The Scandal Before Christmas (11 page)

Anne could feel her mouth stretch into a smile. He really was irresistibly charming. “Does that mean that this is a courtship?”

“A rather backward one, it would seem. But as I was saying, before you butted in with all your pert intelligence—in the normal course of things we would have met at a village dance in … Somerset, was it? And gotten to know each other as friends before we might have progressed to … other things. Like kissing. And…” He hesitated over the top of his wickedly teasing smile. “… like feeling the sweet flair of your waist, and the delicious curve”—he lowered his head to whisper in her ear—“of your breast. Which I should very much like to do again. But we must do it all in the proper order, as my lady bids. So let us pretend. Let us pretend we are at a village dance.”

She gave into the smiling charm in his warm voice. She could not help it—the mental image of him, so tall and powerful, so full of leashed energy, doing the pretty in one of Bridgwater’s tiny, tired-looking assembly rooms was ridiculous. “I cannot picture you at a village dance.”

“Well, no.” His broad smile gleamed in the moonlight. “Neither can I. Which is, I suppose why we find ourselves in this predicament, talking rather improperly of kissing and breasts—very lovely breasts I might add—in a dark, frozen glasshouse, instead of dancing in a low-roofed assembly hall.”

It
was
rather silly. And fun. And wonderful and breathtaking. Because the offhanded compliment heated her skin afresh, and make her breasts feel full and aching. Beneath the enveloping layers of cloak and clothing, her nipples contracted and rasped against the practical starchy white muslin of her shift.

She ducked her head to re-tie her boot, thankful for the darkness that made it easier to hide her reaction to him.

“Now then—our imaginary village dance.”

“Do you actually know how to dance? I don’t.” She had learned—her mother had insisted—but she had never danced with anyone other than her much younger sisters. “Not really.”

“I do.” His reassuring smile was a bright slice of moonlight. “I did learn—all of the exalted Viscount Rainesford’s offspring must learn the art of the dance.”

Another small flash of pain tore across his face, and she knew he must be thinking of his brother—his poor brother who could no longer dance. But he recovered his smile, and stood directly in front of her, and bowed very formally and properly, and said, “Good evening, Miss Lesley. How nice to see you this evening.”

Anne had never practiced formalities with her sisters, or made conversation, so she had no idea how to go on.

But Ian didn’t mind playing the dancing master. “You’re supposed to say something back, like, ‘Good evening, Lieutenant Worth.’ Or, ‘Lieutenant Worth, how delightful to see you.’”

“Delighted, Lieutenant Worth.” She made him a passably graceful curtsy.

He clapped a fist to his chest in mock pain. “And there’s that pert intelligence I like so much. Well played, Miss Lesley—a hit direct. But now it is my turn to fire, and I say, ‘Would you care to dance, Miss Lesley?’ No, no, that won’t do—a mere shot across your bow. Something better aimed, like, ‘May I have the honor of this dance, Miss Lesley?’” He bowed to her again, as smooth and fine and polished as if he stood in some castle’s drafty ballroom.

He was so handsome and sad and gay all at the same time. Anne felt her heart turn over in her chest—a gentle, happy pain. To have such a man flattering and teasing and dancing with her. She had never thought such a thing possible. “You may.”

He held out his hand, and slowly, because she rather thought that it was going to be a momentous thing, she placed her hand gingerly upon his. And she was right. Somehow the power within him—within his flesh and bones and sinew—translated itself from the palm of his hand to hers. She felt light and suspended as he led her out upon their imaginary dance floor, as if she could float along, buoyed up by a cloud of make-believe.

“And we go like this.” He began to hum an easy air, and then promenaded forward two steps and then back, until she caught the movement, and was comfortable enough to stop looking at his feet. He turned her around with the pressure of his hand at her back—sure and warm and solid—and repeated the movement on the other side.

“How delightfully you dance, Miss Lesley. And now you lie, and compliment me.”

“But you are the one who is lying, Lieutenant Worth. You do dance very well.”

