And Then He Kissed Her (20 page)

“We can’t dance. There’s no music.”

“This is our enchanted moment. Don’t spoil it
with trivialities.” He took up her gloved hand in his bare one and put his other hand on her waist. “We can sing the music.”

“I don’t sing,” she said even as she shoved her fan in her pocket and lifted her left hand to his shoulder in preparation for a dance. “When I was a little girl, I heard the vicar tell my father I couldn’t carry a tune in a milk pail. My father told me to mouth the hymns in church silently from then on.” She paused, surprised that the memory of that incident so long ago still had the power to sting. She tried to shrug it off with a smile. “The congregation was grateful, no doubt.”

Marlowe didn’t smile back at her, and oddly enough, his sudden gravity made him seem more handsome than ever before. “Sing as loud as you please, Emma. I don’t give a damn if you sound like a corncrake.”

That sting was suddenly in her eyes and she blinked rapidly, looking away. Tightness squeezed her chest. “Thank you, but I think it would be best if you did any singing required.”

“Very well.” He swayed back and forth, pulling her with him as he counted, “And two, and three, and four.” With that, they started to dance and he began to sing one of Gilbert’s nonsensical Bab Ballads in a rollicking baritone. “Strike the concertina’s melancholy string; blow the spirit-stirring harp like anything—”

She burst into laughter, interrupting the song, but he didn’t miss a step. “
The Story of Prince
Agib
?” she asked as he continued to lead her in a waltz about the room.

“Yes, well, given your love of the
Arabian Nights
, it seemed appropriate.”

He hummed a few more bars as they danced, but then, for no reason she could identify, they both came to a stop. She stared up into his face, and in the sudden silence, everything else in the world seemed to fade away into insignificance. Everything but him.

He let go of her hand and once again curved his hand around the back of her neck. “I don’t believe there’s any such thing as fan language,” he murmured. “It’d be too easy for a chap to misinterpret things. For instance, when you put that fan to your lips, you said it means you don’t trust me, but I think it means something else.”

“You do?”

He nodded and began rubbing the back of her neck just above the collar of her shirtwaist, his fingertips stirring her hair. “I think it means you want me to kiss you.”

“That’s not what it means!” She stirred in his hold, but she knew this attempt to escape was halfhearted at best. He seemed to know it, too, for he ignored it. His fingers caressed her nape in slow circles, and waves of warmth began flooding through her body, a feeling that compelled her to make some sort of protest. “I was not telling you to kiss me.”

“How’s a man to be sure? That’s my point. You couldn’t just take pity on the poor, muddled
chap and say straight out, ‘I want you to kiss me.’ That wouldn’t do.” He stopped caressing her neck and slid his hand up to entwine his fingers in the knot of her hair. He tilted her head back, but instead of kissing her, he paused, his lips only a few inches from hers. “A lady would never say something like that, would she?”

“No.” Emma licked her dry lips. “She wouldn’t.”

The palm of his other hand flattened against her back, pulling her fully against him, causing her to suck in a startled breath at the hard feel of his body pressed so intimately against hers. “I don’t want to misunderstand things, Emma, because then you might slap my face and call me a cad. So, how does a lady use her fan to tell a man he can kiss her?”

“I don’t know,” she whispered. “My aunt didn’t tell me that one.”

“Damn.” His lashes lowered, then lifted. “I suppose I shall just have to take my chances.”

He kissed her then, and at the touch of his mouth, she felt any shred of resolve she had left crumbling into bits. Along with it went all of Mrs. Inkberry’s well-intended caution, and her arms came up around his neck.

His tongue touched her lips, and she knew what he wanted. With a sound of accord, she opened her mouth, and he deepened the kiss at once, his tongue touching hers. The carnal ache she’d felt in the bookshop rose up again, quicker this time, hotter. When he pulled his tongue
back, she followed. It was a move of pure instinct, not conscious thought, and it amazed her that within her was this bold, lascivious creature who put her tongue inside a man’s mouth and liked it.

