“Challenging.”
“I’m not, I… I wish to be partners, not competitors.”
He leaned forward. “I never would have expected it, but perhaps I should have.”
“Expected what?” Her voice trembled. Her body, too.Curse the way he unraveled her with a simple touch, a single look, a hint of his citrus scent.
“Having a wife who does not want me makes me wish to change her mind.”
“You do not mean that.”Danger, disaster—thy name is Felix.
He rubbed his thumb across her knuckles as he mumbled, “Distance is supposed to make a man forget. The experts will want to know that, in some cases, that fails to be true.”
“What nonsense are you—”
“A man deserves a kiss on his wedding day.” His eyes were gems with fires inside them, hard and hot, and he was drawing her forward, pulling her onto the bench at his side until their knees kissed through layers of linen and muslin. One of his arms slipped around her waist, his large hand settling about her ribs, his thumb dangerously close to the bottom curve of her bosom.
A shock, this familiar touch. A star burst to life between her legs and… throbbed. Why hadn’t this feeling been there in Germany? An entirely lovely man, Jacob, had courted her, and she’d tried to make herself want him, tried to think of him at night when she moved her hand between her legs. But his face had always shifted, dark hair lightening to blond, a wicked gleam blooming in his eye until the man who drove her fantasies and her self-pleasure was not dear, sweet Jacob with the printing press but… the man married to her now.
The same man whose thumb currently teased the underside of her bosom. This star-bright desire not what she wanted, not what she needed to bring her plans to fruition.
She jolted away from him, out of his hold with a sharp laugh. “You? Want to kissme? A poor jest, Felix. As if I do not remember your old trick.”
His arms still hovered in the air as if he held a ghost, and he dropped them heavily to his sides. “You didn’t like the footman I sent you, Caro?”
“It was cruel to tease me.” She’d only wanted her friend to give her a kiss. Her first. She’d wanted to give it to Felix. Had written him a little note because she’d not been able to say the wordsplease kiss meout loud.Meet me behind the stables, the letter had begged. At least she’d not been there to see him read it, to hear him laugh. No, she’d only heard the footman’s chuckle when he’d strode like a cock-sure rooster round the side of the stables, calling out, “I heard someone here wants to be kissed!”
She’d hated Felix then. And she’d tried to forget him since. She’d been right to. It seemed he was still a tease.
“I add one more stipulation to our marriage settlement,” she said, looking down the long, dusty road that ended at Siswell Abbey.
“A bit late for that,” he mumbled.
“Never mention that kiss again. It never happened, and I never want to think of it again.” Before he could answer, she pointed down the road. “Oh, look.” Her voice did not sound like her own. The star still throbbed between her legs despite the years-long anger still alive and well inside her tight chest. “We’re here.”
“I should not have sent the footman, Caro. But I couldn’t kiss you. Even if I—”
“It matters not. It is in the past. Just… do not dothatagain.” A star-creating almost kiss. “I do not expect anything like it. You do not either. Remember?”
Silence. Silence, buzzing and blank, then, “I remember.”
“Good.” Kisses were unnerving distractions, nothing more. Not part of her plan. And the way he’d made her feel when he didn’t want to kiss her—empty, aching, lacking—that was not part of the plan, either.
Chapter Five
Three months later
Felix wiped theblood from his cheek and stripped off his ruined glove before entering his London townhouse. His muscles ached, and soon his right eye would be black and blue. But the other fellow was worse off. He snickered as he stepped inside the cool entryway and closed the door. Perhaps that monster would think twice before he kicked another child. Hopefully, the lad Felix had championed would remain in Felix’s employ. He’d left the boy in the mews with his groom and instructions to find him some paying work to do. The child had been ready to bolt, though, eyes darting all about, arms wrapped around his too-lean frame.
Felix slouched toward the stairs, but didn’t make it up two steps before a knock echoed behind him. His butler, Mr. Clarkes, appeared, but Felix waved him away, opened the door himself.
His grandfather grinned from the other side. “You look like hell.”
Felix stepped aside, ushered him in. “What are you doing here?”
“In town to talk with Beckett.” Caro’s brother-in-law, a fellow radical. Naturally, they’d be planning. “About the Corn Laws.”
Felix led his grandfather into his study and sank into a chair, gestured for the other man to do the same.