“I thank you, but that is only because I have had the benefit of a dreadfully expensive and exacting dancing master, who quite despaired of me in my youth. And I have it from a reliable source that now that I am grown so tall and gangly, I am too big, and simply loom over my partners.”

How strange that he should see himself that way—he who was nigh unto perfection. Easy, breezy, laughing, handsome, sad perfection.

“So now we circle around each other, like this.” He twined their fingers over her head as they slowly rotated around each other. “And as we dance in our little imaginary village assembly, since you very politely decline to disparage my dancing, I will take the opportunity to compliment you. Because I cannot help but notice”—here he appeared to look at the glass ceiling and think something up—“the delicate warmth of your hands. Actually, I notice that your hands are ice cold, and I am moved to warm them up. I hold them a fraction of a second too long as we pass through the figures, drawing my fingers along the length of yours for as long as possible.”

He slid his palm slowly out from under hers as he stepped apart, turning away in a small circle.

It was riveting—all this focused attention. She lost the way of the step, and stopped, and he was compelled to touch her again, to put her right. He stepped up close next to her—so close his shirtsleeve brushed against the length of her arm, and her skin tingled within her clothing just as if her arm had been bare to him.

“I take advantage of when we come together, side by side like this, to place my hand in the small of your back.” He suited words to action, and sent his hand exploring under the loose covering of her cloak, pressing the wide span of his hand into the curve of her spine. “And I find I like the feel of the smooth, tiny line of your waist.”

He took up one of her hands, and drew her closer before he moved her in a slow circular rotation around him with the warm pressure of his hand. “I catch a hint of your scent as I lean in close. You smell delicate and delicious—like citrus.” He dipped his head down close to the curve of her neck, and his breath fanned across the sensitive shell of her ear.

Anne shivered despite the relative warmth of her cloak—a delicate skittering of sensation across the surface of her skin.

“I come close to feel the heat from your body, dip my head to smell your perfume, and then I’m here, so close. I can span your waist with my hands. But all I can think about is how sweet your lips taste.”

Her lips were already parted in unconscious readiness, and she stopped thinking and let herself fall into the heady pleasure of his kiss.

This was nothing like their careful, teasing dance. Nothing like the gentle exploration of the book room. Nothing like she had ever imagined.

His kiss was hot and tight and close and needy and fierce.

He kissed her as if this moment, this meeting of flesh and desire was everything. As if he actually wanted her. Wanted her lips upon his, her tongue twisting and twining with his, licking and sucking and tasting her. As if he needed the nourishment of her love. Needed the press of her body to his.

Her hood fell back, and his hands were along her face, holding her to him, angling her head so he could get close, and closer still. As if he could not get close enough.

And she was kissing him back, pressing her lips and her body to his. Kissing him as if this moment of passion between them
were
all that existed. As if she did not need air or water or heat. As if she needed only the cold burning torch of his touch.

He tasted of rum and spice, and winter and need and loneliness—and she ached for him. For all the years he had not been able to dance or kiss. For all the years she had not had the chance to dance, or be kissed.

For all the time that they would never have together.

She would make up for it now. She threw her arms around his neck, anchoring him to her, pulling him down upon her so she could feel the heavy thrill of his weight. He was bending her back, pushing her over his arms with the press of his mouth and nose and cheeks.

“Anne,” he said, and he did not need to say more. She knew. She understood. She wanted everything that he wanted. She wanted more.

More of the fiercely tender way her held her face within his strong hands. More of the weight and strength of his body as he pulled her to him.

More of the heat greedy pleasure blossoming out of her. More.

As if he could hear the unspoken thoughts within her head, he speared his hands into her hair, upsetting the pins. “I want to see your hair down. I want to see you undone. As undone as I am.”

“No.” But her hair was already coming loose, springing free from the severe constraints of her hairstyle. A riotous profusion of unruly curls tumbled over her face and down over her shoulders. “No. Please.”

Ian drew away from her, staring down at her, with something stronger than confusion writ across his face.

“Damn my eyes, Anne Lesley,” he breathed. “What in God’s name have you been hiding from me?”

Chapter Eleven

Her composure, the fine-tuned, steely composure that had lasted through the long day, shattered.

