Her feet tapped to turn around and flee, but she planted them to the dust and refused to let them do as they wished.
The woman disappeared into the alleyway beyond the iron gate, and then the door opened again.
Freddy flung herself to the side as a man strode out of the building. Even without a moon high above, his hair glinted like golden threads. Too long and tied back in a short queue low on his neck, strands escaped to fall over his forehead and muddle with the perspiration there.
Mr. Grant Webster.
Knitting needles like knives, she wanted to lick that neck more than she wanted her next breath. She felt intoxicated by the sight of it, tendrils of lust wrapping round her every vein and tightening. She’d never felt such pulsing need. Was it just him or that she was doing something for herself? Something illicit that spoke to her every hidden and silence desire? If it was the latter, she’d better do something, then.
She rolled off the wall and launched herself at him, flung her arms about that very sweaty neck and pressed her lips to his. He startled, pushed back, peered into the shadows of her hood. “A strange maiden approaches. What shall I do with her? Hm. Eager hands. Welcome lips. I think I should kiss her.”
She opened her mouth to say “yes please” but found the two tremulous words swept into the patient fury of his kiss, into the warm hollow of his mouth. She didn’t need those words after all.
The kiss unfurled like the thin, streaky clouds floating across the moon. They promised rain, but the kiss promised a thunderstorm.
He spun them and walked her backward until her back hit the wall. “Eager, love?” He placed a palm on either side of her head and leaned over her, his body casting her in further shadow.
She nodded, stroked her fingertips down his muscular back. He wore only a waistcoat and shirtsleeves as he did in every performance to better show off his musculature. To give him better ease of movement also on his horse she assumed. It also gave her greater access to him. No wool to hide his warmth and strength from her.
The kiss was slow, meandering, like sipping tea in a garden at morning when the dew still clings to each petal and leaf. Yet it promised to grow, too, and singe her as the rising sun eviscerates the dew.
In the surge of feeling, she remembered how to kiss, how she’d been kissed with passion by her husband before she’d been forgotten. So she outlined his bottom lip with the tip of her tongue, and he opened dutifully for her. They deepened the kiss at the same time, exploring, reveling. He didn’t touch her except with his lips, and the absence of his hands where she most wanted them—everywhere on her—seemed to heighten her pleasure, and as her pleasure increased, so too did her desire. She wanted more, needed it.
She fisted her hands in his cravat and broke away from the kiss. A momentary gathering of breath before diving back in. They were disparate heights, and as she turned her face up to him, her nose brushed the bottom of his cravat, and she spied the gold-and-diamond pin nestled in the folds, glinting in the moonlight. The bit of jewelry was like him—beautiful, sharp, and a bit unexpected. Paste or real? It did not matter. It shone exquisite all the same. Like him.
His hand appeared, a heavy, delicious weight on her cheek, and he stroked his fingers into her hair over her ear, taking the hood of her cloak with him.
Mesmerized by the winking gem in his cravat, by the earthy scent of the man she’d dreamed of for months now, she barely noticed but to lean into the caress.
The moon caught her face.
“Damn me.” Mr. Webster jumped away from her. “Freddy?”
Freddy never cursed, but a damn might be appropriate. So many emotions laced his few words, chief among them shock. She straightened off the wall and smoothed her skirts. What to do with his shock? And was that a touch of disgust in his voice? Surely not. Please God, no.
He paced away from her, raking his hands through his hair. When he returned to stand before her, he said, “It is you. I had hoped I imagined it.”
Hoped he’d imagined it? Well. Freddy pulled her cloak up over her head and tried to find her courage. She looked up to the heavens for help. The clouds had rolled away, and the stars winked hello, but their blinking seemed like laughter. Freddy cut her gaze away, gripped her hands before her.
Mr. Webster wrung his hands. “Good God, Freddy, I’m so sorry. I am so very, very sorry. I do beg your pardon, a thousand times over. I thought you someone else.” He groaned, hunched his body to the left and dropped his face in his hands. “Max is going to kill me. The strongman is going to snap every bone in my body with his bare hands.”
She held a hand out with a halting step toward him. “Do not worry, Mr. Webster. I will not tell my cousin.”
“Well, that makes it a bit better. Man’s a boxer and a viscount and married into the Cavendish family. If anyone can snap my bones, and my reputation, it’s him. And if there existed any reason for him to do so, it’s this.”
She shook her head but lost the words to contradict him.
“Are you here to see him?” Mr. Webster asked.
“No. No … ah, I’m … here to see you.” The last three words were spoken so low, Freddy barely heard them herself. She should not have said them. Why had she said them? They were pointless now. Now that she knew how little he thought of her, how mortified he was to have kissed her. The man loved every woman in London.
But for her. She rolled her lips between her teeth, clenched her tears tight to her chest, and strode around him toward the iron gate. Someone had left it open, and it banged against the fence. Thank goodness. The echoing clang might cover up the brittle breaking of her heart.
“Freddy!” Footsteps pounding after her across the dust. “Wait a moment.”
She stopped, unable to do otherwise.
He ran around her and stopped between her and the gate. “You said you were looking for me? I know you likely wish to put a bullet through my heart right now. For kissing you. But if there is anything I can do for you, please say the word.”