He tasted warm and tangy, rather like the strawberries they’d had in the Victoria Embankment Gardens, and she wondered if he’d eaten strawberries at luncheon today. She pressed her hands to the sides of his face, as if to hold him there, and he went utterly still while she explored this new, foreign territory. She touched her tongue to his again, ran it over the straight, hard line of his teeth, brushed it against the insides of each of his cheeks. She paused only long enough for a quick breath of air, then traced his lips with her tongue. Above and below the edges of his mouth, she felt the texture of his face, different this time, and she realized he had shaved not long ago. She took his lower lip between both of hers and pulled, sucking gently.

He made a smothered sound against her mouth and a shudder rocked his body. Emma knew it was because of what she’d done. He was feeling the same things she felt. Oh, the thrill of that! To know that she, a plain spinster of thirty, could make a man like him feel like this. It was power, potent, quixotic, glorious power.

He didn’t let her keep it, though. He captured her mouth fully with his and turned them both, using his body to push hers backward a step or two. The backs of her thighs hit something hard,
and she realized it was his desk. He slid his hands down to cup her buttocks, and she jerked with a yelp of pure shock, opening her eyes.

His opened as well, and for one split second they stood there, gazes locked, rapid breaths mingling. Then she felt his hands tighten, and he lifted her onto the edge of the desk.

“You’ve been telling me all these rules,” he said between ragged breaths, “but they’re all women’s rules.” He pulled his hands from beneath her. Still looking into her eyes, he lifted his hands to the top button of her shirtwaist.

She stiffened and her hand closed over his wrist. He watched her, waiting, his eyes intensely blue, his mouth gravely beautiful, his fingers toying with the button and her virtue.

“What—” She broke off, excitement rising within her, even as instinctive feminine caution whispered a warning. But something else was driving her, a desperate, aching need for his touch. “What are men’s rules?” she whispered.

“When you tell me to stop, I’ll stop.” He drew a deep breath. “I swear I’ll stop.”

It was the unsteadiness of his voice that disarmed her. She relaxed her hold on his wrist and gave a quick nod, as exhilarated by her capitulation as she was shamed by the ease of it.

She closed her eyes as he unfastened the first button of her shirtwaist, then the next, then the next, removing barriers one by one. He pushed back the linen edges and pressed his mouth to the exposed skin of her throat, licking her bare skin with his tongue. She arched against him
with a moan and tilted her head back, wanting more of this sweet delight.

He blew warm breath against her skin as his fingers unfastened buttons and hooks, pulling back layers of linen, cambric, satin, and nainsook to expose the skin from her collarbone to just above her breasts. She stirred with agitation, her fingers tightening convulsively on his shoulders, as he kissed the top of one breast and worked his other hand beneath the fabrics where her undergarments were still fastened. She knew she should call a halt, but when his fingertips grazed her nipple, the sharp, piercing sweetness of it was so great, her whole body jerked with the sensation. She cried out, but she did not say stop.

He lifted his head and captured her mouth with his, smothering the echo of his name against her lips. His hand tightened at her breast, he groaned into her mouth, and he deepened the kiss. He touched her nipple again, sliding his fingers back and forth across it within the tight confines of her underclothes, and her body shuddered in response. She felt as if she had no ability to govern her own body, for his touch was causing her to move in the strangest way, arching into his hands in little twitches that she could not stop. She could hear herself making soft, queer noises against his mouth, smothered, primitive sounds, and she felt as if she were drowning in a sensuous haze. What he was doing was like nothing she’d ever felt before, and she wanted it to go on and on and on forever.

Suddenly, without warning, he broke the kiss, yanked his hand out of her bodice, and straightened away from her. Cursing under his breath, he began buttoning her back up.

Dazed, Emma tried to come to her senses. She opened her eyes and looked at him. He didn’t look back at her, but kept his gaze on what he was doing. The late afternoon sunlight cast a soft glow over the room, but there was nothing soft in his face. It seemed ravaged.

“I didn’t say stop,” she mumbled, and her own lack of resolve frightened her.

“I know.” He gave a short, harsh laugh. “God, I know.”

His hands stilled, then tightened around fistfuls of fabric. Abruptly, he let go and turned away. “It’s getting dark,” he said over his shoulder. “I’d best escort you home. We’ll ride in my carriage, and I don’t give a damn if it’s proper or not.”

Emma didn’t argue. Given what had just happened, talking about propriety seemed ludicrous now, especially when that dark, hot hunger was raging inside her, ready to flare up when he touched her again. And he would touch her again. She was only fooling herself to think she wouldn’t let him.

