Anything rather than risk making eye contact with her, Verity suspected. Or perhaps her dishevelled appearance offended him. Good.
‘A pity, I was planning to build a small summer house here.’
‘I doubt Papa would wish to sell.’ She realised that she was edging away, poised for flight before she did something obvious like licking her lips or twirling her hair or, for goodness’ sake, batting her eyelashes.
‘Look out!’
She glanced round, then down at the edge of the pond crumbling under her heel. She flailed her arms wildly and was seized by the wrist, then tugged forward to land against William’s chest with a thud that knocked the air from her lungs.
‘Oh,’ she said inanely. ‘You seem to keep rescuing me.’
Only this time he did not let her go. His arms were around her and she was clutching at his lapels and they were pressed together, her head tilted back, his down, so their breath mingled. How did that happen? She could see his individual eyelashes and the pale lines at the corners of his eyes where he had screwed them up against the light, or in laughter. His pupils were wide, dark and Verity found herself unable to tear her gaze from them.
Fallen angel... I would like to fall with you... No, stop it. You know where that leads.
‘Miss Wingate.’ The Duke lowered his head further until their noses were almost touching. She felt his voice rumbling in his chest where they were pressed together. ‘Do you by any chance want to kiss me as much as I want to kiss you?’
‘I... Yes.’
Oh... What had happened to the starched-up, perfectly proper man? What had happened to her, for that matter? And then she stopped wondering and simply kissed him back. His mouth was warm and firm and, when she pressed against him, he licked between her lips, startling a moan of pleasure from her.
Verity came to herself to find they were sitting side by side on the log, her head on his shoulder, his arms around her. ‘Your Grace...’
‘I think after that you had better call me Will.’ His voice was curiously husky, as though he was experiencing some strong emotion, not simply the after-effects of a kiss.
‘Will?’
‘Yes, Verity?’
A duke—this Duke—was asking her to call him by his first name. This Duke—Will—had just kissed her and she had kissed him back. So, what did that mean? That she was dreaming? That she had completely lost her grip on reality?
‘Will,’ Verity murmured. She liked his name on her lips. She liked sitting like this pressed against his big, hard body. Verity raised her hand and touched his cheek.
As though her touch had shaken him back to reality Will shifted away, the sensual smile gone from his lips. ‘What am I thinking of?’ he said as he took his hands from her wa
ist and stood up. ‘That was appalling. I must apologise for...for what has just occurred.’
Appalling? ‘Apologise? Why?’ Apparently she could form at least two words, if not a rational sentence.
‘Because, clearly, that was a mistake. A most serious error of judgement.’
Chapter Five
‘An error of judgement?’ Verity demanded. ‘Us kissing each other—’
‘Me kissing you.’
‘Oh, never mind who kissed who... Whom. Oh, bother it! You are saying that kiss was a serious error of judgement? Why, exactly?’ All the warmth and delightfully fluttered feelings were becoming another kind of heat altogether. Anger. But of course, she should have known better. This sort of thing never ended well.
‘A gentleman does not go around kissing young ladies like you.’ Will had found his hat and gloves from beside the tree trunk and was putting them on, very precisely.
‘And what, exactly, is a woman like me?’
One who goes romping through the woods on a Sunday without a chaperon, presumably. One who so far forgets herself that she kisses a man she does not like. At least last time I had the excuse of being in love with the man, even if I was idiotically deluded about him.
‘A young lady, like you. You were thrown off balance by almost falling into the pond. I took advantage of your alarm. And so I apologise, it was unconscionable.’
‘It was a perfectly pleasant kiss, that is what it was. All it was.’ Verity shot to her feet with rather more force than elegance. ‘No one took advantage of anyone. I am not some green girl who has no idea what a man is about, no idea what a kiss is—or how to say no. I wanted to kiss you, you wanted to kiss me. We kissed. It was an adequate kiss. There is no cause to be ungracious about it. Will.’