A Breath of Scandal: The Reckless Brides (16 page)

“I don’t know how I can thank you.” She sounded as breathless as she felt.

“You can thank me by giving me a kiss.”

And just like that the breath turned hot and tight in her lungs, and she could no longer breathe properly. But she didn’t need to breathe, because he was looking at her with those blue, blue eyes, and the strength of his gaze held her immobile as he reached out and took her other hand, and slowly brought it to his lips, kissing the turn of her wrist as he drew her nearer. Even though she had anticipated it, the unexpected warmth of his lips on her cool, unprotected flesh stopped her breath in her chest. The shockingly sensual feelings spread through her in delicate, inexorable, rippling waves.

“Preston,” he said with gentle graveness as he stepped closer still. He spoke easily as he kept hold of her hand, caressing and warming it with the heat of his long, lean, strong fingers. And then he brought her fingertips against his chest, resting them snugly against the warm, soft wool of his coat, holding her still before him.

He was going to kiss her now. Heat blossomed through her, making her skin feel singed and quivery all at the same time. She was sure her cheeks must be flaming as she raised her eyes to his.

“To thank me properly, Preston,
you
have to kiss me.”

In the long moment of fraught silence, the breathless heat within her grew higher. She rose up upon her toes and pressed her lips against his cheek. Her lips just caught the corner of his mouth, and she was arrested by the surprising contrast of the softness of his lips next to the slight rasp of the close-shaven skin of his cheek. In the next moment, he turned his face to hers, bringing his lips against hers fully, covering her mouth with his own. His lips moved gently, pressing warmly against hers. Just once.

He encouraged her by turning toward her and angling his head so that his mouth fit against hers just so, and she could feel the warm texture of his lips—roughened by years of sun and rain—and taste the ripe yeast of the bitters upon his breath. She moved her lips, pressing small kisses along the seam of his mouth, exploring the feel and taste and scent of him. She kept her eyes open, looking at him, marveling in the sheer beauty of the man.

His eyes were closed, and he held himself quiet, as if he were waiting. He kept himself carefully away from her, his hands fisted at his sides.

Oh, but she wanted to be held by him, the way he had held her on Velocity, and in the tavern yard, when his strong arms had encircled her, enfolding her in his warmth.

Her hands curled into his lapels, holding him there, still and waiting before her, while she gazed and explored and tasted. She pressed her lips to his again, angling her head as he had done, taking the plush firmness of his lips between hers, feeding the hungry curiosity that rose within her.

But it wasn’t enough for him to stand quietly and let her kiss him. She wanted him to dip his head down, and cover her lips with his. She wanted to find out what the warmth of the sun tasted like. She wanted to press her body to his, and pull him down onto the hard cobbles, and run her fingers through his hair, or sink with him into the softness of a bed and—

Oh heaven bloody help her. She broke away, frightening herself with the sheer force of her attraction to him, the strength of her desire.

She quivered at the feel of his breath fanning along her cheek as he very slowly withdrew, and replaced his lips with his hand, running his callused thumb across her lower lip and then along the line of her chin.

Antigone felt the delicate sensation all the way to her toes. She swayed toward him, desperate for the deep, compelling feelings to continue.

But he leaned away, dropping his hands to fists at his sides. “It’s growing late. It’s been a long night.”

“Lord, yes.” Her voice was nothing but a whisper. “Has it been only one night?”

“It seems longer, doesn’t it.” His smile brightened the gray light.

“Yes.” It seemed like a lifetime.

“You’d best go back in through there.” He indicated the door with a tilt of his head. “Can you find your way back upstairs from there?”

“Yes, I think so,” she answered automatically. Why didn’t he want to kiss her anymore? “I suppose it’s time for you to leave now,” she mumbled in the direction of his boots. Maybe it would be easier if he were the one to go, since she couldn’t seem to manage it. Her breath was still rising and falling in her chest in deep, unruly spasms.

“I suppose,” he agreed quietly as he smoothed her hair behind her ear. “Because frankly, it’s no longer safe for me to stay here, is it? Because if I stay, I’ll be here a very, very long time. And there is a limit to gentlemanlike behavior.” And very slowly, his head came down and he kissed the top of her forehead.

