t so mad after all.
“It will be most disagreeable, of course, but I fear it must be attempted.”
Simon’s ears rang as if he’d taken another French saber. “Most disagreeable?” He could not have heard her aright. “How so, Miss T?”
She shrugged and wrinkled her nose. “Well, you know, all slop and press. But I am convinced a kiss, however disagreeable, will be something that not even my mother can ignore.”
All slop and press. Truly, Simon did not know whether he wanted to kick or thank all those stupendously unaccommodating men who had given her disagreeable kisses her in the past.
“Reckon you’re right about your mater.” He addressed one subject before he was confident enough to address the other. “Not to act the blaggard Miss T, but I’ve never had a kiss that I would describe as all slop and press.”
“Oh, well, that must be because women are kissing you, and not the other way ’round.”
Simon could not let that piece of illogic pass. Yet still he tried. “Tell you what—why don’t we give it a go? Bit of a reccy run, so we go into the live fight with dry powder, what?”
She turned that spectacled focus upon him. “Are you saying that we ought to practice?”
“Just so,” he enthused. “Shouldn’t like you to have to endure anything like slop and press.” The very words offended him. He would hand her a pistol and ask her to put him out of his misery if she ever described his kiss thusly. “You can give me directions, just like last time, to make sure I get it right.”
“That’s very thoughtful of you, Colonel Cathcart.”
“Simon, please.” One of these days she was going to call him by his Christian name. Like an intimate. “Just shouldn’t like to be thought of as sloppy, Miss T.”
“Indeed,” she agreed. “When might we meet to do so?”
No time like the present was still good advice. But the frozen Serpentine was no place for a tryst. There was, however, a small, wild island, covered with snow-dusted trees that would provide more than adequate coverage. “Why don’t we go there? Now?”
Her brows rose, but she took in one of her strengthening breaths and firmed her chin. “I suppose that would do.”
It did do—there was even a conveniently fallen tree trunk jutting out onto the ice that acted as a bench for them to remove their skates. But they never got to unstrapping the metal blades.
Because once they were seated side by side, it seemed quite natural to take her mittened hand in his, and give it an encouraging squeeze. And raise it to his lips for a wooly kiss. And since he was already there, and she was so close, he leaned in.
Slowly.
So slowly, she could adjust and turn away from him if she chose. So slowly, she could not mistake his intentions. So slowly he could not mistake hers.
He slowed time even more by turning his hand so the backs of his gloveless fingers caressed the soft curve of her cheek. And in those extra seconds, gained a world of sensation—her skin, soft against the rough of his hand. Her warmth against his chill. Her steadiness against his onslaught.
No. He wouldn’t allow it to be an onslaught—this wasn’t a charge, cavalry mounted and swords drawn. It was an invitation, slow and sensuous and as pleasurable as he knew how to make it—so she was the woman kissing him, and not the other way ’round.
He tilted his head to better fit hers, and waited until she did the same. He let his gaze fall to her mouth, and watched patiently, until hers did as well. He parted his lips in readiness, ever so slightly, breathing in her essence, all but willing her to do the same.
Willing her to ease nearer. And nearer still.
He meant to watch—to watch and wait and understand—correctly interpreting her actions, gauging her interest and consent. Keeping himself from anything that could be in any way thought of as a press. Assessing her enthusiasm.
But he could not sustain the detachment, the distance required to hold himself back. His eyes slid shut, and all he could do was feel. And wait for the first cool, tentative fluttering of her lips against his. And the exquisite sensation of her lips settling more firmly upon his.
And then she was kissing him, and nothing else mattered, or even existed. No ice, no snow, no chill. Nothing but the sweetness of her lips. And the warmth of her breath. And the cold, clean scent of her.
He slanted his mouth, and without leaning any weight into her, gently took her plush lower lip between his teeth, and worried at it without biting, luring her with the promise of more. Hoping there was nothing disagreeable about the kiss.
And perhaps there wasn’t, because in the next moment, she angled her own head, and kissed him more deeply, her mittened hands sliding up the lapels of his coat.
But then she drew back.
For a moment he thought she meant to stop—and he meant to stop with her. But she only paused long enough to strip off her mittens—letting them fall where they would on the ice—before her fingers were at his nape and pushing into his hair, knocking his beaver hat askew and then off, to fall with a soft shush into the snow.
But he didn’t care, because she was kissing him with something more than mere tolerance—with growing heat and hunger. And he was falling or rising, soaring into the sweet span of her lips, flying away on the decadent tang of her tongue tangling with his.
Kissing him the way he was kissing her—with heady abandon.
It was everything he could do not to pull her into his arms. Not to press, but to let her set the pace, and the pressure, and the contact. To follow her lead, and take his orders from her like a good soldier.
Damned if he wouldn’t.
Chapter 10
Who would have thought that kissing could be so heavenly? Tamsin never wanted to stop. She wanted to kiss and kiss and taste and feel and experience.
Experience everything.
Every sensation skittering across her skin. Every thought that caromed about her head. Every ounce of joy at this new discovery.
If she had known that kissing could be this marvelous, she would have done a vast deal more of it. But then she had not been kissing handsome, cheerful, kind, clever Colonel Simon Cathcart.
Who could not possibly be as simple and different as she had thought. How could a man be an idiot and kiss like an angel?
Tamsin opened her eyes to look at him—to marvel at his sandy-haired, sunny handsomeness. But all she could do was laugh.
He drew back. “Miss T?”
“I can’t see.” Their kissing had raised such heat that her spectacles were completely fogged.
“I am sorry,” he said. But he didn’t look sorry—he looked quite pleased with himself. And with her.
“I’m not sorry at all, either.” She tucked the spectacles into the pocket of her velvet-trimmed Spencer. She could see up close well enough without them. And he was very close. “Ple
ase don’t let that be a reason to stop.”
“No reason at all.”
There were, of course, many reasons, but she couldn’t seem to remember them now. And she didn’t want to.
But the colonel did nothing to resume their intimacy—nothing to press. He just smiled at her and waited as if he had all the time in the world. As if he would wait all afternoon long for her to kiss him again.
So Tamsin took pleasure in drawing out the moment of anticipation. In extending her own patience to the limit. In taking the opportunity to touch his face, and run her thumb across the barest beginning of scruff, as if he had come out to her before he had even had a chance to shave his morning beard. In letting the tip of her finger delve into the deep dimples that creased his cheeks beside his mouth.
But she could not resist that mouth—wide and pliant and clever. So clever, that once she had kissed him, he smiled and quipped, “Something better than slop and press, what?”
“Much, much better.” She was so happy, so full of joyous sensations. It was a remarkable feeling.
“Happy to oblige, what?”
There it was again—that feeling that something was amiss. He kissed with such awareness, such focused intention, that she could not reconcile his actions with his careless words.
Or was it only her imagination that wanted him to be more? To be different in an entirely different way?
The thought made her felt strangely uncomfortable in her own skin. She must have shivered, because he asked, “Are you cold?” and immediately hugged her close and began to rub her back.
“No, truly.” One look at his sunny, smiling face restored her equanimity. And the truth was she hardly felt the cold—she felt warm from the top of her head to the tips of her toes. She felt as breathless and muzzy-headed as if she’d had a teacup full of gin. “That was certainly very agreeable.”
“Most agreeable,” he agreed.
“The best."
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