Edith Layton (15 page)

“D
o
remember that,” she said fiercely.

“But I am not talking about nonsense,” he told her
gently and whirled her away across the floor too fast for her to find the breath to answer him.

He left her with a bow, and another of those strangely sad smiles that troubled her so much that for a few minutes she forgot her burning desire to talk with Damon. He didn’t, however.

“Come with me,” Damon said, catching up her hand. “We’ve got an excuse. Lady Sinclair needs your help with Max.”

“M
ax
? Is he all right?” Gilly exclaimed. She left the ballroom with him at a trot. “It’s his stomach!” she muttered as she pattered up the stair by his side. “I knew it. He was in the kitchens watching them prepare. They must have stuffed him with so many sweets that…oh!”

Because no sooner had he got her up the long stair then he pulled her into a darkened niche in the hallway and spun her into his arms. His kiss was just as sudden, wild, and impassioned, his mouth hot and sweet as it stole all sense from her.

He dragged his mouth from hers and stood locked tightly to her, his hands on her bottom holding her, his lips against her hair. She could feel his risen passion, she could scarcely believe her own. “Gilly,” he muttered, “if our wedding day doesn’t come soon…”

“It will come soon as it always does,” she said shakily.

“What is it you wanted to say to me?” he asked, his mouth on her brow, his lips soft against her cheek, and then demanding against her mouth again.

She couldn’t remember. But when he finally let her go, she did. “The lady…Annabelle,” she breathed.

“What?” he asked, confused.

“Your mother and Felicity told me about Annabelle,” she said, tilting her head back, trying to read his expression in the dim light.

“Annabelle who?” he said.

She laughed and flung her arms around his neck. With his lips on hers, that was enough answer for her. For now.

G
illy sat on the quilt they’d spread on the grass and watched the sun strive to make Damon even more radiant. It seemed impossible. He reclined on his side, head propped on one arm, watching her, his expression mischievous. Or so she thought. She couldn’t be sure, because she couldn’t look at him too long. He dazzled and daunted her. Damon Ryder, the Catch of the Season, and looking every languid inch of it this long, late summer afternoon.

He wore form-fitting fawn breeches, a brown-and-gold waistcoat, and high brown boots with golden tassels. He’d taken off his tightly fitted jacket, and lay there in his shirtsleeves, the white of his linen making his smile even more dazzling as he grinned at her. His skin was so clear and smooth, but now she could see
the tiny laugh lines that radiated from those sun-filled eyes. She longed to move even closer to him, to touch the soft hair that gleamed in the sunlight, to see from up close what exactly to make of that new light dancing in his silvery eyes.

Such a handsome fellow! But she’d always known that; she’d just never felt it before. These past few days had changed something subtle between them. She’d never been so aware of him. Or of her own reactions to him. And of her growing uneasiness about it and their situation. He wasn’t making it any easier for her today.

They’d found a grassy spot of lawn near a small fountain, behind a flowering hedge. The age of pleasure gardens might be over, but Vauxhall Gardens was still a summertime haven for those elegant persons who stayed in London, as well as those who couldn’t afford to leave it. It had huge pavilions and galleries, and spectacular spaces where hordes of patrons could listen to music and dine, dance, or watch staged tableaux and spectacles, and fireworks in the evenings. But it also had dark walks through heavily treed lanes, dozens of hidden grottoes, as well as unexpected little garden spots everywhere for the adventurous, or scandalous, to discover.

This was a little bower tucked behind a flowering wall of roses and honeysuckle. The fragrance, borne by a soft breeze, drifted over them. A bronze Triton and his adoring nymphs poured spouts of tumbling water into a tiny rock-lined pool. It reminded Gilly of the night they met, though it was brilliant daylight now. Birds sang to the accompanying sound of the gushing waters, the light wind riffled the leaves in the towering
trees overhead. As soon as Bridget and Damon’s sisters had gone strolling, Damon had taken Gilly to the hidden garden he’d discovered and spread out one of the quilts Bridget had supplied.

The only concession Gilly could make to the warmth of the afternoon was to take off her bonnet and let the breeze have its way with her hair. She wore a charming round gown of buttercup yellow, but she desperately missed her boy’s garb. She had to sit up straight. It was hard for a lady of fashion to sit any other way without having more joints than an acrobat, impossible to lie down the way Damon was doing without looking positively sluttish. Most of her bosom might be exposed to the air, but not her ankles—her arms, but not her legs. It was a rarely lovely day; morning mists had cleared to a radiant afternoon. Which Gilly couldn’t appreciate, sitting up like a stuffed duck. Ridiculous, she fumed, just another thing to unsettle her today.

He saw her uneasiness. “Relax,” he commented lazily. “It’s all perfectly proper. We look like we’re alone, but it’s only Vauxhall Gardens, where the world and its uncle comes to play. Well, we are alone in a bower, I grant you, yes. But my mama is patrolling the gardens, my sisters and all their noisy offspring are within shouting distance. Look at me. I’m not worried at all. If you try to compromise me, they’ll get you.”