Antigone closed her eyes at the devastating tenderness of that small benediction. She hadn’t imagined it all on her own—he felt the force of desire between them, as well. But he was an honorable man.

“Until tomorrow.” One more nod of his head, and he turned away, the cape of his greatcoat swirling about his boots as he walked away into the enveloping night.

Then and only then did she let out her breath.

Not only would it be a wonder if she made it up the stairs, and back into her room without being caught, but it would be a wonder if she managed to fall asleep at all.

Because for the first time in a long, long while, consciousness was more wonderful than the blessed oblivion of sleep.

Commander William Jellicoe was her friend. And he had also become something very much more.

Chapter Ten

Will waited in the shadows of the stable yard, gazing upward at the facade of the west wing, waiting and watching for some sign that Preston had made it back to her chamber safely. But there was nothing to see, no obvious indication that the evening was at last done, and he could go home.

So he didn’t. He stayed.

He did exactly as Preston had so cavalierly suggested and laid himself down in the clean hay of an empty stall to wait—for what, he wasn’t sure.

A number of rooms near hers to be illuminated by candlelight? The sound of a shrill denunciation? Or perhaps just a rumor, carried from a servant to the stables as Northfield’s staff went about their early-morning work?

But nothing of that sort happened. What did happen was that, as the morning crept over the horizon, he fell into a deep and dreamless sleep, which was a welcome change from the night before, which had seen him staring at the ceiling, wide awake in frustration at four o’clock in the morning.

He was awakened after a few blissfully restful hours by a stable boy, who assumed he was just another drunken nob who had fallen into the hay to sleep off the worst of his excesses, but the lad was happy to find the stable master when Will gifted him with a sovereign, and politely requested assistance in procuring a ride home.

He was dispatched in a small closed carriage back to the bosom of his family at Downpark, whereupon he stripped off his clothes, bathed in the hottest water an earl’s well-paid and highly experienced staff could provide—which was gorgeously scalding—and slept for another four hours before he felt himself equal to the task of pondering his adventures of the night.

Their adventures.

Upon sober reflection, he found himself to be remarkably free of any recriminating regret. If he had the evening to live over again, he reckoned he would go about it in exactly the same manner—though perhaps with the omission of the brawl in the tavern. Still, all in all, it had been one hell of a fascinating evening.

However.

They may have escaped a reckoning last night, but the fact remained that he may have left Preston to face judgment all by herself. And that he would not allow. He was, as he had told her, her confederate, but moreover, he was both an officer and a gentleman. If there were to be consequences from their evening, he would not stand idly by.

Wealdgate, her village, lay to the east, across the border in the county of Sussex, which was, in the hidebound way of the English countryside, practically a foreign country. Will was sure there were people belonging to Downpark who had never crossed into the neighboring county. But Broad Ham was not one of them.

“Redhill, is it, Master Will?” Broad Ham thrust his chin upward toward the ceiling of Downpark’s roomy carriage house to contemplate Will’s request. “That’s what I thought. Suppose I don’t need to ask why you’re wanting to go there.”

“I suppose you don’t.”

“Trust ye concluded your business in a satisfactory manner last night then, young sir?”

“Not entirely satisfactorily, Ham. Hence the need to travel to Wealdgate. Can I get there and back by evening?”

“Depends on how you go. And you, all togged out in yer brother’s best clothes.” He looked Will over from hat to boots, and reached out to adjust his—or rather, his brother’s—beaver top hat to the correct angle. “Damn me if I wasn’t right to wish you happy after all. Right then. Ye’ll not be wanting to ride, judging from the ginger way you’re walking this morning.”

“No, thank you.” Will made a mental note to get himself to a tailor, but said no more. Anything else would be humiliating. Trust Broad Ham to pick up on the fact that Will was as saddle sore as sore could be. It had been over ten years since he had last sat a horse for any appreciable length of time—the navy not being known for its cavalry—and sitting behind Preston’s saddle had made his arse feel as if he’d been turned over a cannon for flogging.

