And if I could obliterate that distastefully asinine moment in the marriage service at which brides vow before God and human witnesses to obey their husbands, I would gladly do so." He spoke with a soft menace that was quite at variance with his words. "We had better be on our way," he said before Margaret could think of a reply. He pushed his shoulder away from the tree trunk. "Or we will be late for tea." "I thought," she said, "you wanted to kiss me." "And /I/ thought," he said, "you did not want to be kissed." "You were wrong," she said.
The words hung in the air between them for a few moments. Then he leaned his back against the tree again and reached out both hands toward her.
And oh, she thought as she closed the distance between them and set her hands in his, oh, she longed to be kissed. There had been a vast, dark emptiness in her life … He clasped her hands firmly, twisted her arms behind her back, and brought her body against his from breasts to knees.
His eyes gazed into hers from a mere few inches away. "Don't cry," he murmured. "I am not – " But she was. "Yes I am." "You do not want to do this?" he asked her. "I do," she said.
And then his mouth was on hers, and her lips were trembling and her knees were buckling, and she was grasping his hands behind her back with enough force to leave bruises, and her breasts pressed to his chest felt swollen and sore, and she forgot to breathe.
Then she was gazing into his eyes again. "I am sorry," she said, humiliated. "It has been a long time." His body was as solidly muscled as she remembered it from the night before last.
Oh, goodness, was it really only the night before last?
He released her hands and raised his own to cup her face, pushing his fingers beneath the brim of her bonnet. He touched the pads of his thumbs to the center of her lips and moved them outward to the corners, leaving a trail of sensation behind them. He dipped his head and set his lips where his thumbs had been. She rested her hands on his shoulders.
His lips were closed. But then she could feel the tip of his tongue tracing a path across her lips and then prodding at the center and sliding through into her mouth until she was filled with the warm taste of him and reacted to the invasion with every part of her body.
His hands moved from her face, and one arm came about her shoulders and the other about her waist, and she slid one arm about his neck, the other behind his back while he drew her hard against him again.
It occurred to her later that it was probably not a terribly lascivious embrace. His hands did not wander at all, and his kisses were confined to her face and her throat. But she felt ravished nonetheless – or, if that was too violent a word, then she felt … Oh, she felt more alive, more feminine, more exhilarated, than she had felt in a long, long while.
Perhaps ever.
She felt very thoroughly kissed.
His hands were on either side of her waist, and hers were resting on his shoulders when she realized it was over. He was looking into her face again, his own as inscrutable as ever. "I am not very good at it, am I?" she said. "I am not complaining," he told her. "And indeed, I give you fair warning, Miss Huxtable – /Maggie/. If you marry me, you had better have a good night's sleep before the nuptials. I can promise you a very sleepless wedding night." She swallowed and noticed that he swallowed at almost the same moment.
But she would not marry him only because he had made a wedding night sound like the most desirable thing life had to offer, she thought, moving firmly away from him and turning slightly in order to shake the creases from the muslin dress she wore beneath her spencer. Or because she had enjoyed his kiss more than … Well, more than anything she could think of at the moment. Or because she wanted more and knew she would dream of more for a long time to come.
She was playing with fire, and she was getting burned.
What would it be like – a wedding night with the Earl of Sheringford?
And a lifetime as the wife of a confessed rogue? "We will almost certainly be late for tea," she said briskly, "if we do not leave immediately." "If your cheeks stay that rosy," he said, "my mother will be charmed even if we are very late." He offered his arm and she took it.
Miss Margaret Huxtable was prim and straitlaced and judgmental. Last evening she had even taken him to task for saying /good God/ as an exclamation. And she kissed like a novice. She had not held anything back, it was true, but then he had not demanded much. She had initiated nothing. Whatever her experience was, it was either so old that she had forgotten it or so minimal that there was nothing much to forget.
If he had to wager on it, he would bet that Miss Margaret Huxtable and Dew-of-the-weak-chin – with whom he had exchanged a few words in the park this morning – had rolled in the hay together once only, probably just before he marched off to war. She was very fortunate there had been no awkward consequences.
As they approached Curzon Street, not talking a great deal, Duncan asked himself if this really was the woman he wished to marry. It was a redundant question. /Of course/ she was not – but then neither was anyone else.
He had received a letter from Mrs. Harris this morning – she could read and write though Harris could not. Toby had fallen out of a tree last week and sprained an ankle and given himself a goose-egg of a lump on his forehead. Although he had made an almost miraculous recovery, Mrs.
Harris assured his lordship, they had nevertheless felt it wise to summon a physician, and the doctor had felt it wise to prescribe some medicine – all of which had cost money. And, of course, the fall had torn out the knees of his breeches so that they were quite beyond repair.
Old Tobe! He was as accident-prone as any other normal little boy. As accident-prone as he himself had been as a child.
There had been the time when Toby had insisted upon climbing over a stile unassisted though he had been warned that the wood was old and rough and the maneuver must be done very carefully. He had, of course, yelled out excitedly, "Watch me!" from his sitting position on the topmost bar and jumped. He had taken part of the bar with him in the form of a large splinter that had torn his breeches at the seat – not at the knee that time – and embedded itself in one tender buttock cheek. If Duncan had not caught him on the way down, he would also have smothered his entire person with the mud that lay in wait at the bottom. And there had been the time when he had sloshed into a late winter puddle of water after being told not to, only to discover that there was a layer of ice beneath the water. And the time when … Well, the reminiscences could go on forever. But there were other things to think about at the moment than a sore little bottom after the splinter had been pulled free and a wobbly lower lip and a valiant effort not to cry and a wheedling little voice saying they must not upset Mama by telling her. Or a wet, miserable little body huddled against him for warmth and comfort during the walk home from the ice puddle, his little arms about Duncan's neck, his child's voice suggesting that Duncan not tell Mama. Which, of course, was the last thing Duncan would have done anyway. "My mother," Duncan warned Miss Huxtable as they approached the house, "will wish to talk about our wedding." "I know," she said. "I will make it clear to her again that there may well /be/ no wedding." "Making things clear to my mother," he said, "is no easy task when she has once made up her mind on a point. She dreams of a happily-ever-after for me." "All mothers do it," she said. "So do all sisters who have acted as mothers to their siblings. I understand your mother's feelings perfectly. You must have caused her almost unbearable suffering during the past five years." He doubted it. His mother was vain and flighty and affectionate, but he did not believe her feelings ran deep. "You raise your eyebrows," she said, "as if to say that of course I am wrong. I do not suppose I am." "In which case," he said, "you had better not cause her more suffering, Miss Huxtable. You had better marry me." She opened her mouth to answer, but they had arrived. And someone must have been watching their approach. The front door swung open before Duncan had climbed the steps, to reveal first Sir Graham's butler and then Duncan's mother, who was smiling warmly at Miss Huxtable and holding out her arms to draw her into a hug.