He dared to move his mouth against hers, a gentle search for more, an offering, a vow. Hunger coursed through him. He stopped. Waited. Eyes still closed.
She responded in kind, the enchanting caress of her lips as slight and self-conscious as his own. Once more, he moved his lips, perhaps this time less a kiss than a prayer, a prayer that was answered, as for another tiny, sacred moment, they kissed as lovers would.
Then the pressure was gone. She ended the kiss. His lips were cold from her absence and warm from the memory, and new and familiar and alive. He could breathe again, and he sucked in that breath, his body desperate for air, and for, oh, so many things. He kept his eyes closed, because to open them was to lose that precious, tiny moment, but he knew from the murmur of muslin and the whisper of his shirt sleeve over his skin, that she had ducked under his arm and escaped, and was lost somewhere in the room.
He opened his eyes and faced the wall. It was papered with a riot of leaves and flowers and berries.
“What was that?” he asked the ugly wallpaper.
“A kiss,” Thea said from behind him. Her voice was too high and too bright, and he felt a rush of unmerited pride.
She cleared her throat and added, in her usual tone, “That should keep you satisfied for…a week.”
He turned and lounged back against the wall to show he didn’t care. She stood by the writing desk, fingers of one hand curled around its edge, the others fiddling with the ribbon below her breasts.
“What happens in a week?” he asked.
“Um. Two kisses?”
“And in two weeks?”
“In two weeks, we shall renegotiate.”
In two weeks, this farce would be over.
But what if things were different? What if he were a different man? A man who could take a lively bride home and make her happy?
Thea at Brinkley End, lighting up the house, turning it upside down, making it a place that he longed to enter.
Thea at Brinkley End, lonely and bored, sick of him, fading away, her light dimming, her laughter gone, and him, helpless to save her.
She had lived in an isolated country house, she had said, where she had no friends and never quite belonged. Whereas he rarely left his estate these days and spent every evening alone.
Blast it. No. Desire was turning him foolish, the bishop’s words confusing his thoughts.
Her face was half turned away from him as she stared down at the desk, giving him the angle of her jaw, the lock of wayward hair. He searched for words, annoyed both that he could not find them and that he cared enough to try.
But then her manner turned sharp and bright, and the last lingering echoes of that tiny moment and its elusive promise faded away.
“Look! A letter for the Countess of Luxborough,” she said, lifting the paper sitting by her hand.
Rafe suspected that if he mentioned the kiss she would look at him blankly and say, “Kiss? Oh, yes, I forgot.”
Fair enough. It was barely a kiss. He would forget it too, if he could not still feel her lips on his, her caress soaking into his skin like dye.
“But this isn’t Arabella’s hand.”
Her smile dimmed. Oh, blast. It could only be Mr. Knight. A mistake to have called on the man. If he told Thea about the money, she would take it and run, and this would end too soon.
“This is my father’s hand,” she whispered. “How could he possibly know?”
Thea pressed one corner of the letter into the pad of her thumb so hard it left an indent. As she watched, the indent disappeared. Like that kiss: a fleeting feeling, soon gone, easily forgotten.
And yet, not.
Luxborough was watching her intently and more than a little warily, as if he feared she would do something terrible like kiss him again. If she had surprised him, she had surprised herself more. But when he teased her, a kiss had seemed a marvelous idea. When he advanced, seeing nothing but her, thrills had spiraled down her middle. When he stood close, her body warmed to his, even though they did not touch.
Thea was not accomplished at kissing—besides, he was tall and she had not been steady—but perhaps she had not done too badly, because the kiss still bounced around inside her, like a living thing that had become trapped in her body, bumping against various parts of her, creating…sensations.
Oh dear. That was not part of the plan. She was meant to keep him at a distance. He believed they were married, which meant he believed he had a legal right to her body. She had to put things back to how they were, when she annoyed him with her nonsense and he growled at her.
He was rather adorable when he growled.
“You called on Pa?” she asked.
“I married his daughter. Seemed right.” His eyes flicked down to the letter and back again. “Give me the letter. I’ll read it.”
“It’s my letter.”
He lunged for it. She leaped away. Those same thrills spiraled through her, right down between her thighs. She did not know what to make of this, and when their eyes met, he seemed equally confused.
Then he lounged back against the wall, and she scrabbled at the letter so clumsily she tore the page.
“‘My darling Helen,’” she read out loud.
Oh, thank heavens. Her parents didn’t know what she was up to. Helen and Thea had agreed not to tell them, because they were incapable of keeping a secret. And this—this must have been the cause of the joy she had witnessed that day.
Luxborough was eyeing the letter as if it planned an attack.
“What did you say to him?” she asked.
“Hmm?”
“My father. What did you say?”
“Hmm.”
Thea gave up and read silently:
How proud we are of you, to have married an Earl. Just yesterday we learned the new Marquess of Hardbury has returned to England a Bachelor, and we entertained Dreams you might become his Marchioness. But better an Earl in the Hand than a Marquess in the Bush! Thank you, our dearest—We can forget the Troubles your Sister caused, and know that even if I lose everything again, the Little Ones’ future is secure. Nobody stops a Knight!
The paper was suddenly too heavy; Thea lowered it and let it dangle. The too-familiar feeling of having disappointed them lodged in her throat, as sour as old cream. She supposed if she had truly married an earl, they would welcome her home and forget what “troubles” she had caused. Perhaps, if she were a countess, they would discover they did believe her, after all. Well, she wasn’t a countess, and she never would be, but soon Helen would be safely married, and Thea’s pamphlet would be published, and everyone would know the truth. Nobody would stop this Knight.
“What did he say?” Luxborough asked.
“I didn’t read it all.”
This time, when he reached for the letter, she let him take it. The letter did not seem to betray her ruse. Her mind swam with the image of her parents that day, hugging and laughing. The closed blue door.
She didn’t want to think about that. She would think about something else.
“The Marquess of Hardbury!” she cried.
Luxborough did not look up from the letter. “What about him?”
“He’s alive and back in England.”
“And?”
“You already knew?”
“Someone mentioned it today. Everyone assumes that as a peer I am interested in other peers.”