“I have a feeling you’ve a double meaning.” Her voice breathless and raspy.
“Oh, I do.” He winked again.
This time, her heart didn’t stutter, it stopped. She must be way past foxed. She’d not had enough of the watered wine to push her to extremes, but that must be the cause of her flailing body. She’d never gone silly from one of Josiah’s winks before. Her body felt as if it were falling, her mind reeling. She removed her hand from his arm and blinked the falling sensation away, found her focus.
“My aunt’s opinion,” she said, proud her voice was steady and strong, “was that husbands were better off dead.”
Josiah cracked a laugh and fell back into the chair, arms hanging to his side. “Perhaps some are, Gee, perhaps some are.”
She pressed her fingertips to her temples. Everything was so muddled. “But some are better off alive. Xavier for instance.” A difficult concession to make but itmustbe made.
“Undoubtedly so.”
“How come you are not so muddled about all this?”
“Because I have not had so much wine as you. It’s truly not a particularly difficult concept to grasp.”
She looked at the leather folio containing her aunt’s memoirs stuffed beneath the desk. Perhaps something else had helped muddle her mind long before now, and she currently waded through fields of ancient mud to discover the truth shining in the distance, out of reach.
“I’ve captured Edith and Griffin!” Sarah called out, bustling back into the room, Josiah’s sister hooked through one arm and her husband through the other. She settled them near the negus and looked about. “Where are—oh.” Her gaze had landed on Georgiana and Josiah, and her lips curled into a sly grin. “You two may stay there. If you like. No need to join us if you’re having a cozy chat.” She caught Georgiana’s eye, pursing her lips as if to give a kiss.
A reminder, a double dare.
Georgiana groaned. “Josiah. Jos. I think I’ll call you Jos.”
He laughed. “Yes, Gee, Queen of the Warm Wine?”
“You’re not going to like what I have to do at all.”
He shook his head, that lock of hair falling over one merry eye. “You need fresh air.” He slapped his thighs—such nice, thick thighs—as he stood and offered her a hand.
Which she took so quickly she almost fell into him as he pulled her from her seat.
“Skating, anyone?” he asked, pulling her toward the door.
“Don’t think skating foxed sounds like a good idea,” Georgiana muttered. But it did sound daring. She liked that.
Peter jumped up, as did Miss Darlington.
“No, no!” Sarah waved them back down. “You’ve both already started this game. You must see it through.” She smiled Josiah and Georgiana out the door. “Have fun! Perhaps take a walk first to sober someone up before strapping blades to her feet?”
Josiah rolled his eyes and pulled Georgiana close to his side, a rather welcome help in keeping her upright. “That was the plan.”
Plan. She had a plan. Do her dares and go back home. But that meant kissing Josiah. And with their sides touching, and his palm warm against her, even a dared kiss seemed more dangerous than balancing on blades while bosky.
Fresh air would be good, though. Fresh air would clear up the matter of husbands and kissing, would remind her as much as Lord Westgrove’s boisterous interruption had, that some dares went too far, and kissing Josiah was one of them.
ChapterFour
“Kisses. Bah. Cake is better.” –from The Masculine Inconvenience: Memoirs of a Superior Lady
Giving a sharp woman a pair of blades for her feet would likely prove a bad idea, but Josiah was the daring sort. And she did seem better now after an hour’s walk through the gardens. He’d left her there to sober up while he gathered supplies, and in the hopes Sarah would release the other guests to skate with them in time. He needed people, barriers, between him and Georgiana after the earlier events of the day. But after the negus, everyone seemed to have sunk into a lazy haze for the rest of the afternoon. So now with two pairs of skates slung over his shoulder, he led Georgiana toward the frozen lake, shoving the word “dare” right out of his brain.
He couldn’t think about what he’d been dared to do. Not after sitting so close to her, arms pressed together, her scent—fresh soap and soft velvet—burning him up as much on the inside as on the outside. Not after her muddled question about dead husbands. Not after confessing his weaknesses to her, showing her his raw wounds. Not after watching her pace the garden for an hour, waving her arms as if she was talking out loud to herself, likely trying to work through her muddle.
No dares. No… kisses.
Only blades and ice and wicked whipping winds. Skating, with its precariousness—an open situation on a lake, viewable from the house, and a painfully hard surface—offered the perfect location to avoid those things.
