Martin jumped up and, for a second or two, it looked like the weasel might try to hit Lionel. Lionel did not move, continuing to level his coldest stare at Martin. If the wretch wanted to fight, Lionel would not refuse, but Martin would have been a prize idiot to attempt it.
“I would die before I apologized to an inferior woman,” Martin spat, turning on his heel and leaving with a few choice grumbles under his breath.
It should have been a satisfying victory, made twice as gratifying by the fact that Martin would never bother Amelia again, but as silence descended across the room once more, he rather wished he had stayed ‘underground.’
“Why did you do that?” Amelia whispered, her voice thick.
“If you will excuse me, I have much to attend to,” he replied, getting to his feet.
But Amelia was faster, grabbing his hand and holding it tightly. “Not before you answer me,” she urged, her eyes slightly wild. “Why did you do that for me?”
Because I cannot help it,he wanted to say, but the words would not come.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
“Lionel?” Amelia pressed, her hands a vise around his wrist. “You shall have to drag me to wherever you are going if you do not want to answer me, but I will not give up.”
She had not said anything throughout Martin’s visit, but that did not mean that her mind had been silent. For the entire duration, it had raced, firing back and forth like the daisy game she used to play with Isolde and Valery:He likes me, he likes me not.
Lionel gazed at her, suddenly unable to speak, though he had said plenty to Martin.
“You have been avoiding me for days,” Amelia pressed, her throat dry. “Yet, you appear at the exact moment that my brother arrives and, not only that, but youdefendme fiercely. I cannot understand it, Lionel! I am… beyond confused, not knowing where I stand with you. One moment, you are warm and kind. The next, you are distant and cold. Indeed, how mayI prepare appropriately when I do not know what temperature I must brace for?”
Lionel expelled a weary sigh, his hand covering hers for a moment. “It is simple, Amelia.”
“Is it? Then, you must be reading a different book to me,” she shot back, trying not to concentrate on the touch of his palm against hers, imagining his gentle caress at the Duke of Thornhill’s ball.
Lionel carefully prized her fingers away from his wrist, dispelling Amelia’s hopes that it had been a tender touch, intended to comfort her.
“Itissimple, Amelia,” he replied. “You are my wife. I will defend you no matter what, and when I happened to see your brother coming through the gates, I knew I would be needed.”
Rather than allow him to remove her fingers from his wrist, Amelia let go of her own volition. She did not wish to feel any more foolish than she already did by clinging on to him.
“You say that, but how can you defend me no matter what when you go ‘underground’ to escape me?” she said tersely, her heart thundering in her chest while blood rushed in her ears.
“I am always nearby,” he replied softly. “If I were to leave the vicinity, I would tell you.”
She squinted at him, balling her hands into frustrated fists. “You see! Who wouldnotbe utterly confused when faced with such a man as you? You are so sweet to me in one breath, then you withdraw with the next. Why, you werejust aboutto try and leave again. You keep doing it and it is… tangling my brain into knots.”
“It is not my intention,” he replied.
“I believe that, but you cannot deny that your intentions have not been clear,” she insisted. “If I am your wife in name only, then you should not be giving me hope like this. You should not gaze at me so intently, you should not hold my face and act as if you are about to kiss me, you should not touch me when my sleeve falls; you should not fly into a foul temper because a handsome gentleman happened to compliment me, and you certainly should not be bothered if other men admire me from afar.”
“You are right; I should not,” he said thickly. “Yet, I am, and I do.”
He caught her by the wrist and pulled her to him, his arm slipping around her waist as if he was about to commence a waltz with her. She gasped as she bumped into his broad chest, barely having time to draw breath before his lips grazed hers in an astonishing, unexpected, doubly bewildering kiss.
His mouth was soft and warm, his kiss slow and fierce at once, as his hand traveled up her arm, following the same path his touch had taken at the Duke of Thornhill’s ball. He cradled her neck ashe caught her mouth with his a second time, urging her to kiss him back.
In her shock, Amelia’s mind and body had frozen, but as his kisses began to thaw her, she gave into the feeling of wonder and curiosity that swept through her veins.
Holding onto his lapels and raising up on tiptoe, she kissed him back, hesitantly at first. She had read of countless kisses, devoured the details in secret before her brother or father could deem the book inappropriate, but reading and enacting were not quite the same. And she did not want to get it wrong.
Follow his lead…
She obeyed her thoughts, allowing Lionel to guide her, to teach her in the art of kissing. It was a stirring ebb and flow, a slow and burning graze that could quicken into something hungrier at a moment’s notice, a strange and captivating act that had her melting into his embrace, letting her instincts take over.
The room faded around them, transforming into a bubble where only the two of them existed. She could not hear the birds in the garden anymore, she could not hear the activity of the household staff; all she could hear was the thudding of her heart and the sawing of his breath and hers as their kiss deepened.
