A Breath of Scandal: The Reckless Brides (21 page)

“I do hope you are able to take advantage of it while you can.” Her words were intent, as if the sentiment were deeply felt.

“We are,” he assured her. “You and Cassandra seem amicable as well, despite your differences in temperament.”

“She is the best of sisters. Insisted that I must be able to come when my mother tried to say otherwise.” She looked away from her hand, still held in his, and gazed again out at the lake.

“Yes. That was interesting.”

She did not pretend to misunderstand him. Her eyes, frosted blue and piercingly direct, swept immediately back to his. He had her complete attention now. “Forgive me, but what did my mother say to you yesterday afternoon?”

“She said you weren’t
out
. And then Lord Aldridge rather smoothly warned me off.”

“Lord Aldridge warned you off?” She was looking at him rather intently, her pale eyes probing and searching. As if her question were some sort of test.

“Yes, he seems to take a rather officious interest in your affairs, does he not?”

“God, yes. Most officious. Odious man.” She all but spat the words, as if she couldn’t get the taste of his name out of her mouth. “What did he say? How did he warn you off?”

This, then, was the thorn in her paw.

It was Will’s turn to shrug. It really hadn’t mattered one bloody damn to him what the devil old Aldridge had said. “He said you would not be moving in society.”

“Ooh.” She made a throaty sound of frustrated anger. “He has no say in how I choose to go about.”

“I’m glad to hear it. But it doesn’t matter now, does it?” He rubbed his thumb across the width of her palm. “Because you’re free to move about any way you like here, with us. With me.”

“Yes, I am.” She smiled tentatively at first, nodding, as if she were making a decision to be happy. As if she were willing herself into happiness, step by difficult step. “Yes. You are quite remarkable to have arranged this. How you did it, with no chaperones or interference, I don’t know.”

“How is easy.” He was brilliant at the hows—at arranging plans and putting them into action. It was one of the things that made him an excellent officer. “But why, my dear Pres, that’s the thing.”

That was the thing that had kept him from sleeping last night. That was the thing that had him holding her hand at the edge of a lake. That was the thing between them.

“Pres?”

“Bit of a nickname, I suppose. Can’t bring myself to keep calling you ‘Preston,’ like you were a fellow. Because you’re not a fellow at all, are you?”

“No. I suppose I’m not.”

He looked at her again, there in the flat, overcast sunlight with her face open and unhappy, even as she smiled. And he knew he had to make her happy. Will took off his hat and stepped toward her. “Pres, I’m going to kiss you now.”

“Yes.” Her voice was breathless and low, but her bright blue gaze was too direct to ever qualify as coy. “I do wish you would.”

He took her lips like a man longing for water, who upends a cup to take every last, precious drop. He was greedy for the cool taste of her mouth. Hungry for the pliant texture of her lips beneath his.

He had nothing of restraint. She was open and giving, and he took. He took her softness and her sweetness and her tart insistence. He took her lithe, almost animalistic strength and her well-hidden weaknesses. He took it all.

But he gave, as well. He gave her his care and his protection. He gave her his passion and his need. He gave her everything of his skill for her pleasure.

And she gave him bliss. She gave him the entirety of her self.

*   *   *

Antigone was melting, all her good intentions dropping noiselessly into the hot, dry dust at the bottom of the well deep inside. The well of longing that only Will Jellicoe could seem to fill.

That anyone should do such a thing for her—should come back, should insist on being with her after being rebuffed—was beyond her wildest, most secret imagining. She was floating away on a clear blue sea of gratitude, gliding inexorably toward her fate on a wave of gratefulness, just like one of the swans out on the lake.

Because he was kissing her. And she was letting him.

She had meant to keep him at arm’s length. She had meant to mind her mother’s dire warnings, and explain the way things were with Lord Aldridge. She had meant to be prudent and reticent, and everything logical.

But her awareness of him had been like a physical thing—a pressure, like the energy in the air when a storm was about to sweep the downs. Her father would have called it dynamics, and written an equation to illustrate mutual force and reciprocal attraction. But an equation could not explain why her fingers itched to feel the short strands of his newly cropped hair, or why her lips longed for the feel of his mouth on hers, or why the ache that seemed to have become a part of her dissolved into nothingness the moment he pulled her into his arms.