She smiled, but kept fidgeting.

His expression softened. “Gilly? They are nearby, that’s true. But so are you, and we
are
sheltered from prying eyes by all the shrubs. Do you think…? Could you sit a little closer? There’s nothing to worry about. It’s broad daylight, you know.”

“Huh,” she said, flustered. “As if that makes a difference. Half the bastards in London town were made in the daylight…oh! Oh, Damon,” she cried, agonized. “Just listen to me! You don’t deserve that. Not the thought, not the kind of female who’d even think it, much less say it!”

She didn’t know a man could move that quickly. “No,” he whispered in her ear, one arm going around her, the other on her flushed cheek, tilting her head up. “Look at me, Gilly girl. Not such a bad thing to say, or to think. Especially since it’s true. Not the sort of thing to say in polite company, but since when am I polite company? Come, this isn’t like you.”

“You know what I found out just today?” she asked, laying her cheek against his, glad she couldn’t look in his eyes, sorry she breathed in the scent of him now. Because she needed a clear head to say such an important thing to him, and the attar of sun-warmed clean linen and spice and Damon was intoxicating.

She drew a shuddering breath when she felt his steady heartbeat against her own breast. And because of what she had to say.

“I heard your sisters wanted to go to Almack’s,” she said in a rush, “but your mama said they shouldn’t because I couldn’t go with them. Because I was never given vouchers to go there. Much I care! Or cared, that is, when I heard that even with all of Ewen’s influence, those old crows wouldn’t give me permission to enter what they consider their sacred halls. It is just a drafty hall, whatever society thinks. And it
is
for society misses, not for the likes of me. But who cares? It’s a paltry place for dancing, worse for eating and drinking,
or so Ewen said. I didn’t mind, really. But I do now. I mean, your sisters should go. How often do they come to London, anyway?”

She felt his body tense as she spoke. His hand slowed as he stroked her hair. “It don’t mean a fig to me,” she explained, still not looking up, “but they’ll miss their old friends and a chance to hear new gossip. Because of me. And as for that, what about our children—if we have any. Who can say what they might have to miss? This is all because of me. It makes me think, and so should you. It’s a problem, Damon, we can’t ignore it.”

His voice was deceptively calm when he spoke again. “Almack’s?” he said. “I see. And how did you hear this today?”

“Well, I came down to breakfast and your cousin Felicity was telling your mother about it. They hushed as I came in and changed the subject. But I’d heard enough to know the way of it.”

“Have to rise before dawn to fool you,” Damon muttered, “but I don’t think the old wretch was trying to. Gilly,” he said, drawing back, holding her shoulders as he tried to catch her gaze directly, “Cousin Felicity’s a scandalmonger. If she can’t find scandal, she invents it. She looks like the dear old auntie everyone wishes they had, but she’s a harpy in disguise. Mama puts up with her because no one else will. She’s always saying Felicity isn’t so bad, but we all know she is. She’s not a favorite of mine. I’m not one of hers, either, though she’d cut her throat before she’d admit it. She knows how her bread is buttered and knows there are some things Mama will not stand for. It isn’t that Felicity
prefers Annabelle, it’s that she knows I don’t.”

But now Gilly stiffened. She flung back her head to clear her eyes of the errant strands the breeze had slipped from her topknot. She stared at him. “You
do
know who Annabelle is!” she breathed.

“Well…of course,” he said, taken aback. “We grew up together.”

“But the other night!”

“Oh,” he said, with the flicker of a smile that faded when he saw her eyes were glowing bright, smoldering with repressed emotion. “That. The other night when you were in my arms?”

He paused, running a hand through his hair, wishing she was in his arms now, where he could speak to her with his heart as well as his lips. “I didn’t lie,” he told her in all honesty. “It’s just that I can’t think when you’re that close. Gilly, I could’ve asked Annabelle to be my wife any time this past decade. But I didn’t want her. I want you.”

“Why? No!” She put up one hand. “Don’t go on about my eyes or nose or any of my body parts. Or give me that nonsense about how unique I am. That’s the point. I am. And not at all acceptable, either, in spite of Bridget and Ewen and all the king’s horses and all the king’s men. Or all the viscount’s men,” she muttered.

“Your sisters have every right to go to Almack’s. I don’t belong, and everyone knows it. I’m a slum brat jumped up to a nobleman’s ward, but I am who I am. Damon…” Her voice was almost pleading. “I didn’t know how highly placed your family was. I didn’t realize how they all adore you. I
am
‘not quite the thing’ and well I know it. Think long and hard about the
future, will you? I
do
know more about life than most girls. And what I know too well is that men—even the best of them—often think with their…um, that is to say…” She paused, lowering her lashes over her eyes to hide her dismay. She’d almost said the common vulgar expression right out loud. It was one thing to admit her low origins, even to try to discourage him from a misalliance. But she couldn’t bring herself to give him a disgust of her.