Stop
, she thought dismally. Such a simple word. And so hard to say.

N
ot making love to Emma was one of the hardest things Harry had ever done in his life. He was beginning to think it had also been one of the stupidest. He shifted on the carriage seat, trying to ease the stiff agony in his trousers, but it was useless, since the cause of all his discomfort was sitting right across from him, looking lusciously disheveled, her lips still puffy from his kisses.

She wasn’t looking at him, thank God, but staring at that god-awful hat in her lap, plucking
at the brim. Probably wondering if she was going to hell.

The carriage bumped. He grimaced and shifted on the seat again. He closed his eyes, rested his head against the back of the seat, and cursed virgins, proprieties, and the inexplicable notions of chivalry that were wont to come over him nowadays.

Tell me to stop and I’ll stop.

What had he been thinking, to say something as idiotic as that? Worse, she hadn’t even been the one to call a halt. He had. And why? He’d remembered where they were, that was why. He’d thought Emma’s first time shouldn’t happen on a desk.

Harry wanted to get out and let one of the horses give him a good, swift kick in the head. Then he wouldn’t be capable of doing any more thinking.

The carriage jerked to a stop, and he drew a deep breath of relief. His driver had barely opened the door and rolled out the steps before Harry was out of the carriage and offering his hand to assist her down. He walked with her to the front steps of her building.

“Good night, Emma,” he said with a bow and turned to depart.

“Would you—” She stopped and cleared her throat, gesturing to the door with her hat. “Would you like to come in?”

He felt a glimmer of hope, then snuffed it out, remembering who he was talking to.

“Why?” he asked bluntly. “Are you inviting me up to your rooms?”

She colored up at once. “No. Of course not. I just thought…perhaps some tea.” She met his gaze. “In the parlor. Downstairs.”

She wanted to have tea? He stared back at her in disbelief. “Tea?”

She nodded. “We could both do with a bit of refreshment, I daresay.”

There were times when he wondered if she was real. Looking at her now, he began to think perhaps some moor spirit had taken over her body four months ago with the purpose of making his life hell. He’d probably forgotten to leave a pin in the caves at Torquay one summer, and in consequence, the pixies were after him, intent on revenge. “Maybe if you had whiskey and a siphon, I’d take you up on it. God knows, I could use a drink. Otherwise, no. I intend to go home.”

If he had any sense, he’d go to a brothel.

“Mrs. Morris might have a bottle of whiskey about.”

Harry studied her for a moment, and dissolute fellow that he was, he began to speculate about possibilities, reckon up the odds of getting into her flat. He could be a very persuasive fellow when he set his mind to it. After due consideration, he figured he stood a fair chance of getting up to her rooms, where he could make love to her in a bed. Making love on desks could come later. “Then I accept,” he said and followed her inside.

The infamous nosy landlady, Mrs. Morris, was in the parlor, and proved delighted to meet Emma’s former employer, though she was a bit flustered at the unexpected arrival of a peer of
the realm. Emma should have warned her he would be accompanying her today. Though, of course, she was as accustomed as anyone to genteel company—Emma’s own aunt, for example, had been a dear friend and a lady of the utmost respectability, having been married to the third son of a baronet. A cup of tea? Of course, Emma, a cup of tea for her guest was no trouble at all, unless his lordship would prefer a whiskey? And no, she insisted to his lordship, it was no bother to make a full tea with sandwiches. It was well known that gentlemen need sustenance. Of course, she would supervise the preparations herself, she assured him, and bustled out of the room to go belowstairs and see what repast could be got that was worthy of a viscount.

Emma sat down on a hideous horse hair settee and began pulling off her gloves. “Poor Mrs. Morris. A full tea, indeed. And at seven o’clock, too!”

“I’m hungry.” He sat down beside her, leaned close, and pressed a kiss to one corner of her lips. “Very hungry.”

“What a lot of bother you’re being.” The words were a criticism, but her voice had a breathless quality that caused his hopes to rise.

“That’s one of privileges of being a peer. I’m allowed to be a bother.” He tilted his head to kiss her mouth.

She leaned sideways, evading him. “I thought you wanted a drink.”

He rested one arm along the carved wooden back of the settee behind her shoulders. “I
changed my mind. If your landlady is belowstairs ensuring that her cook makes me the perfect tea, I have more time alone with you.”

