“Through the orchard to the brook. It’ll be pleasant in the shade.” There was a lovely little spot she and Dickie had discovered years ago in which one could sit and listen to the brook babbling past.
She was perfectly certain that Nicholas suspected her of having some ulterior motive—quite obviously, she’d come to find him rather than requesting her brother’s company—but equally, she judged that he was not the sort to allow a lady to wander alone in such a setting, bucolically peaceful or not.
Sure enough, he stated, “I’ll go with you.”
Hiding a spontaneous smile, she turned to the door. “By all means.” She waved at the bright day outside. “Shall we?”
In silence, he paced beside her as she led the way to a corner of the yard, through the gate there, and on along a path that wended beneath the bright-green branches of the orchard’s trees, many still sporting blossoms here and there.
They were out of sight and hearing of anyone from the inn. She seized the chance to probe an issue pertinent to her aim. “I gathered that, by choice, you spend little time in London, yet you’ve been on the town for what? A decade?” Eyes innocently wide, she glanced at him.
He met her gaze briefly. “I’m thirty-two, so longer than that.”
He was a trifle older than she’d thought, not that that made any difference. “And in all those years, you haven’t developed a”—airily, she waved—“tendre for any lady?”
“No.” A flat, definite negative.
Her heart leapt, but immediately, he countered, “What of you? You’ve had… Is it four Seasons? Given your family’s wealth and standing, I find it difficult to believe you’ve had no offers.”
“Ah, but it’s Miss Flibbertigibbet who goes to London and gallivants about during the Season, and she’s never going to receive an offer from any eligible parti.”
“You aren’t Miss Flibbertigibbet.” The words were a declaration of incontrovertible fact.
She conceded the point with a dip of her head. “But most in our world don’t know that. Few outside the family do”—she met his gaze—“and now, you.”
They’d reached the end of the orchard, and she looked ahead and led the way on, between the larger trees and into the denser shade that bordered the brook. Some yards farther along, the path ended at a grassy spot on the bank. She was pleased to find it much as she remembered it, enclosed by trees and bushes. In that season, the brook ran too low to support any fishing, so the spot was as close to being private as any place she could think of.
She halted with her boots sinking into the lush grass.
Nicholas halted beside her. After taking in the scene, he glanced at her. “If your previous question was by way of learning if I’m in the habit of dallying with ladies, the answer is no. Frankly, I don’t have time for inconsequential dalliances—I have better things...” He paused, then amended, “More important things to do.”
“I was serious about Miss Flibbertigibbet being me in London. The whole point of creating her was to shield me from the overwrought attentions of the so-called gentlemen who are attracted by this”—she waved at her face and figure—“and my birth, dowry, and connections.”
His gaze on the rippling water, he huffed. “I can imagine.” After a moment, his voice lower, his gaze still on the babbling brook, he went on, “If I’m following your train of thought correctly, that means that both of us are free of all entanglements and, therefore, free to pursue…”
She swung to face him, stepped into him, and raising her arms and winding them about his neck, pinned him with her blue, blue gaze. “This.”
She pressed her lips to his in a deliberately challenging and provocative caress, and a fire of need smoldering inside him ignited.
As if sensing that, she pushed nearer still, the curves of her body a blatant incitement as they pressed into his harder muscled frame, then she murmured something incoherent and, in the next instant, dove even deeper into the kiss.
Into the conflagration created by his need and her desire. By his passion and her wanting.
There was really no question in either of their minds over what they sought in that moment.
More.
More of this, whatever this was. More of the tastes that sated their mutual hunger.
More of the heat and the spiraling pleasure.
He supped at her lips, at her luscious mouth, then wrested control of the kiss from her.
Predictably, she tried to regain the ascendancy, but he held her off—held her back. In this sphere, experience counted.
Yet inexperience and a blatant disregard for social restraint were a heady mix, an incitement she turned into a weapon aimed directly at him. At the greedy, hungry need she enticed and provoked.
She was insistent and pushy, her busy hands divesting him of his jacket and flinging it to the grass before she spread her palms and questing fingers across the fine linen of his shirt and wantonly traced.
