Rafe leaned one forearm on the wall by her head, catching her sweet strawberry scent. He kept his other hand, with its clutch of bills, behind his back, so he would not test the softness of her skin, or catch a curl of her hair. She tilted back her head and made no attempt to flee.
“I promise never to send you for roast beef. But surely I can expect a kiss. What use is a wife whom I don’t take to bed?”
“It might be nice to wait until we know each other better.”
“I don’t need to know you better to locate your pertinent parts.”
Ah, poorly done, Rafe. Now he was imagining her pertinent parts. Imagining all of her. How animated she would be, how curious, enthusiastic, fun. Her expressive face… So help him but he would love to pleasure her just to watch her face.
But he must not. He had promised she would be safe, and she would be. This was a whole new game, and one not even he was ready to play.
So he closed his eyes and contented himself with breathing her in, her scent summoning images of long, lazy summer afternoons. He was aware of every inch of her: her breasts above the ribbon, the curve of her waist below. Aware of her hips, her thighs, her feet.
Aware of her breathing. Her breath hitching. Her skirts rustling.
She was escaping. He kept his eyes closed. He must let her go.
Then soft, warm lips pressed against his.
Just pressed. Unmoving, but unmistakable. A light promise of a kiss.
Every part of Rafe was as still as stone, but for his suddenly pounding heart and the hunger stirring in his loins and the sweet sensations dancing through his gut. He dared not move, for fear of frightening her away, and he needed time, a millennium, to savor the sensation of her lips on his. Time stretched and Rafe became as big as the selva, yet as tiny as this moment: this tiny, sacred moment of two pairs of lips pressed together.
He dared to move his mouth against hers, a gentle search for more, an offering, a vow. Hunger coursed through him. He stopped. Waited. Eyes still closed.
She responded in kind, the enchanting caress of her lips as slight and self-conscious as his own. Once more, he moved his lips, perhaps this time less a kiss than a prayer, a prayer that was answered, as for another tiny, sacred moment, they kissed as lovers would.
Then the pressure was gone. She ended the kiss. His lips were cold from her absence and warm from the memory, and new and familiar and alive. He could breathe again, and he sucked in that breath, his body desperate for air, and for, oh, so many things. He kept his eyes closed, because to open them was to lose that precious, tiny moment, but he knew from the murmur of muslin and the whisper of his shirt sleeve over his skin, that she had ducked under his arm and escaped, and was lost somewhere in the room.
He opened his eyes and faced the wall. It was papered with a riot of leaves and flowers and berries.
“What was that?” he asked the ugly wallpaper.
“A kiss,” Thea said from behind him. Her voice was too high and too bright, and he felt a rush of unmerited pride.
She cleared her throat and added, in her usual tone, “That should keep you satisfied for…a week.”
He turned and lounged back against the wall to show he didn’t care. She stood by the writing desk, fingers of one hand curled around its edge, the others fiddling with the ribbon below her breasts.
“What happens in a week?” he asked.
“Um. Two kisses?”
“And in two weeks?”
“In two weeks, we shall renegotiate.”
In two weeks, this farce would be over.
But what if things were different? What if he were a different man? A man who could take a lively bride home and make her happy?
Thea at Brinkley End, lighting up the house, turning it upside down, making it a place that he longed to enter.
Thea at Brinkley End, lonely and bored, sick of him, fading away, her light dimming, her laughter gone, and him, helpless to save her.
She had lived in an isolated country house, she had said, where she had no friends and never quite belonged. Whereas he rarely left his estate these days and spent every evening alone.
Blast it. No. Desire was turning him foolish, the bishop’s words confusing his thoughts.
Her face was half turned away from him as she stared down at the desk, giving him the angle of her jaw, the lock of wayward hair. He searched for words, annoyed both that he could not find them and that he cared enough to try.
But then her manner turned sharp and bright, and the last lingering echoes of that tiny moment and its elusive promise faded away.
“Look! A letter for the Countess of Luxborough,” she said, lifting the paper sitting by her hand.
Rafe suspected that if he mentioned the kiss she would look at him blankly and say, “Kiss? Oh, yes, I forgot.”
Fair enough. It was barely a kiss. He would forget it too, if he could not still feel her lips on his, her caress soaking into his skin like dye.