But seducing her wasn’t even what he wanted most right now. He wanted to lay his head in her lap and let her stroke his hair all night long.
“What are you doing to me?” he murmured.
He allowed every part of their bodies to meet—the bony prominences of hips, the softness of bellies, the resistance of breast against muscle. The pounding of hearts and the mingling of breath.
He pressed the full length of his body to hers—every lean, hard, red-blooded, masculine inch of him. Wanting her to feel him, to know the size and shape and strength of his body. To be awed by what she did to him, and what he meant to do to her. He wanted to hear her gasp, make her tremble.
God help him, he wanted her a little bit afraid.
Because he was shaken to his core.
He pressed his brow to hers, and he tightened his grip on her waist.
Pull back, he told himself. You can’t allow this to happen.
Then their lips met, filling that last bit of space between them. As though no matter how far their lives stood apart, if they could agree on this one thing only—it was the answer, the reason of it all.
Her mouth softened for him like a gift, unwrapped. He kissed her deeply, with increasing urgency, and she matched him stroke for stroke. Her grip tightened around his neck, causing parts of his body to tighten in response.
He slid a hand upward, palming the globe of her breast. She gasped against his mouth and broke the kiss, still holding him close. Her breathing grew ragged as he lifted and kneaded her softness. The point of her hardened nipple pressed against his palm.
He squeezed his eyes shut and searched himself for composure. He had to stop. If he didn’t release her now, he wouldn’t release her until she lay bare beneath him, clasped in his arms.
Tearing away from her was like so many things he’d done in his life—cold, ruthless. Necessary.
“Dinner,” he said. “I’m expected downstairs.”
She nodded.
He touched her cheek with the backs of his fingers. Her skin was flushed and smooth. Then he slipped from the room without looking back.
Eventually, she would glimpse him for what he truly was. That glossy veneer of honor that had her fooled would eventually wear away, revealing the darkness beneath.
But he wasn’t ready. Not yet. He rather liked the sweet, pitying way she looked at him, even though he knew he didn’t deserve it. Could never deserve it.
I’ve come to save you, she’d said.
She was a sweet, darling girl. But she was half a lifetime too late.
Chapter Seven
“And then,” Charlotte said, indignant, “she beat me about the head with the aubergine!”
“Oh, dear.” Delia laughed.
“It’s not amusing.”
“It is tremendously amusing,” Delia countered, smiling. “And you know it.”
Yes, Charlotte did. Circumstance might have thrown her and Delia together, but honesty and wicked humor had made them friends.
“I only wish I could have been there. I would have loved to see your—” Delia winced, slowing in the middle of the wooded path.
Charlotte winced a little, too. “Shall we rest for a moment?” She ventured a few steps off the path, into a small, sunny clearing. “I see a few blackberries left over here.”
“Well, don’t eat them.” Delia rested against a tree.
Charlotte plucked the dark berries from the bush, gathering them in her palm. “Why not?”
“You know what they say. You can’t eat blackberries after Michaelmas. They’ve been spoiled by the Devil.”
“Spoiled how?”
“He spits on them.”
“Spits on them?” Charlotte pulled a face. “What a loathsome bit of folklore. Dutch children have Saint Nicholas going from house to house, placing treats in their shoes. We English decide the Devil spends Michaelmas spitting on blackberries.”
“It probably has a practical root. Some goodwife in the Dark Ages had a stomachache after eating blackberries, and they decided the Devil caused it.”
Charlotte wasn’t so certain. “More likely some bad husband drank too much ale and blamed his sickness the next day on blackberries.”
“I suppose it doesn’t matter who it was. They’ve ruined it for the rest of us.”
“Only if we let them.” Charlotte selected a berry from her cupped hand. “Do you dare me to eat one?”
Delia just shook her head.
“Really, I’ll do it. Devil’s spittle and everything.” She tilted her head back and dangled the berry above her mouth. “Last chance to stop me.”
“I would never attempt to stop you,” said Delia. “Trying to stop you is the surest way to encourage you.”
Quite true. Delia knew her all too well.
Charlotte popped the berry into her mouth and gave it a thoughtful chew. “It is rather mealy,” she said, swallowing and throwing the rest to the ground. “Perhaps the goodwives were on to something after all.”
“We should be going.”
“Wait.” Charlotte pressed a hand to her stomach and doubled over. “I . . . I suddenly feel so strange.”
“Are you well?” Delia asked.
“It hurts. Like something’s burning me from the inside. I taste sulfur.” She clutched at her throat and made a gagging sound. “I . . . I think it’s . . . Satan spit!”
Charlotte reeled in a circle and collapsed behind the bushes, limp and lifeless. She waited for Delia to laugh.
Instead of laughing, Delia whispered, “Charlotte, get up. Lord Granville is coming.”
“No, he isn’t,” Charlotte said. Delia was just trying to repay her teasing.
“Yes,” Delia hissed. “He is.”
“Really, I’m not that easily fooled.” Charlotte rose to her knees and peered through the bushes. “Oh, no.”
Piers was approaching. Devouring the distance between them in long, purposeful strides.
She scrambled to her feet, brushing the grass from her skirts. “What could he want?”
“Whatever it is he wants,” Delia murmured, “he looks quite determined to get it.”
Yes. Yes, he did.
Heavens, he was so handsome. His handsomeness was not a new development, of course—but it had begun to affect her in new ways. She felt a strange sense of possessiveness welling in her breast. As if he—in all his strong, sensual desirability—belonged to her.