“And that’s when you accosted me?”
“Would you stop saying that?” she snapped, her hand slapping the surface of the water, sending it spraying through the air. She swam forward, stopping just short of where the water became too shallow. Closer now, she glared up at him. “It makes me sound positively predatory.”
He arched a brow. “Does it? Well, that’s not an inaccurate description.”
“It was not like that!”
“You tore my waistcoat,” he reminded.
“I popped a few buttons,” she protested. “They’re easily mended.”
“If I was to find them. Right now they’re scattered somewhere on the floor of the library—”
“I’m an excellent seamstress,” she declared. “I can befit your waistcoat with new buttons. Finer buttons than before.”
“Can you now? Fine buttons, eh?” he mocked. “Well, that will go some way toward reparations.”
“Reparations?” she echoed, looking quite stunned. She really was easy to unnerve, a fact he found quite diverting. He could discourse with her all day, in fact.
She continued, “You hardly offered protest, sirrah, when I accosted you.”
He shrugged. “Call me a gentleman. You were in quite a fever and very demanding. Who was I to deny you? I did not want to cause you further distress.”
Her hot gaze actually burned him. “A true gentleman would have turned me away.”
He laughed. “No man, gentleman or not, would have turned his back on a fetching, half-dressed woman throwing herself at him.”
“You make me sound a . . . slattern.”
“Not at all. I respect any woman strong enough to know her mind and claim her own passion. There is no shame in that.”
She gazed at him skeptically.
For a moment, he had a flash of his mother, Helene, as he’d last seen her . . . dark hair like spilled ink on her pillow; not a strand of gray even at her age, not even in her condition. She had been stretched out in a bed, a ghost of her former self. So much in pain. Used up and forgotten and forever broken from all the men in her life, his father included.
Kingston didn’t believe in shame. It was a construct invented to keep people inside Society’s lines—to keep them inside and feeling acute remorse if they ever dared to stray outside those lines.
There was not shame. Only risk.
And the memory of that, of Helene, was enough to kill his good humor.
“Have a care, though,” he heard himself saying rather bitterly. “The next man you corner in the middle of the night might not be so kind as to walk away without lifting your skirts and taking his own pleasure.”
She flinched.
He saw that other scenario in his mind and it turned his stomach. The scenario of Miss Charlotte Langley with some other man. A far rougher, greedy man uncaring of her needs. Any number of men would have taken her in the library whether she wished it or not. They would not have hesitated to seize all she offered and plunder her, and it left him dazed with anger.
He wasn’t just angry at these phantom men. Indeed not. He was incensed at her. Incensed that she would risk herself so foolishly.
“I vow to you,” she whispered, “what happened in the library was not my customary behavior.” Another breath, jagged as a broken bit of glass. “And I told you why.”
“Ah, yes. The elixir.”
Her face tightened in anger and suddenly she was splashing water at him, soaking his trousers.
He jumped back against the onslaught. The nerve of the girl! “Brat,” he muttered, shaking out first one leg and then the other. Even his boots were wet. Fortunately they were made to withstand the elements.
“I speak the truth, and it’s maddening that you truly think me some vulgar manner of female who goes about climbing all over strange men like she is eager to . . . to—”
“Rut?” he suggested.
“Oh!” She gasped at his suggestion.
“Apt, I think.” He nodded.
“You are a wretched, wretched man.”
Smiling, he wished he could see her more clearly through the water, but he could only make out her vague shape.
She swam backward from him, her chin bobbing at the waterline as she inched away, her hands working feverishly under the surface.
“You weren’t thinking that of me earlier,” he taunted after her, the toes of his boots stepping closer, right up to the water’s edge.
She released a cry of outrage while still continuing her retreat. “Please come no closer. Stay where you are until I emerge from the water.”
“Why?” He looked down at the water lapping the tips of his boots. “Are you afraid of me? You know I could have had you last night. You would have made no protest. I would think that earned me a modicum of your trust.”
“You’re a cad to fling my ill behavior at me.”
“Your ill behavior?” He tsked. “Is this not where you again insist that you were drugged with an aphrodisiac and lacking all control over yourself? The behavior, then, is not yours.”
“You continue to mock me.” Even as her words vibrated with angry emotion, she ceased to swim away. In fact, she began gliding forward again, toward him, moving as sinuously as an adder.
He shook his head and stared at her with earnest sincerity as she inched closer. “No. I do not mock you. You believe in your rubbish. That much I know.”
Her eyes flared, but she did not retreat again.
“Are you not a little curious, though?” he continued.
“About what?”
“The library . . . You blame it on this aphrodisiac your sister invented, but wouldn’t you like to know?”
“Know what?”
“If it could be like that again? Without your sister’s potion?” He was humoring her. He knew it. But he could not forget the way she had shattered in his arms, desire convulsing through her. It was impossible to forget. As impossible as not wanting to experience it again.
Impossible, indeed.
“Would you not like another climax?” he taunted. “To see if it’s as good as before?”
Those eyes of hers grew larger yet. “I am certain it won’t be,” she said in clipped tones.
He let loose a bark of laughter. She was blunt. And impertinent. Again, it boggled his mind that he had so vastly misjudged her. How had he ever thought her insipid?
It was gratifying that she’d admitted her climax had been good—even if only indirectly. At least there was that. Especially as she had been denying the authenticity of her desire with the most maidenly airs. In this, she was truthful.
This, if nothing else.
“Oh?” He arched an eyebrow. “You seem very sure of that.”
“Indeed I am.” She sniffed. “The tonic clearly heightened the experience.”
He closed his eyes in a tight, long blink. She was unbelievable. The lass was infuriating. He reopened his eyes to look at her. “Is that a challenge?”
“Simply true.”
“Do you not feel it now? The sparks between us?” He motioned across the distance. “I’m standing here, and you’re there in the water, but it’s still there. The heat between us that has nothing to do with the temperature.”