She glanced at the door, looking worried. “We’re not alone. Someone else could come in the room at any time. Other tenants live here besides myself.”

“Let’s take a chance.” This time he was successful in capturing her mouth for a quick kiss. “Be reckless.”

“I don’t take chances.”

“Yes,” he said ruefully. “I know.”

He studied her profile, the delicate line of her jaw and chin. The room was dim in the growing twilight, but he was so close, he could see the gold tips of her lashes, the tiny star-shaped scar on her cheek, the round little mole just in front of her ear. He kissed it.

“Harry,” she whispered, lifting her shoulder to nudge his chin, but he liked to think it was a halfhearted gesture.

“I’m keeping an eye on the door,” he promised, his lips brushing her cheek. “I don’t suppose I can close the blasted thing?”

“Heavens, no!”

She sounded so horrified, he would have laughed had the situation not been so damnable. “Since I can’t close the door and ravish you as I’d like,” he murmured, “I shall have to settle for conversation.”

She leaned back, realized his arm was behind her, and hunched forward.

“Emma, relax,” he said gently and removed
his arm from the back of the settee. “Lean back, close your eyes.”

She complied, and he did the same. “So,” he said, “what shall we talk about? The weather? The Queen’s health? How you’re driving me mad?”

“Why did you stop?” she whispered.

He turned his head, but she wasn’t looking at him. She was staring up at the ceiling. He leaned closer and spoke in a low voice near her ear. “I had this idiotic idea that I probably shouldn’t deflower a virgin on top of my desk.”

Color flamed in her face, but she still didn’t look at him. “I would not have been able to stop you. I would not have had the strength.”

That took him back. “God, Emma, I would never force you.”

“That isn’t what I meant. I thought I should say stop, once, while you were…umm…” She paused and gave a little cough. “But then I couldn’t say it.” There was a note of surprise in her voice. “I just couldn’t form the word.”

“Because it felt so good?”

There was a long silence before she answered. “Yes.”

He brushed his knuckles along her cheek. It was so soft, like velvet against the back of his hand. “So many ways I could make you feel good,” he murmured, thinking out loud, desire rising within him. “It’s become my favorite pastime of late, thinking about how I’d make love to you, Emma.”

She pressed against the settee behind her,
sinking into the cushion at her back as if she wanted it to swallow her up.

Being an optimist, Harry took that as encouragement. After all, she was free to stand up and walk away, but she hadn’t done so. “How I’d take down your hair first and let it slide through my hands. All that long, pretty red hair. How I’d unbutton your shirtwaist and slide it off your shoulders. How I’d take off your skirt.” His throat went dry, and he had to stop a moment. “You see?” he said after a moment. “I’ve imagined it all, step by step.”

She made a wordless sound of surprise, and he could tell she was unnerved by the knowledge that he’d been having fantasies about her.

“The corset cover and petticoat would be the next to go,” he went on. “Which reminds me…from the brief, tantalizing glimpse I had earlier, I have to tell you that your underwear is much too plain, Emma. I’d like to see you in absurd little camisoles of silk with pearl buttons on them. That’s pure selfishness on my part, though. I’m partial to pearl buttons because they come undone so easily. Next, I’d strip you out of your corset—”

“Stop talking about my undergarments,” she whispered, the rosy blush in her face spreading down over her face and neck. “It isn’t…” She wet her lips. “It isn’t decorous.”

“Decorous?” He laughed softly. “Emma, when he’s taking off a woman’s clothes, a man doesn’t feel decorous. Neither does she if he’s doing it right. Besides, we’re just talking, making
conversation.” He nuzzled her ear. “Having social intercourse, you might say.”

She made a choked sound.

“I’d be kissing you the entire time. Your lips, your throat, your bare shoulders—”

“Oh, stop!” Her voice was a soft wail, so low he barely heard her. “Please stop.”

“Why?”

“It’s embarrassing!”

“Is it?” He eased back and made an open-handed gesture to the doorway. “If you don’t wish to hear it, then leave.”

She didn’t move. “Mrs. Morris has gone to a great deal of trouble. Leaving would be rude.”

“It would also prevent you from hearing what I’d do next.” He ran his finger along her jaw, watched it quiver. He touched her mouth. “You do want to know what’s next, don’t you?”

