A Marquis for Mary (3 page)

“Oh, yes, please, let’s walk,” she said. “
Now
, if you don’t mind.”

He wrinkled his brow but did not question her. He took her arm and guided her through the garden, past the people, through the maze of rose bushes, down the pretty path and into a maze of shrubbery trimmed to look like various odd animals. The sound of the crowd transformed to a faint buzz behind them, and at the same moment they let out twin sighs of relief.

He looked at her and smiled as he motioned to a bench in the midst of the shrubbery animals, and she nodded as they sat together.

“It seems we have the same affliction, since we both want to run from the crowd,” he said.

She tilted her head slightly, examining him more closely. “Do you mind if I ask you a question?”

He nodded. “Of course not.”

“That night at the ball, did you leave because I did something wrong?”

He drew back in horror. “No, no, of course not, Mary!”

She blinked at his use of her given name, but he did not correct his social faux pas. He rather liked the feel of her name on his tongue. It was likely as close as he’d get to tasting her skin, feeling her kiss.

“Then why
did
you all but bolt?”

He shifted. “You are direct.”

Her smile flickered. “So I am told, especially by my brother-in-law.”

He hesitated. Did he really want to confess to this young woman? A part of him truly did, but he couldn’t go too far.

“I-I have not been in Society for many years,” he admitted slowly. “For reasons I do not wish to discuss, though I’m certain you could find out some of the details if you ask the right people.” He pushed aside the bitterness that went with that sentence and tried to continue. “Being in the crush, feeling the weight of expectation, well, it is not easy for me. It was cowardly to run that night, and if it left you feeling you had done something wrong, for that I am truly sorry, Mary.”

She shook her head. “You needn’t apologize, though I am happy it wasn’t me that made you dart from the ball. I do understand the pressures of Society. I often wish I could escape, myself.”

He nodded. “Yes, after all, I found you on the terrace that night, didn’t I? Wishing you could fly away like the nightingale?”

She blushed, but it was her only response.

He continued carefully. “You told me then something about the happy marriages of your friends and family and the bad intentions of your father.” She nodded. “Was that him on the steps up at the house? I ask because that man’s arrival seemed to make you intent on escape.”

Her lips parted in surprise and then she ducked her head. “I said too much that first night, my lord.”

“Edward,” he corrected softly. “If we are to be friends and share such confidences, should we not be on a first name basis?”

She hesitated a moment. “Edward, I do not wish to burden you with my petty complaints.”

“Even if I offer to carry them a moment?” he pressed. He found himself leaning in and caught a whiff of the soft, peachy scent of her pale skin. God, he wanted to taste her.

Her breath came shorter as she whispered, “It is all a little too humiliating.”

He felt his hand move, watched it like it was disconnected from his body and mind. His fingers brushed the satin of her cheek, glided up until he cupped her face in a far too familiar way.

“Mary,” he whispered. “It is just you and me.”

“Yes,” she breathed. “It is.”

He couldn’t resist. He lowered his face to hers and suddenly his lips were brushing across hers. She lifted to meet him, her eagerness a lure he couldn’t deny. Suddenly what had been chaste and gentle turned heated. He darted his tongue out and she opened for him, gasping as he delved in to taste her. She made a soft whimper, a tiny sound of surprise and surrender mixed, and his whole body went hard and ready.

He wanted her. It was a shocking truth. He wanted to drop to his knees and lift her skirts and pleasure her. He wanted to feel her body pulse around him and let her milk him to completion. He wanted to strip her bare and look into her eyes as she gave him everything she was.

But those thoughts were too much, too shocking, so instead he forced himself to abruptly break the kiss and get to his feet.

Mary gasped for air as she watched Woodley…
Edward
walk away from her. He had kissed her. Truly kissed her, the same way she sometimes caught Crispin kissing Gemma. A kiss filled with passion and desire, and her body felt like it was on fire as a result.

“I’m sorry,” he said without looking at her, his shoulders lifting and falling on ragged breaths that were much like her own. “I should not have done that.”

She got to her own feet, heat burning her cheeks. “Wh-why?”

When he faced her again, he was expressionless. “It wasn’t proper.”

She nodded. Of course he was right. That was the kind of kiss that got women into trouble. The kind which led to ruin and scandal and even forced marriages. And yet Edward’s dismissal of her, even couched in terms of her own protection, stung.

He cleared his throat. “Despite my very bad behavior, I
do
want to know why you fear your father, why you think he is bound to sell you off to an unwanted suitor,” he said, remaining at least three paces away from her.

She turned away. It seemed more intimate to confess the truth than it had for his hot, slick tongue to breach her mouth and taste her so sweetly. Certainly the second was far more enjoyable than the first. She found herself answering regardless.

“He forced my sister into both her first and second marriages for his own gain,” she said, her voice shaking. “She is very happy now, but that was a turn of fate rather than by his design. He wants to be associated with a title, and since I have failed him for four Seasons, he claims he will retake control of me from my sister’s care at the end of this one.”

Edward’s mouth pinched with displeasure. “Why haven’t you been successful?”

