“Bull’s-eye!” He looked at her with smiling dark eyes and she could see the little boy in him. Playful, but playing with things he shouldn’t have been, like knives.
“Now, where were we?” He turned her face toward him with a brush of his finger along her cheek. The piece of ice dripped in his hand.
What was she so afraid of?
He traced her jawline down to her neck with the ice. He licked his lower lip, glided the ice along the crescent moons of her breasts, which peered out from her bodice. Her nipples hardened and she began to grow warm.
He kissed away the melted ice in her cleavage. He slipped off her pelisse. Puh-lease. He was smooth, she had to grant him that.
She melted. She combed his tussled hair with her fingers. With every lick of his lips, her breath grew shorter, shallower.
He was adept at unbuttoning her gown, unlacing her stays.
She untied his cravat, unbuttoned his waistcoat, and feverishly untied his breeches.
The drop-front pants took her by surprise. She didn’t realize Regency men didn’t wear underwear.
She was horizontal on the ice block. Drip, drip, drip . . . the melting ice trickled down a drain somewhere in the darkness.
Her shoulder blades stung from the ice. She propped herself up on her elbows.
“Wait a minute.” She pressed her hands into his muslin shirt and felt the throbbing of his heart, or at least the bulging of his pecs.
“I have protection,” he said.
“I hope it’s not made of sheep’s gut.”
He looked confused. Very confused.
“You knew Regency condoms were made out of sheep gut or fish membrane, didn’t you?”
He shook his head. “No. I really don’t care—” He slid her gown higher up.
The bricks. The straw. The ice! What kind of a sadist would’ve picked a place like this for a tryst, anyway?
“This just isn’t right. I can’t do this. A Regency lady would never find herself in this position.” She looked him straight in the eye.
His hands gave up on her back laces and he looked hurt. “What position?”
“The horizontal one.” She pulled herself up to sitting and straightened her stays. “In an ice-house. Like a common trollop.”
He tenderly leaned over and devoured her with a kiss that could make a trollop forget everything—almost everything.
He whispered just under her earlobe. “You’re so excited you’ve got gooseflesh.”
“They’re goose bumps. And I’ve got them because I’m freezing. Now stop!” She pressed her hands against his shoulders and stood up. The laced brickwork closed in on her. It smelled like dank dog. “This is not how it’s supposed to go.” She picked up the lantern.
He yanked his shirt down over his rapidly shrinking shaft. Still, he managed to look somehow manly in his long white shirt, bare legs, and riding boots. “How what’s supposed to go?”
“You. This. Everything.” She thrust her arm up at the arched brick ceiling and paced the cold brick floor in her boots. She felt her torn gown billow behind her; the lantern swung and tossed light randomly around the dark brick like broken glass.
“Wait!” he said just as she aimed for the doors.
He was down on bended bare knee, his shirt, and everything else—dangling. He stretched out a hand toward her.
She stopped, set the lantern down, took his hand, and put her other hand on her hip. “This better be good.”
He kissed her hand as if it were about to disappear forever and looked up at her.
Something as warm as oil burning in a lantern came over her.
“Miss Parker, will you marry me?”
“What?” She laughed and one of the ice-house doors swung open with a breeze, sending in a pool of moonlight.
“Don’t laugh.”
She bit her lip.
He pulled her closer, taking both of her hands. “I do believe I’ve fallen in love with you. I don’t know why I haven’t asked you sooner. Will you marry me? It’ll be the perfect ending. The perfect television ending to our real-life beginning.”
A white gown, flashbulbs flashing, and a carriage festooned with white flowers paraded around in her brain. Did the Regency Anglican church allow divorced mothers to wear white?
He pulled her closer, leaned his head in toward her hips, and wrapped his arms around the small of her back. “You don’t have to answer right away. Just let me know you’ll think about it.”
“I will. Think about it.” She thought about Abigail, the money, her business, William.
His knee must’ve been frozen.
He kissed her hip bone, moving slowly across her pelvis, where she felt the warmth of his lips through her crepe-thin gown to the other hip bone, and a tingling like she hadn’t felt in years sparked all over her. She lifted off his shirt and laid it on the ice block where he flopped down. He pulled her on top of him.
“Say yes,” he murmured as his fingers worked the buttons on the back of her gown. “Say yes.”
She closed her eyes. She’d gone from something close to a governess to a temptress in a moment’s time, and he’d taken her there. “Yes.” She closed her eyes and kissed him with hungry lips and tongue. “Yes!”
And she would’ve said yes again, but he ripped her bodice open and a lantern appeared at the ice-house doors.
She almost fell off him. What if it was Henry?!
“Excuse me, sir—Mr. Wrightman!” Thank God it was just Sebastian’s footman who shone the lantern on them. Sebastian palmed her breasts to cover them as the lantern light swung away.
“Oh—so sorry—ehm—sir.”
“That will be all, Smith. Thank you.”
Henry called all his servants “Mr.” or “Miss” and then their surname.
“It’s Mrs. Crescent, sir.” Mr. Smith turned around and spoke toward the forest.
Chloe tucked her breasts back into her torn bodice, buttoned up her pelisse, and swung her leg off Sebastian for the dismount.
“She’s having her baby, sir,” Mr. Smith said.
Chloe turned toward the footman. The shadow of his ponytail and wig appeared in the moonlight at the door.
Sebastian propped himself up on his elbow and grabbed Chloe with his other hand just as she moved toward the doors. “This is of no concern to me. Now be gone.”
“Yes, sir.” The footman bowed his head and closed the ice-house doors.
“Mr. Smith! Wait!” Chloe smoothed down her pelisse and tossed Sebastian’s breeches over his midsection. “Is it true? Is she really having the baby right now?” She tugged a boot on.
“Yes.” Mr. Smith looked away, into the moonlight, confused about the question. “Of course. I heard her myself from downstairs. She sounds in terrible pain.”
Chloe lunged toward the door, but Sebastian grabbed her arm and snapped her back.
“Ouch!” Her arm smarted.
Chapter 20
“Be gone, Smith!” Sebastian sat up on the ice block and yanked his breeches on with one hand and clamped Chloe’s arm with the other.
He sneered. “How the devil did he know we were here anyway?”
Chloe turned toward the laced brickwork around the ice-house doors, and tried to wriggle her arm free.
She had totally messed up everything. Her fan splayed across the brick floor. Her yellow-tasseled reticule, flung near an ice block on the other side of the lantern, sat in a pool of melting ice. The outline of Henry’s glasses showed through the silk.
She couldn’t see much beyond Sebastian’s lantern, but heard Mr. Smith’s horse gallop off. His lantern bounced away like Tinker Bell disappearing into the night.
Sebastian finally released her arm, combed his hand through his disheveled hair, and took up the lantern. “I didn’t want the hired help to know you’ve been alone with me. You understand, right? I didn’t want to compromise your reputation. You’d get booted off the show. Or we’d be forced to marry. But then you had to—talk to him.” He threw his arms up in the air, Italian style.
“Right.” Chloe tightened her pelisse around her like a second skin. Hypothermia set in. “I need to go.” She shivered uncontrollably and picked up her fan and her soaked reticule.