“They often think with their…impulses,” she concluded weakly.

“I
mpulses
? Interesting,” Damon said. He spoke soberly, but he was grinning like a boy, though Gilly was too embarrassed to look up and see it. “What an inventive euphemism,” he mused. “But one that would get a gent in trouble, I’d think. Consider if he has to go to a physician for an annoying malady he contracted from a lady—say, one who shared her favors too generously? ‘Doctor, I seem to be having some trouble with my impulses.’ ‘Hmmm, indeed?’ the good physician says. ‘You mean you wish to do things you ought not?’ ‘Oh no,’ the unfortunate fellow says, ‘I mean my impulse is doing things it ought not.’ ‘Like making you act out things you should only think about?’ ‘Good heavens, no! I never think about such painful things as my impulse is feeling now!’ Oh?” Damon asked, seeing Gilly’s bent head and shaking shoulders. “You’re weeping for the poor man?

“And why not?” he asked pleasantly, tickled at her response to his nonsense. “Who knows what the doctor will treat given such a complaint? The fellow might end up in Bedlam instead of being given mercury for
the pox. But it’s you who used the word. Surely a lady can mention a gent’s ‘member’? Or ‘attachment’? No? Maybe ‘appurtenance’? Too loose an interpretation?”

He heard Gilly make a stifled sound, and encouraged, went on. “Hmm. ‘Organ of generation’ is scientifically correct. But too medical, we don’t want you getting the reputation of being a bluestocking. ‘Sex organ’ is correct, but never correct, if you know what I mean. I suppose ‘member’ is the most acceptable. But not
impulse
, please.”

He heard another muffled noise, and tilted her head up with one finger. When Gilly peeped up at him from under a curtain of spilled flax, he saw her face was rosy with suppressed laughter.

“But whatever you call them, we don’t think with them,” he said seriously. “They try to think for us, and if we act on it, then we
are
fools. Truly, those are impulses. A grown man learns to think with his brain. I’m thinking and speaking from that, as well as a much more important member—my heart. And yes, absolutely,” he whispered, as he looked at her lips and lowered his mouth to hers, “with that other as well, because I love you with every part of me, even that important
impulse
of mine.”

Damon’s marvelous mouth was warm and soft and beguiling. Gilly relaxed and let herself lose herself in his kiss. Such a wonderful thing, she thought muzzily, the way he kissed. The way she’d learned to tolerate, then like, and then need the feel of his tongue against her own. The way she’d learned to accept the little jolt of shock when his smooth hands touched her smoothest skin, and then to look forward to it. The way she allowed herself to touch him with her hands, and then with her
lips—his cheek, the delicious places where his neck wasn’t covered by his neckcloth…

She discovered it was possible to lay back against the quilt after all, because a lady’s ankles and legs weren’t exposed to the day if a gentleman was laying over her. If his big warm hands covered over her thighs, then they weren’t exposed either. And if his hand then concealed even that most intimate part of her, who was there to see or complain? Not her. Because the feelings he provoked robbed her of speech. They were warmer than the sun, more secret than this hidden place they lay in.

Gilly was lost. They’d caressed, but never like this. She’d never been touched like this, she’d never been touched much at all. Ewen and Bridget and Betsy hugged her now and again, but she’d never known such intimacy. The sensations he was arousing were stupefying, but that wasn’t all. She reveled in the very closeness of his embrace.

The feel of the man, the gentle strength that held her so tight, yet so lightly. The way he seemed to encompass her, his wide shoulders blocking out the sunlight, his soft words she didn’t hear but felt in the marrow of her bones as he breathed them against her neck, her breasts. It made her feel whole and necessary, cherished and good. So good that her lack of control over herself didn’t frighten her.

She wasn’t aware of it, only of him. The spiraling feelings he touched off in her. The look of him whenever her eyes fluttered open to see. How starry his lashes were over his closed eyes when she opened her own, how hot his mouth—so hot it made her close her
eyes again to see what was inside herself, to feel how good his touch was, how—

Then she was alone. Damon murmured something and drew away, rising to his knees, and she blindly reached for him to come back. But then with a sudden oath, he was entirely gone, and she’d only the sun to cover her.

Gilly blinked. She opened her eyes to see herself as good as naked, her gown off at the top and up at the bottom until it was only like a bright band of sunlight around her waist. She sat bolt upright. All she saw of Damon was his broad back; he was sitting up next to her, turned from her, his head bowed.

“Damn, damn, damn,” he muttered.

Gilly scrambled to cover herself. She’d never seen herself look so naked, she’d never felt so exposed. She looked and felt positively
raw
! she thought in horror. There was so much white and pink. Her bare breasts were poking up, rising from her gown, and that hair
there
! She gasped. How shocking, how out of place in the broad light of day! In an agony of embarrassment she fumbled, trying to pull her skirts down and her top up. His hands stopped hers.