Much Ado About You

Page 25

His lips came to hers with a certain stillness, as if he merely wished to taste her, to brush their mouths together. The gesture was almost a chaste one, except he was so close to her, bending near, and Tess could smell a clean smell of the fields and drying hay from his coat and his hair.
Before she knew it, the fingers of her right hand curled into the thick hair at his neck and in a second, something changed in his kiss, something patient became less patient. The lips just brushing over hers slanted to the side; she gasped.
“I doubt that any governess would have let you read that particular poem by Catullus, Miss Essex.” There was something amused in his tone. Tess stilled her hand on his hair. He clearly thought that she would be dazzled by the mere touch of his lip. Perhaps knowing that they had never had a governess made him bold. He thought she was naive, because unschooled.
She pulled back, but not abruptly. His eyes were the darkest indigo blue that she had ever seen. She let a faint smile curl on her lips. “You inquire how many kisses of yours would be enough, and more to satisfy me,” she said, and was startled to hear a husky catch in her voice. “As many as the grains of Libyan sand that lie between hot Jupiter’s oracle…as many…” She paused. The look in his eye had made her forget what she was saying. What came after hot oracle?
He didn’t look sardonic now, but truly surprised. She had to leave. This was all entirely too intimate and uncomfortable.
“Alas,” she said, gathering up her skirts again and turning toward the rockslide. “I have quite forgotten the next line, so we shall have to delay this learned discussion.” He was at her shoulder in a moment, helping her over the stones.
“As many as the stars,” he said, conversationally, as if they were talking of gardening, or Romans, or any number of polite topics. “As many as the stars, when the night is still, gazing down on secret human desires.”
“Exactly so,” Tess said, coming out onto the wide expanse of green meadow again. She had suddenly remembered that the Earl of Mayne was courting her and that she had decided to encourage his suit. Kissing Mr. Felton was not prudent under those circumstances.
A footman was standing politely at the edge of the ruins. He showed no sign of having peered into the sunken bath, but Tess felt her face heating. “The party awaits you for nuncheon, miss,” he said, his gloved hands clasped before him.
Mr. Felton held out his arm, and Tess took it. Now she could see the party gathered under the willow trees at the edge of the ruins, Annabel’s bright hair shining in the sun, and Lady Clarice’s parasol dipping to the side and threatening to take someone’s eyes out.
She had held herself cheap, allowing herself to be kissed like a hurly-burly village girl. Surely young ladies who were raised with governesses had more restraint. It was a rather depressing thought. Mr. Felton must think her a veritable hoyden.
They walked silently.
If the truth be known, Lucius was wrestling with the twin devils of conscience and surprise. Foremost, if he were honest, was a potent sense of shock. What the devil had he done that for? He prided himself on adhering to every gentlemanly precept, other than those dictating an indolent life. Why on earth had he thrown the practices of a lifetime to the wind? Not only had he kissed a young lady, but she was the very same lady whom his friend Mayne had decided to wed. Worse and worse.
Moreover, there were consequences for abandoning decorous conduct. When a gentleman kisses (even if tamely) a young lady in a Roman bathhouse, he is obli-gated to make an offer of marriage. Everything he had ever known about young ladies implied that one does not kiss that particular genus of mankind without suggesting matrimony in the near aftermath.
True, Miss Essex seemed to have no particular expectations in that direction. She was not peeking at him in anticipation, nor did she even look particularly pleased to accept his arm as they picked their way back over the field.
A thought occurred to him: Mayne would be outraged if Miss Essex accepted his proposal. Unless he gave Mayne a horse from his stables to assuage his feelings. He felt quite sure that Mayne would happily accept the horse over the bride.
So without letting himself think too much about it, but instead summoning up all of his steadfast determination to remember that he was bred a gentleman, Lucius said, “Miss Essex, I should like to request your hand in marriage.”
Lucius had only proposed once before; it was accepted with rather embarrassing fervor. This time, however, the young lady walked along without even giving a sign of having heard him.
“Miss Essex,” he said more loudly.
She jumped slightly and turned her head. Lucius paused and looked down at her eyes, and then at her mouth, that luscious, deliriously luscious mouth, and thought that perhaps the kiss wasn’t such a bad decision on his part. The thought was followed by a shock of surprise. Was he actually thinking such a thing?
“I should like to request your hand in marriage,” he said, repeating himself.
No overwhelming pleasure swept into Miss Essex’s face. Instead, she narrowed her eyes at him. “I suppose that your question is a punctilious response to what just happened between us?”
Lucius almost stopped walking. “I find your company enchanting,” he said cautiously, looking at her. Their eyes caught and tangled for a moment before she looked away.
“I did not make myself common in order to be enchanting,” she answered.
“You did not make yourself common,” he said. “The fault was entirely mine. I behaved in an unconscionable fashion.”
“I am naturally relieved by your assurance,” she said. “All the same, I decline to marry you on such slender grounds.” There was a hint of a smile on her face.
Lucius knew he should be feeling relief. It was rather annoying to discover he was deeply curious about why she didn’t wish to marry him.
“You needn’t worry, Mr. Felton. I shan’t think twice about that kiss. And since no one saw us, we certainly have no reason to make rash arrangements on the basis of such a triviality.”
A triviality? Triviality? Lucius would have given it quite another name.
“Much ado about nothing,” she said, in a tone that did not welcome further commentary.
Tess walked a little faster, congratulating herself on her thoroughly careless and—to the best of her ability—sardonic tone. Just so might Mr. Felton reject a similar offer, she was certain of that. Not that ladies ever asked gentlemen to marry them. But if a lady did ask Mr. Felton to marry her, he would look at her noncommittally. Sardonically.
“A measure of constraint is likely felt between parties in circumstances such as these,” Mr. Felton said, after a long, silent moment.
The picnickers were quite close now. She turned and smiled at him briefly before waving to the group. “Oh, I see no reason for that.”
“There you are,” Lady Clarice said, rather pettishly, when they finally arrived. “I can’t think what was so interesting in that ruin, if one can even call it that. All I saw were a few holes in the ground and a great deal of stone that poor Mr. Jessop will have difficulty removing.”
The Earl of Mayne leaped to his feet and gave Tess a lavish smile. “My dear Miss Essex,” he said, “may I help you to sit down?”
“My goodness, English gentlemen are chivalrous,” she said with a quick glance at Mr. Felton. Then she took Mayne’s outstretched hand and sank onto a cushion at his side. Mr. Felton had put on his bland expression again and was busying himself next to Annabel, offering to peel an apple for her.