Mischief by Moonlight (7 page)

He squinted at her. “
Ivor
W?
What is that?”

She grinned. “A nickname. We're close enough, surely, for nicknames.”

He gave her his haughtiest look. “I'm an earl, Josephine.”

“I know!” She felt quite giddy now. “But you're also my friend. Of course there's Nicholas, but he's been gone so long, and I've had all these wonderful months with you. And, well, we do make excellent friends, don't we?”

“Yes,” he said with a wariness that only made her smile to herself. Colin was so reserved.

“So I want you to do something for me. Or maybe, I should say, let me do something.”

His eyes opened wider, as if he had an idea that what she was going to propose was improper. He was always so trustworthy and considerate—she knew he'd be shocked by what she wanted to do.

But suddenly it felt like the best idea possible for gaining a broader experience of men, the experience which thoughts of marrying had suddenly made her want. Surely she might have a little bit of experience with her friend Colin, and then that would banish those unsettled, doubting feelings she'd been having and resolve all the yearning with no harm done, really, to anyone.

She moved forward, to where he stood in the shadowy corner of the balcony where the balustrade met the wall of the manor.

“Josie,” he began in a warning tone, but she lifted up on her tiptoes at the same time as she curled a hand around his neck and tugged him lower, and she quickly pressed her lips to his.

***

Colin froze. He was instantly in heaven and hell at once. Heaven, dear God, to have Josie's lips pressed to his.
She
was
kissing
him.

And hell.
Nick
. She belonged to Nick.

No matter how much he wanted this, it was wrong.

He tried gently to lean away from her, but she had hold of his neck, and she kept him there.

As if he truly wanted to move.

Her lips were so soft against his. And not shy. Pliable, friendly, they urged him to join in, to do what he so badly wanted to do. The tip of her tongue brushed unskillfully along his mouth, leaving a trail of brandy and innocent sin. Even as he steeled himself not to respond, a bolt of lust shot straight to his already painfully aroused groin.

His first kiss from a woman in over a year, and it was from Josie. He stifled a groan.

He should already have stepped away from her, but he could not. She swayed and the tips of her breasts brushed the front of his coat, and he might as well not have been wearing a shirt and waistcoat and tailcoat, because they burned right through all the layers of fabric. He forgot everything else but her, and he kissed her back.

Heat raced through him as his tongue touched the gently questing tip of hers and he felt her respond to him.
To
him
. Josie was responding, wanting him. She whimpered, and the sound drove him further. He brought his shaking hand to the graceful curve of her shoulder and slid it slowly across the cool satin skin exposed by her low bodice, every inch of her a revelation.

She still clutched his neck, and now her other hand came around his waist to hold on to him as though he were there to rescue her from something. Their kiss grew wilder, nothing but naked hunger, and Colin knew he was barely holding on to his control, because he wanted everything from her.

She leaned into him fully, so that her breasts crushed themselves against his chest and his erection jutted into the soft fabric of her gown. His eyes rolled back with lust.

“Colin,” she whispered against his lips, her voice holding a note of pleading mingled with something else, as though she'd been surprised by him, as though she hadn't been the one to start the kiss. She was sweet and soft, and she smelled amazing. Every breath he took was filled with the intoxicating scent of her.

But now a new note reached him—the pungent odor of pipe smoke. Someone in the garden below was smoking a pipe, and whether that person might even be able to see Colin and Josie in their dark corner mattered not: his stomach dropped as he remembered who he was and who she was. What they were doing was wrong.

What he so violently wanted could not be.

With every part of his being screaming in revolt, he broke their kiss and gently tugged her hands away. He stepped back, forcing his breathing to calm.

Her eyes flew open, dark blue pools that held desire and confusion. And dawning guilt.

Of course. They were both guilty. But while Josie the innocent had taken too much ratafia and run away with a silly idea, he was entirely sober, and as the man who'd been lusting after her for months, the only one truly at fault here.

He'd forgotten the lesson of that night he'd shouted her name to the rooftops.

She gasped, her hand flying to her mouth. “I'm—I'm so sorry, Colin. I don't know what came over me.” She dropped her hand. “Can you ever forgive me?” she said in a voice of awful anguish.

But she wasn't the one who needed forgiveness. He'd been tempted, and he'd faltered.

“Nothing to forgive, dear girl,” he said. “You've had too much to drink. And I—”

“It wasn't the ratafia,” she broke in. “It—was an impulse. A wild idea that should never have gotten ahold of me. I didn't mean anything by it,” she said, devastating him without the least idea she was doing so. Her eyes drifted to the floor. “I'm so ashamed.”

Her remorse was killing him. “Don't feel ashamed. You got caught up in a whim, and I should have been able to resist the temptation of kissing a woman, no matter how beautiful she is.” Kissing
you
, he wanted to admit, but that would make this more personal, which would only be worse.

“You think I'm beautiful?” she said quietly, and he thought her lower lip quivered. But then she drew her brows together with sober discipline. “No,” she said. “This was my fault.”

This was in fact the second time he'd been kissed as a sort of ambush by a beautiful girl—the first time had been with his friend Hal's too-young sister, Eloise, who'd had a
tendre
for him. With sweet young Eloise it hadn't taken much resolve to resist. With Josie it couldn't have been more different.

“Don't,” he said. “We'll simply put this moment behind us. Forget about it.” Though a rotten part of him wanted to take what had happened and build on it. Cozen her, entice her into doing more—into seeing him as more than a friend.

The
heat
in
that
kiss
hadn't been all him
.

What if she
was
attracted to him?