He kissed her and nothing else existed. Nothing but heat and texture and scent. The supple warmth of his mouth on hers, the raspy feel of his skin against her cheek, the tangy citrus-laden aroma of his body.

He pulled her flush against the long strength of his body, his hand spanning the small of her back, and she flowed into him, pliant and wanting, fitting herself into every breath of space between them. His other hand was at her nape, cradling her skull, angling her head to take her mouth, to fill her with the caress of his tongue upon hers.

She wasn’t melting after all. She was blossoming, warmth spreading languorously from her belly throughout her body. She was floating, swimming in sensation. Only she wasn’t floating. She was plunging in headfirst, immersing herself in the dark liquid depths of desire.

“God, Will, your hair.” Her hands dove into his hair, fisting up the short, tousled lengths.

He broke away only enough to say, “I have been barbered.” He moved to kiss the shivering skin below her ear. “I’m sorry if you don’t like it, but it was necessary.”

Oh, yes. It was necessary to make him even more handsome—she could look at him for days, and still not be done looking. It was necessary to offer her starving senses such an enticing sensual treat—the short, golden strands felt as soft and rippling beneath her fingers as they looked.

It was necessary to abandon herself to gratification. To let the pleasure sweep her under and carry her away on the tide. Away from worry and duty. Away from Lord Aldridge, and toward Will.

Will, who kissed her as if she were vital to his happiness, as if he would breathe her in instead of the damp spring air. As if he would never let her go.

Antigone closed her eyes, and let herself drop into the decadent dreamland between waking and sleep, where every thought gave way to a hundred feelings, and every feeling dissolved into a hundred more sensations of sensual delight.

A delight that danced over the surface of her skin, whirling through her blood, skipping its way deep into her bones. Within the confines of her clothes her body grew restless and dissatisfied by the constraints of fabric and fashion. Her breasts grew sensitive and tender, longing for a different kind of touch.

But his hand was there, giving her what she wanted, sliding up over the surface of the fabric, and easing her need with the weight of his palm. She was turning toward him, angling her body to press against him, to appease the low ache building deep in her belly, and—

“Will?”

The call carried to her by the wind sounded frighteningly near.

Antigone opened her eyes to see Lady Claire cresting the knoll only to stop short at the sight of Antigone tangled in her brother’s arms. The younger girl turned abruptly and put out her hand, as if to warn another. “No, Thomas, they’re not there. This way. They’re over here, I think.”

By the time Lady Claire’s head had disappeared over the other side of the hill, Will and Antigone had stepped hastily apart, backing away from each other as they fought to control their breathing. Antigone fidgeted and tugged her pelisse back into place, and Will reached down to collect and brush the dirt from his dark beaver hat.

“I think she saw us,” she said between gasps.

Will squinted up the hill, gauging the distance. “She won’t have seen much. Only that we were kissing. She won’t have divined the rest.”

The rest being the veritable hayrick of fragile, tenuous feelings still stacked up inside her?

“Will she say anything?” Not that it particularly mattered. Viscount Jeffrey must have guessed, and even Cassandra—thought they had not discussed it—must have had an inkling of Antigone’s true feelings for the great oak-tree-of-a-man. Of their party, that left only Thomas in doubt of their affections—although at this point, “affection” seemed much too listless a word.

“I think not,” Will said. “Not if we reappear shortly, walking along the lake as if the wildfowl were of the greatest interest. Your bonnet is askew.”

“Thank you. There is a dried blade of grass on your hat.” She must sound and look like an idiot. Wonder and enchantment were still wheeling around inside her. She felt like laughing and crying all at the same time.

“Will? Will, where have you gotten to?” Lady Claire called in warning from somewhere ahead of them.

“Here, Claire,” Will called back, before he turned to Antigone. “Ready?”

“As I will ever be.” She took a deep breath. “We had best go.” And because he looked so unruffled when she felt herself ready to fly into a hundred fluttering pieces, she said, “Because there are limits to ladylike behavior.”