She jerked her gaze to him. “I-I—” she stammered, and once again found the truth falling from her lips. Edward inspired that, it seemed. “My sister and I have said that it is because our father inserts himself whenever there is an interested party. He is humiliatingly obvious in his drive for social increase and it has scared away more than one man. But it is more than that. I have not found a husband because…”

“Because?” he encouraged when she cut herself off.

“Because I want to love someone,” she whispered. “I want to be loved in return. I want someone to kiss me as my sister’s husband always kisses her.” She blushed. “It is the way you just kissed me, actually. Like you couldn’t get close enough. Like you wanted me with every fiber of your being.”

He froze in his place, staring at her. She couldn’t read his expression. Did he think her an utter idiot? That was how she felt at present.

“Or perhaps I misunderstood your desires when you kissed me,” she murmured.

The three paces between them vanished so quickly that when Edward reached her, she started in surprise. He caught her arm to keep her from walking away and dragged her closer, until she molded against him in scandalous closeness.

“You misunderstand nothing.” His voice was rough before his mouth descended on hers a second time.

She knew in her heart that she should push him away. After all, his statement that what they were doing was improper was correct, and she was on shaky enough ground when it came to her future. But as his hot lips burned against hers, as his tongue gently traced the crease of her mouth and then past it, she forgot all that. She forgot everything except him. Him and how he made her aching body feel.

She had never been so aware of her skin. All over, even beneath her gown, she tingled. Those tingles seemed to focus in the most improper of places. Her nipples, for example, and between her legs where the tingle transformed to a throbbing ache she longed to ease.

His arms came around her, imprisoning her in his heat, and she sighed as she relaxed against him. They staggered back and he found the bench they had abandoned earlier. He sank onto the stone and dragged her onto his lap where he continued to explore her mouth with thorough kisses.

And then her mouth ceased to be enough and he pressed those hot, wonderful lips to her neck.

“Edward,” she sighed, tilting her head back and allowing him access. God, the things he did to her. It was like being awakened from a lifelong sleep and suddenly her body felt foreign and funny.

“Do you know how long it’s been since I wanted someone this badly?” he grunted between sweeping his lips back and forth on her throat.

She shook her head because she wasn’t certain she could form coherent words beyond moaning of his name.

He drew back and looked down at her in his lap. “Too long. I didn’t think I would ever want someone again, Mary. But you are so sweet. And even though I know it’s wrong, I want to do such wicked things to you.”

Her eyes went wide. Wicked things. That sounded both terrifying and oh-so-promising. She licked her suddenly dry lips and he grunted out a pained sound. “What kind of wicked things?”

“I want to kiss every inch of your body. I want to claim you. I want to awaken you to all the desires you don’t even know you have. I want to watch you quake in anticipation for hours while I keep you on the edge of pleasure and then take you over with the flick of my wrist. I want you to know you’re mine. And none of that makes any sense because you are almost a stranger to me.”

She stared at him, shocked by his words and he frowned.

“You must hate me for being so forward,” he said.

She cupped his cheeks and looked into his eyes. Beautiful dark brown eyes that sparked with swirling desires much more powerful than she could understand. But also eyes that spoke of great sadness.

“I don’t hate you,” she reassured him softly. “I felt a draw to you from the moment you stood up from the shadows and nearly frightened me to death. And now that you’ve touched me, I am drawn to these acts you describe even if propriety tells me I should recoil.”

His hand moved to cup the back of her head and he made a guttural, possessive sound deep within his throat before his mouth covered hers yet again. She arched into him, aching for more, not understanding quite what the more was, but needing it nonetheless.

She would have surrendered to him in that moment. The fact that it was midafternoon in the middle of a stranger’s garden be damned. She would have given him whatever he asked for in her tangled, confused, wanton state. But she never had to make that desperate decision. As he shifted her in his lap, deepening the kiss to what even she recognized was a point of no return, there was a sound behind her that froze time, that stopped her heart, that made all the beauty of this moment shatter into pieces.

It was the sound of her father’s smug voice.

“Well, well, well,” he said, and Edward immediately broke the kiss and leapt up, forcing Mary to her feet as well.

Edward steadied her as they turned to face the intruder and Mary covered her face as she realized Sir Oswald was not alone. Right behind him were a desperately pale Gemma and a very angry-looking Crispin.

Her father laughed. “It looks like Miss Mary has taken care of her husband problem all on her own at last.”

Gemma’s father was talking, but Edward heard none of it. All he could do was stare at the man’s companions. He knew Crispin and Gemma Flynn all too well. The two men shared a sordid history.

“Woodley!” Flynn growled, taking a step forward that was only stopped by his wife grasping his arm with both hands and holding him steady.

“Crispin, no,” she said, casting a glance behind her toward the house and the party buzzing not so far away. “Don’t make my sister’s troubles worse.”

Edward’s mouth dropped open and he stared from Mary to Gemma and back again. The two women
did
share some small features now that he made the connection, but he had never guessed that Mary’s sister was this woman.
This
woman of all women, married to this man of all men.

“Gemma Flynn is your sister?” he asked, interrupting Mary’s father’s tirade.