“Hurry. When we’re discovered, you can’t be freshening up your peruke. Kiss me.”
He inched backward into a stack of smocks. “Absolutely not.”
“Must I do everything?”
She latched on to his shoulders so that he could not escape and, before she could lose her nerve, planted her lips on his.
She had not taken the initiative to kiss anyone since that first fumbling attempt on Apthorp all those years ago—and it was harder than it looked to do it properly, without accidentally eating someone’s nose or clacking into his jaw with one’s forehead. She felt like a mole nosing in the dark for a berry on a bush just slightly out of reach. Under her fumbling lips Apthorp went completely rigid. She stood up on her toes, trying to get better purchase.
He yanked his head out of her reach. “My God, what are you doing?”
“Kissing you. My brother will come looking for us at any moment. We must be locked in a passionate embrace.”
He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, his eyes flashing with some emotion she couldn’t place.
“You know, Constance, you really must learn to ask permission.”
He must really learn to stop lecturing her, but now was not the time to press the issue.
“Please just kiss me.” It was imperative that when Archer found them, they be engaged in something more convincing than a discussion of the etiquette of courtship.
Apthorp stared at her, as if debating something in his mind.
“Constance, may I kiss you?” he asked in an official, courtly tone, like he was modeling correct behavior on which she might be tested later.
“Obviously.”
Gently, he took a hand and tipped her mouth up to his. Gently, he put his lips to hers.
Given what she knew about the secret ways he spent his time, this pretension to gentlemanly delicacy was rather laughable. And they did not have time for it.
She snatched his head in her hands and mashed her face to his, trying to mount a more persuasive display of ardor before anyone witnessed this chaste, practically nonexistent peck.
She felt a rumble beneath her hands.
His shoulders were shaking.
With laughter.
She gasped and pushed him back. His shoulders hit the shelves, causing a wooden wig stand to fall onto a sack of lavender-scented powder, which erupted in a cloud that itched her nose. She immediately fell into a coughing fit so violent that, half-weeping with laughter, he pounded at her back.
“You cow,” she said through gasps. “Because of you, we will both suffocate.”
He stilled, clearly trying to restrain his mirth. “I’m sorry.”
“What is so unbearably humorous?”
“The fact that you are mauling me in the powdering room.”
“I was not mauling you. I was evincing passion.”
His lip quirked up. “In my experience,” he said softly, “that’s not how passion works.”
“No? It works by tiny mincing nibbles at my lower lip?”
“It builds. Lovers have to get to get a feel for one another.”
“Sounds dreadfully dull.”
He stared at her lips for a beat too long, then glanced up into her eyes.
“I assure you, Constance, it isn’t.”
She wanted to be angry at him, but she could not fail to notice that his eyes no longer held the ire they’d borne when he’d looked upon her yesterday. His gaze was earnest. Like he wanted her to understand something that was important to him.
She found herself at a loss for a response. Because for the first time, she was connecting the rumors about this man and his salacious nocturnal predilections to the person whose eyes lingered on her face rather more kindly than she’d have expected of a hell-raking letch, yet with a knowledge in them that made her shiver.
“Haven’t you ever been properly kissed?” he asked softly.
She stuck out her chin, embarrassed to admit that she was far less bold in her private behaviors than the devil-take-it portrait she liked to affect in public. “Of course I have.”
He bit his lip. “Not by anyone who knew how to do it properly, apparently.”
She knew exactly whom he meant, and he was right, but it was surly and impudent of him to point it out, for after his reaction to her in the garden maze at Rosemount, and that dreadful scene in Devon, she’d avoided any man who’d betrayed the slightest interest in providing demonstration for five years. She had not wished to be mortified again.
And she still did not. Particularly before a man who had just the day before reacted with visceral revulsion at the idea of marrying her.
“Fine,” she shot back. “I confess. I am ignorant of your debauched ways. Maybe had I spent as much time as you cavorting in a den of fornication—”
He let out a sound of absolute shock that she had said that.
“You want to be kissed properly, you wicked girl?” he growled.
“As I said—” she began, but before she could finish, he put his finger to her chin to tip up her mouth, twined his hands behind her head, and kissed her the way she had imagined lovers kissed.
None of that boring, mousy nibbling.
His mouth was on hers, his tongue was against hers, and he was using it to claim her. It was knowing and erotic and demanding and she felt like she would drown.
And not with passion. She couldn’t breathe.
The portrait gallery and the smell of tobacco and the feeling of being trapped came rushing back.
“Stop,” she cried, wrenching her mouth away.
His hands fell to his sides and he broke away immediately, moving back against the shelf behind him.
“Constance? I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to scare you. I’m so sorry.” He looked stricken.
“No, it’s my fault, I told you to do it,” she said quickly, stunned by her own reaction. “It’s only …” She trailed off. She felt overwhelmed and shy. She realized what the problem was, but she didn’t want to say it: she was not good at kissing. It alarmed her and she didn’t understand it. And she loathed—loathed—being observed undertaking tasks at which she did not naturally excel.
Especially by Apthorp.
“I don’t know how to do it,” she admitted darkly.
Slowly, he relaxed. “That’s all right. There’s no right or wrong way to kiss a person. Only the way that you like.”
She glared at him. “I don’t know what I like.”
He bit his lip, like he was holding back a smile. “Ah.”
“Don’t gloat.”
“I’m not gloating. I’m thinking. Perhaps let’s try it the way I like, shall we?”
She nodded, hating this, wishing she could run away, but knowing that they really did need to be caught by her brother, and not at debating her inability to be seduced.
“Close your eyes,” he said softly. His voice was gentle, and there was no longer any laughter in it.
She did.
“Lean back against the wall and relax.”
She tried, but she was nervous. She waited for his lips again, holding her eyes shut tight. Instead his fingers lightly traced her cheek.
“Ideally,” he murmured, “lovers enjoy each other’s touch.” His fingers brushed the back of her neck and landed at her nape, where the small hairs that always evaded her pins fell against her skin. His warmth made her shiver.