Hecate might be giving him time to marshal his courage, but he suspected she was also appreciative of a chance to put the evening’s busyness behind her.
“What do the ladies discuss over the teapot?” he asked.
“The gentlemen, mostly, and sometimes the latest news from Town.” She cuddled closer and sighed. “I was supposed to kiss you witless and part you from your reason. I had planned to, in a general sort of way.”
“And I promise to dazzle you with my charm, just as soon as I’ve settled my nerves.” He kissed her fingers. “Those people exhaust you, and they rattle me. I was happy cutting hay this morning, Hecate. That’s who I am. A farmer who has enjoyed more good luck than most, nothing more. I was miserable trussed up like the Christmas goose in evening finery, listening to a lot of peacocks deride the ladies. Portia is frustrated with her situation, and I think you are right to be worried about her, even in the company you’ve recruited for this gathering.”
“And if Portia steps past the line of good behavior, she’ll take Flavia with her by association. I tell myself they are doing the best they can, though they are headstrong. I was headstrong, too, but not like those two.”
Phillip kissed Hecate’s ear and considered her words. “Portia and Flavia are what you could have become, but you resisted both Portia’s bitterness and Flavia’s surrender of her intelligence. I admire you for that. Society would probably call you headstrong, but I call you brave and determined.”
Hecate kissed his cheek, which he probably should have taken the time to shave again. “Society calls me unnatural, on the shelf, managing. I like your words better.”
She kissed him again, not a ravishing charge into an erotic affray, but rather, a gentle invitation. Phillip obliged, and by soft, sweet degrees, the evening’s frustrations and bewilderments fell from his grasp. He shifted so he straddled the stone wall, and Hecate was nestled against his chest.
“I could spend the night like this,” she said, “cuddling, talking, kissing. I loved seeing you with your shirt off.”
I love you. He caught the words before they would have become audible, but the rightness of them was beyond debate. To hold Hecate on a soft summer night, to hold her trust and her confidences while desire hummed quietly to life was precious. Soil that rich could grow a family, a happy and long old age, a thriving estate.
“I loved sitting in the gallery with you,” Phillip said, “time flying past while we talked about anything and everything.”
“And we kissed,” she said, hiking her legs over his thigh. “I would like to see Lark’s Nest. Tell me about it.”
Hecate became a warm weight on his heart while Phillip prosed on about his broodmares, his favorite bridle paths, his neighbors, and his ideas for building a small conservatory and propagation house, until Hecate’s breathing was regular, and her eyes closed.
“I’ve farmer-ed you to sleep,” he said, which doubtless went squarely under the heading of Not Done when a man was bent on courtship.
“No, you have not. I like the feel of your speaking voice here.” She patted his chest. “You are passionate about your acres, not merely a good steward of them. I am the same way about my investments.”
“Tell me.”
She did, her recitation gathering momentum and wandering from a sailors’ home—her favorite charity—to the cent-per-cents, to her father’s complete lack of interest in anything other than the total of her wealth.
“Papa is a pragmatist,” she said, yawning. “We understand each other.”
Phillip heard in that statement both acceptance and longing. Would it have been too much to ask for Isaac Brompton to have shown her some fondness? Some appreciation? Some loyalty?
“I’d like to meet him.” The notion of asking Brompton for permission to court his daughter struck Phillip as ridiculous, but Hecate deserved that courtesy.
“I’d rather we slip away to Lark’s Nest.” Hecate sat up. “Papa can be charming, but I’m a penance to him.”
“You are a reproach. He’s a grown man without inherited wealth or title, and he’s spent his life sitting on his arse resenting your capabilities.”
Hecate brushed her thumb over Phillip’s lips. “And my patrimony, let’s not forget that.” She stretched luxuriously, which strained the fabric of her bodice most intriguingly. “I am no sort of siren, Phillip. I apologize for that, but supper did tax me somewhat.”
Now that the time had apparently come to part, Phillip wished it hadn’t. He wanted to take down Hecate’s hair, to slide that fetching frock from her shoulders, to feel her hands on his bare flesh.
“Sirens are flighty creatures bent on luring a fellow to his doom,” Phillip said. “Perhaps we both need some time to adjust to this… attraction.”
Hecate swung her legs down and stood. “You are like no fellow I could have imagined. I don’t need time to adjust, and neither do I regard the past hour as anything but delightful. I have…” She waved a hand. “Romped. I can romp again this very night if I please to. With you, I’m not romping, and I don’t want to romp.”
Phillip rose and dusted off his backside. “What do you want of me, then?” A gentleman had to ask, and worse than that, he had to accept the lady’s answer with good grace.
She hugged him fiercely. “That you would inquire into my wishes… I want to wallow, Phillip. To luxuriate in the wonder of you, to have all afternoon to talk and touch and meander along. I want to see you with your shirt off and smile at you down the table while everybody else looks on. I want to have you to myself and show you off to the world. I’m not making sense.”
“I want,” Phillip said, looping his arms around her shoulders, “to go carefully and to gallop. To toss caution to the wind and exercise the greatest prudence. To offer you flowers, poetry, and all my dreams, and to sit with you in silence while we watch the sun rise on a new and wonderful day.”
I am smitten and inebriated and terrified and determined.
Hecate kissed him, and this kiss had an edge. “Even your words,” she muttered against his mouth. “Your ditches and hedges and silences…”
He had no idea what she referred to, but he was very aware of her person pressed to him from chest to thighs. In some purely male corner of his mind, he realized that Hecate Brompton had eschewed stays, and his dreams trotted off in the direction of a soft bed of clover and a blanket of night stars.
Hecate glossed a hand over his falls. “You too,” she murmured. “I was supposed to ravish you, and then I lost my nerve, and now…”
She swooped back in, anchored a hand in Phillip’s hair, and twined a leg around his hips. He shifted them, hiking Hecate onto the stone balustrade, and the fit was sublime.
He’d found two of the pins securing her bun when an odd sound checked his explorations.
“What?” Hecate rested her forehead against his chest, her breathing labored. “Is somebody coming? I am not inclined to care.”
Phillip shoved the pins back into her bun. “Either somebody is already here, or the owl nesting in your home wood has taken to tippling. Let’s get back to the house, shall we?”