He laughed just as she had hoped, a great jolly laugh that vibrated through her breastbone, and insinuated itself beneath her stays.

“You
are
incorrigible. And that’s why I like you.”

He liked her.

Such a mundane expression, suitable for dogs, or carrots, but to Antigone it was the world. To know she had friends who would plot and plan for her, for her amusement and enjoyment and pleasure, who would keep her secrets and care about her happiness, was a gift beyond imagining a few days ago.

And she
liked
him, too. She liked his smile and his hearty, unrestrained laugh. She liked his ability and readiness to join her in adventure. She liked his gorgeous golden hair and his blue, blue eyes, and the way he looked at her sometimes when he didn’t think she was looking. As if she were a puzzle he enjoyed solving. As if he were already thinking up new ways to amuse her. Or teach her about pleasure.

But best of all, she liked herself when she was with him.

It was easy to be happy, easy to get along with the world, when she was with Will Jellicoe.

“Will?” Young Thomas rounded the knoll and ran toward them. “Where have you been? We found the most ferocious peacock strutting about the ruins. He scared Claire to pieces, screeching at her. You should have heard her shriek.”

“I must have heard her,” Will joked. “But I thought it was a peacock. I think we had best head back toward the carriage, because if my weather eye is any good, I fear it’s coming on to rain. Where are James and Miss Preston?”

“They went round the back of the ruin, toward the garden, they said,” Lady Claire answered.

“Everyone kept disappearing today,” Thomas groused.

Antigone chanced a look at Lady Claire, whose fair skin colored all the way to her hairline. The girl took out her embarrassment on Thomas. “Not everyone wants to hear about horses all day long, Thomas.”

“No one wants to hear about horrid novels or stupid poetry all day long, either, Claire.”

In another moment, tongues were going to be stuck out. “I like both horses and horrid novels,” Antigone offered as a balm to calm the waters. “I like horrid novels with horses in them best, but they seem to be few and far between. Have you read
The Castle of Wolfenbach,
Lady Claire?”

“Don’t tell me you read such novels, Miss Antigone?” Will interjected.

“I told you, I read everything. It can’t all be the differential calculus of
Analysis of the Infinitely Small,
and fleecing footmen.”

He laughed, that wonderful, unrestrained laugh that jumbled up her insides. “Appalling.”

“Will!” Lady Claire clearly did not understand her bother’s teasing.

“It’s all right, Claire. If I said Miss Antigone, with her flash mare and her inappropriately vast breadth of reading, was
fascinating
instead, she would undoubtedly become swelled with vanity, and that truly would be appalling. Although if you object so strongly, I might be persuaded to make do with the word ‘lunatic,’ instead.”

Antigone felt her cheeks curve with another smile. She most certainly was a lunatic. “Dangerously moon-eyed and reckless,” her mother would have called her. “Young,” her papa would have said, laughing. But whatever she was, she was happy. What an extraordinary feeling. It felt impetuous and rash and heady. And right.

Because, after just three days of being acquainted with Will Jellicoe, Antigone was newly alive to the possibilities of what could happen between a man and a woman. It hummed through her body like a song, whether she willed it or not. It invaded her every thought, coloring her awareness of him with a new, different sort of restlessness.

Even after an interval of only a few minutes, she longed for him to hold her again. She wanted to feel the little shivers that ran tingling along her spine when he had run his hands lightly along her upper arms, and sent the delicious curling heat deep down inside her.

In those moments beside the lake, Antigone became completely and excruciatingly aware of William Jellicoe as a man, a vibrant, physical being.

When they ascended into the carriage, and sat waiting for Cassandra and Viscount Jeffrey, Will sat directly across from her, and it seemed as if his long legs hemmed her in on every side. The inside of his thigh brushed against the outside of her knee, and it seemed as if each time she drew in a breath, her body moved of its own volition toward his. Warmth and comfort poured off his body, soaking into her, permeating her frame with his vitality and his strength. She tried to move back, away from the lure of his body, mere fractions of an inch from her own, but could summon no willpower to resist.