“Don’t do that. You mustn’t,” she stammered, and abruptly tore away to gather her hair up in her hands. She twisted it viciously to subdue the wild corkscrew of sable curls that sprang from her head in wild abandon, and stab it back under the hood of her cloak.

“No. No, no. no. My God. What have you been hiding?” he asked again. His fingers nearly itched to get at her, to fist in the untamed abundance before him.

“I’m sorry,” she repeated, and scrabbled up the pins scattered across the dark, uneven slate floor.

“No, stop. Stop it.” Ian went down on his knees beside her to cover her hands.

She snatched back her hand, and went instantly still, like a wary wild animal—even her erratic breathing seemed to strangle to a stop.

He was breathing too hard and too fast, as well, but for an entirely different reason. His breath was sawing in and out of his chest because he wanted to …

He wanted to rip off the shapeless cloak clothing her frame and see what else she was hiding behind her careful little wren’s defensive plumage. He wanted to see the glorious riot of her hair unrestrained. He wanted to see the color of the peaks of her small high breasts—apricot—they would be the same apricot hue smeared like jam across her flaming cheeks. He wanted to see all of her. He wanted to light every lamp he could find, and assuage his ravenous curiosity by—

Ian closed his eyes to try and blot out the image. The devil must have already taken him, because he was clearly in hell—a hell of his own making. Because he was a gentleman, and an officer of His Majesty’s Royal Navy, and she was a naïve, shy, untried young woman, his not-quite-betrothed, under his bloody glass roof. A guest in his house.

He opened his eyes to find hers wide and dark with something beyond fright. She looked, for the first time in their short acquaintance, entirely vulnerable—stripped of defenses in a way that was nearly too intimate, too personal, to take advantage of so callously.

Ian willed his body and his mind into self-discipline. He gathered up a few of the hairpins, and placed them carefully in her hand. “Please, Anne. Please. Do not think that I am displeased, or in any way disappointed. In fact, quite the opposite. I am…” Words failed him—polite words, that wouldn’t have her running back to Somerset as fast as her legs could carry her. “Please understand, I like your hair. I am enthralled by it.”

Her hair was the exact opposite of her disciplined restraint—exuberant, unfettered, and abandoned.

“I find it inordinately beautiful.” He reached out to finger an errant strand curling below her ear.

She turned her face away and closed her eyes. “You mustn’t.”

“Whyever not?”

She kept her face turned resolutely away, withdrawing from him in every way, though she did not move. “It’s not ladylike. It’s not seemly.”

“Anne. I don’t give a damn for ladylike—I’ve never given a care to seemly.” What he wanted was her—this glorious unbound creature lurking behind her tightly controlled facade, unrestrained by shyness and convention. He wanted
her
for his wife.

“Do you mean it?” she asked, her voice full of doubt and a pain he could not fathom. “Do you mean any of it? Truly? Or is this just another one of your convenient lies, like the one you told your father?”

Damn, damn, damn his eyes.

The truth was a stunningly sharp blade between his ribs. Hoist on his own insidious petard.

He took her hand again very slowly and carefully, and held it very lightly, very reassuringly. “Anne, I admit I am a ramshackle sort of fellow. I
have
lied a great deal in my life. I have lied to my father almost from the day I was born. And I lied to him again today. But I will pledge here and now, I will never, ever lie to you.”

She did not speak. She did not move. She was barely breathing. Finally, she whispered, “How can I trust you?”

“I will show you. I will show you in my action and my deeds how much I like
you
. Very, very much. I
like
the way you try to contain your thoughts and words by crushing the soft cushion of your lips between your teeth. I like the way your breath throttles up in your throat, and you sound a little scared, but also curious, all at the same time. I like talking to you. I like kissing you. I want to kiss you again, to prove to you how much I want you.”

He could not tell if she believed him or not, so he went on. “I will tell you that you taste like melted snow and wintergreen mint. I will tell you that I like the hint of chapping on your bottom lip where you bite it in your shyness, or to keep from speaking. And I will tell you I want to kiss those lips, to taste you, and feel you in my arms.”