She
was
not
married
yet
. The final choice was not yet made. Wouldn't he and she be throwing away something potentially amazing if they didn't pursue what had happened tonight? What if he kissed her again?

No! Absolutely not.
That was exactly the wrong kind of thinking. Scoundrel thinking.

Josie, who had always seemed to him so in command of herself, had shown him her dawning curiosity and her vulnerability, and he must help her guard it, not exploit it further. He owed that to her and to Nick.

“I wish Nicholas were here,” she said in a small voice. “Then none of this would have happened. I wouldn't be tempted to be so impulsive.”

“Yes.”

“I, um, I don't think we should tell him about this. It was sort of an accident.”

Colin didn't say anything at first. He so didn't want to talk about Nicholas right now. But after all that brave talk about mastering desires, he could hardly shy away from what he owed his friends, both of them.

“Right.”

“I miss him,” she said.

“I know,” he said quietly, her words tearing at him. “Of course you do.”

“He'll be home soon, but…” Her sapphire eyes were dark with trouble. “What if he doesn't care for me anymore? It's been so long.”

Ah. He began to see even more what was behind the kiss, no matter that he wanted to believe he alone had inspired it. Of course she would have doubts—it had been a year since she'd seen Nick.

“Josie, he engaged himself to you. I'm certain it's thoughts of you that cheer him each day.”

“But what if something's changed?” she whispered, as though she could barely stand to entertain the thought. “A year is a long time. What if he's thought better of his choice? Or if I…” Her voice trailed off.

Don't do this to me, Josie
, he thought.
Don't make it sound possible that there could be any other future for you than with Nick.

Something in him rebelled at the emotions she had stirred in him, at this power she had over him. He'd given in to temptation tonight, surrendered reason to the surge of passion, and now he allowed a silent fury at himself to take over and put the tumult to rights. This was what came of allowing emotions to rule. Emotional excess was how he'd ended up on the roof of Greenbrier, shouting out her name.

He despised emotional volatility.

He moved farther away from her. “I'm sure nothing's changed,” he said, knowing they would both be best served by the coolness he allowed into his voice. It should have been there all along. “You'll see when he comes back.”

He turned away and went through the balcony doors.

***

Dinner cleared Josie's head of some of the ratafia, and a long conversation with a Mrs. Turner on the subject of holidays by the shore allowed her to avoid thinking about her behavior with Colin. He kept to the other side of the room, and she made herself not look at him. She didn't feel his eyes on her once, either.

After dinner, the guests wandered back to the ballroom, taking the noise and distraction with them, and Josie followed them, wanting desperately not to be alone with her thoughts, because she'd done it again—given in to the urge to be reckless—and this time was worse than anything she'd ever done before.

Oh, God, why, why,
why
had she kissed him?

The kiss she'd pressed on him had been startling, jerking at the foundation of so much she'd thought she'd known. The jolt of pleasure and happiness that had rushed through her when their lips touched had been as unexpected as a firework going off in a dark, blank sky. And for a few moments, her world had turned on its axis toward something entirely new, a rich, bursting feeling for Colin that she hadn't expected.
Passion
for Colin.

He'd responded, hadn't he? Hadn't that been desire in his kiss, and in the touch of his hand on her décolletage? Why had he been so cool afterward?

Was it because she was engaged to Nicholas? Or because he didn't want her?

And what was the matter with her that she was even thinking these things?

Colin was her friend, and what was just as bad, he was Nicholas's friend. And she'd had the urge to kiss him and told herself it would just be a lark, when it was so wrong.

She entered the ballroom, where Colin was just leading Edwina out for a dance. It felt queer watching them. She didn't like it, and she didn't like herself for disliking it.

He'd kissed her back, and there'd been desire in his kiss, but she forced herself to face what had to be true: she was a woman, and men desired women. He'd told her himself:
I
should
have
been
able
to
resist
the
temptation
of
kissing
a
woman, no matter how beautiful she is
.

He found her beautiful, and that made him want to return her kiss, but he probably wanted to kiss every other pretty woman in the room as well. Men were attracted to women, and she was a woman. She'd opened the Pandora's box of desire when she'd kissed him.

She saw now that the idea of being such good friends with a man had been fatally flawed. The pull that existed between the sexes must touch the friendship at some point. But clearly, from the way he'd retreated, only his desire had been touched, the desire he'd feel for any attractive woman.

While she…Josie swallowed a lump of emotion that was pressing against her throat. She could not separate the desire she'd felt in his arms from the deep, deep fondness she had for him. It was beyond fondness, she forced herself to admit. She couldn't bear how easily he'd been able to walk away from her, because she needed him.

She watched him twirl by with her sister, both of them smiling as though they hadn't a care in the world.

I'm a terribly shabby person
, she thought as she fought to conquer the emotion rioting in her chest,
but
let
me
not
have
ruined
everything.

***

Colin bowed to Edwina at the end of their dance and forced himself not to cast his eyes about the room for Josie.

That's it!
He was going to have to start pursuing other women.

Pursuing any women at all, he reminded himself harshly, because he certainly wasn't pursuing Josie.

He was master of himself. And he wasn't going to think about her anymore. At all.

Obviously, lust was pressing on him. He was going to have to make an effort with women (though not Edwina, who was, anyway, being courted by Mappleton). Very likely what all this was telling him was that he needed a wife.

Fine!
He hadn't in the least been wanting to marry—with the example of his parents' marriage it was hardly appealing—but apparently he must do so or risk becoming a devil.

He forced himself to dance every dance for the rest of the night, even staying late to partner the bold, cynical widows who remained when the sweet young things had all gone home to bed. He stayed past the point when he himself wanted his bed.