“Ye’ll want a carriage, then. Something smaller than a four, or are ye wanting to do the thing in style?”

“I’m not doing ‘the thing,’ Broad Ham, only making an afternoon visit. The barouche box is not necessary.”

Broad Ham made an inelegant sound of understanding, and cocked an eye at the sky. “I could put you in a phaeton, but I’m thinking the Stanhope gig ’ed be best, if the weather holds. One of the lads can drive, if you don’t want to take the ribbons yerself.” Broad Ham looked askance at Will’s hands, as if he might divine his driving skills from the state of his palms. “Or I’m sure young Master Thomas would be happy to drive for ye. A fair hand, your young brother is.”

Will’s fourteen-year-old brother, Thomas, whom he hardly knew—the boy had been an uninteresting infant of only three or four when Will had left home to join the navy—was supposed to be ensconced with his tutor, learning whatever exotic language their father, the earl, currently thought politically expedient. But Will found that all he had to do was send a polite inquiry to the boy via a footman, and his exuberant younger brother came tearing down from the schoolroom.

“Broad Ham says I can drive? What carriage are we taking? Can we have the grays?”

“The Stanhope, I understand. But these are questions that are better put to Broad Ham.”

The lad tore off to consult with Broad Ham—or more likely hector at him—about the selection of the single horse that would pull the elegant gig. But they seemed to come to a quick agreement, for less than two minutes later, the lad had the ribbons in his hands and was driving the gig out to pick up Will.

“Do you know where we’re going?”

Thomas’s look of confident superiority wavered. “Don’t you know?”

“Not a clue. North and east, I should expect.”

Broad Ham was happy to play the oracle. “You’ll want to head east through the Garden Wood, and then up the Hill lane toward the Flat Down,” he began, and continued along in the same familiar manner. “Water’s been running high with all this rain, so you’ll want to check the bridge over the river at the bottom of that little rise—”

“God’s balls, Broad Ham. Have you not got a map?”

“A map, sir? What would I want with a map?” Broad Ham pronounced the word as if he were completely unfamiliar with the item in question. “Ne’er looked at one myself.”

“Really?” Will was very fond of maps and charts himself. Half of his time as a midshipman had been spent poring over charts of the French coast. He must have memorized every nook and crag from Brest to La Rochelle before he had ever sailed into their waters. “Then how do you know where everything is?”

“Keep it in my head, don’t I, where it belongs.”

“But how did you learn it?”

“Going about, all these years, keeping my eyes open, and learning what I see. See?”

Country thinking. Will almost shuddered to think he needed to get used to it. Almost. As he had discovered last night, the country did have its compensations.

“Seems to me,” Broad Ham opined under his breath, “that you kept your eyes open enough last night to see what you wanted to see.”

Will shot the coachman the kind of look that had always made young midshipmen’s cods shrink up in their bodies for safety. “Broad Ham.” He would not have Preston’s name, or even the suggestion of her name, bandied about a stable yard. Never mind what he himself might have bandied in the inn yard last night. Or in the stable yard at Northfiled. Or in the courtyard next to the house.

Broad Ham was not in the least anything like a young midshipman, but the big coachman put his hand across his heart. “Apologies, Master Will. But you did ask my opinion.”

“I asked for your opinion last night, not today.”

“Ah, well. It’s like the Bible says, young sir. Ask once and you shall receive forevermore.”

“That’s not what the Bible says, Broad Ham.”

“Ah, well. You’re the one that’s supposed to know, seeing as how you’re the one as can read maps and all.”

With that flea in his ear, Thomas and Will set off.

Thomas had no trouble following Ham’s convoluted instructions east into Sussex, and in no time they were bowling through the damp early-spring countryside and into the picturesque village of Wealdgate, where a polite inquiry at the White Horse Inn directed them north again from the village High Street, and down a long muddy lane.

At the raw end of the lane lay Preston’s home, Redhill. Will looked across the sweep of well-tended lawn to the red-brick face of the elegantly balanced Queen Anne–style house, with its even row of windows glinting peacefully in the morning sun. It looked exactly like its chief inhabitant—sunny, confident, and delightful.