She made a tiny sound of denial against his finger, but she still didn’t leave. Didn’t even move to the chintz chair opposite. She pressed her lips together against his caress, and went still.

“I think now I’d have to stop undressing you for a bit and just touch you.” He touched his hand to the nape of her neck, and she jumped as if shocked by a jolt of electricity. “I’d run my hands over your shoulders and down your bare arms,” he told her, feeling lust overtaking him with each word. “I’d touch your breasts, your belly, your hips, through your chemise and drawers—”

She made an inarticulate sound of shock.

“Is that what you have on?” Harry brushed the
side of her neck with his lips. “Or a combination, perhaps? I’ve imagined stripping you out of both, of course, but which do you usually wear?”

She didn’t answer, and he nipped the taut ten-dons of her neck, feeling her shiver in response. “Emma, Emma, tell me,” he coaxed against her skin, “so I can imagine it when I’m not with you. A chemise and drawers?”

She didn’t move.

“A combination, then?”

Her stiff little nod confirmed that, and he continued, “I’d leave that on for now.”

“You would?” The moment the words were out of her mouth, she bit her lip, still not looking at him.

“I have to,” he explained. “I can’t get you out of it without taking off your shoes first.”

“Oh.” It was a hushed sound.

“Since you’ve got on a pair of plain walking shoes today, and not those ugly, high-button things you usually wear—”

She interrupted with a sound of indignation. “I don’t wear ugly shoes!”

Since most of her shoes were hideous, he ignored that bit of nonsense. “Just now, I’m fully occupied with the luscious task of removing your garters, so we won’t argue the point, but I’m going to buy you some pretty shoes, Miss Dove, at the first opportunity. Dozens of ’em, frivolous, frippery little slippers of velvet and brocade. Now, don’t interrupt again, if you please. Interrupting is rude, you know. So, now that I’ve got your shoes off, I have to remove your stockings—”

It was not Emma who interrupted, but the sound of footsteps on the stairs. Harry groaned and pulled back, and the moment he did, Emma scooted sideways, as far from him as she could get without abandoning the settee altogether. Another hopeful sign. He drew several deep breaths, forcing down his arousal.

Mrs. Morris entered the room with the tea tray. A maid in print dress and cap followed with a second tray, this one laden with food.

“Put it there, Dorcas,” the landlady ordered as she set her tray on the tea table opposite the settee and took one of the chintz chairs that flanked it. The maid deposited the tray of sandwiches and cakes on the table in front of Emma and Harry, gave a curtsy, and departed.

“I say,” Harry said, leaning forward and trying to look properly grateful for food when he was ravaged with lust, “this is the prettiest tea I’ve seen in ages. And on the spur of the moment, too. Your tenants are so fortunate to have you.”

Mrs. Morris simpered as she began to pour the tea. “Not all my tenants eat in, my lord, but for those who do, I flatter myself that I set a good table with proper food.”

He glanced at Emma, but she was looking away, paying no attention to either of them. The blush had receded from her complexion, leaving her skin once again as pale as milk. “Does Miss Dove eat in?” he asked, returning his attention to the woman opposite.

“She didn’t too often, sir, when she worked for you. She had some late hours, then, she did.
But now that she is the secretary to that wonderful Mrs. Bartleby, typing up her manuscripts for her, well, she eats most all her meals in.”

Harry leaned forward and reached for a seed-cake from the tray on the table and ate it as he tried to think of some excuse, any excuse, to get the woman out of the room.

“Sugar?” Mrs. Morris asked as she poured him a cup of tea. “Milk?”

“Neither, thank you, but perhaps…” He paused, frowning a little, scanning the tea tray as if searching for something.

“Yes, my lord?” The landlady leaned forward in her chair, terribly eager to please. “Was there something else you wanted?”

Harry gave her a deprecating little smile. “No, no, I don’t wish you to go to any further trouble on my account.”

“It would be no trouble,” she assured him. “No trouble at all.”

“I was hoping you might, perhaps, have some lemon?”

“Lemon?” She glanced at the tray, then back at him, giving an awkward laugh. “Why, how silly of Hoskins not to have provided it! I shall bring it at once.”

“How kind you are.” He gave her his very best smile. “And so thoughtful.”