Not Quite a Lady (The Dressmakers 4)

To be loved.

She felt his hands slide from her face, felt him start to pull away, and she wrapped her hands about his upper arms.

Not yet, please, not yet.

Only a little more, another moment. It had been so very long a time she’d done without this. She’d forgotten how sweet it could be, a kiss, merely a kiss. She’d forgotten how perfect the beginning could be, before everything turned cold and ugly.

She held on and pressed her mouth to his.

Come back. I’m not done.

She coaxed him with all the sweetness she could find within her.

She coaxed him with all the dreams she’d given up dreaming.

She coaxed him with all the longing she’d stifled, all the wishes, all the loneliness.

Ten years.

It spilled out of her, as though an inner dam had broken.

Ten years’ boredom, frustration, and anger.

Ten years’ lying and evasion and manipulation.

Ten years’ suppressed laughter, too.

It spilled out of her, all of it.

It was only a kiss, a mere kiss, but she kissed him with everything she had in her.

And at last he kissed her back.

He wrapped his arms about her and kissed her as though she were the only girl in the world and this was the last kiss in the world and all that was left in all the world was this kiss.

Only this kiss, so sweet.

…and wild.

…and hot.

…and devastating.

Her knees buckled. Her mind went dark.

The world shook and changed. Became unrecognizable.

The taste of him poured into her and swept everything before it. She was lost, tumbling along like a twig in a torrent.

She saw herself tumbling again, down to the ground, careless, laughing fool. Lost, lost, again.

No.

She couldn’t. Not again.

She wrenched her mouth away. She planted her palms on his chest and pushed. He didn’t move but only regarded her through eyes narrowed to slits of molten gold. The big chest under her hands rose and fell, fast and hard.

“You started it,” he said. His voice had dropped to a rumble. She felt it low in her belly.

Her breath was short and she struggled to form words. “You started it,” she managed to say.

“You didn’t stop it,” he said. “I was ready to, but you…” He trailed off. She watched a slow smile transform his face, making him more impossibly handsome than ever. “You know how to kiss. Well, well.”

He was right on every count.

She wanted to kick him for being right, and for what he’d done to her, so easily, oh, so easily.

Ten years, and she was as great a fool as ever.

She ought to kick herself.

He shrugged and looked about him. His hat must have fallen off during the tussle. She watched him pick it up, brush off dirt and gravel with the back of his hand, and put it on, tipping it at a typically rakish angle.

As though she needed the reminder. A rake. She knew he was a rake. She knew the consequences. She’d borne the consequences for ten long years.

One kiss, and she’d surrendered.

Another minute and he’d have had her on the ground, her skirts up and her legs spread, like all the rest of his strumpets.

Yes, it was her own fault, but she couldn’t bear it: the knowing rake’s smile, the cool confidence—when she felt as though she, and the world she’d so carefully constructed over ten long years, had shattered to pieces.

She snatched the hat from his head and struck him with it. She hit his upper arm, then his chest. Then she flung down his hat, kicked it, and stormed away.

Darius remained where he was, waiting for his breathing to slow and his breeding organs to settle down.

That kiss.

He did not like to admit it, even to himself, but his legs were the slightest bit…wobbly.

On account of a kiss. A mere kiss. Nothing more. He hadn’t put his mouth anywhere but on hers. He hadn’t put his hands on her breasts or between her legs. He hadn’t tried to unhook or unbutton or untie anything.

He couldn’t. He’d had all he could do to keep up with her, with that kiss.

It wasn’t supposed to happen, that kiss.

He knew better.

“Moron,” he said between his teeth. “Did you leave your brain in London?”

He closed his eyes but opened them immediately again because the sight in his mind was too painful to contemplate. One insane act after another.

He, a man of science, whom other men of science looked up to. He, who devoted himself to reason.

Yet he’d panicked over her damaged dogcart, practically fainted with relief to find her unharmed, then whined to her about his father, of all things!

“This is unacceptable,” he said. “This is…absurd.”

He searched for his hat and found it eventually, under a shrub. He brushed off dirt and leaves. “Idiot,” he growled. “Numskull.”

He shoved the hat onto his head. It was the celibacy, he tried to tell himself. A fortnight at least, perhaps as much as a month or even more since he’d last bedded a woman. He couldn’t remember when it was exactly, or who she was.

Celibacy was the trouble.

No, it wasn’t.

The trouble was Lady Charlotte Hayward.

The trouble was his inexperience with blue-blooded virgins. They were a species he did not understand and didn’t want to or need to understand. They were like…like an infectious fever. The only intelligent way to deal with them was to have nothing to do with them.

“You know that,” he told himself. “You’ve always known that. Keep away. How difficult can it be?”

By the time Charlotte reached the house, she had herself under complete control. She walked past the servants in the same calm and self-possessed way she usually did, and they did not betray by the smallest change of expression any reaction to her mangled coiffure and cap or the ragged hem of her dress trailing behind her.

When Charlotte entered her bedchamber, Molly simply stared, her mouth open, while her wide brown gaze traveled from her mistress’s head down, then up, then down again.

Before Molly could think of what to say, Lizzie came in. She, too, surveyed Charlotte more than once. “Did you have another accident?” she said.

“I fell,” Charlotte said. “I caught my heel on the hem of my dress and tore it and tripped.”

“Oh. I thought perhaps Belinda had stepped on you. Several times.” A pause, then, “I was told that Mr. Carsington was here.”

“Oh, yes. He was.” Charlotte looked away from her stepmother’s too-keen gaze and addressed the maid: “I need a bath, Molly. The sooner the better.”

“He’s downstairs, then?” Lizzie persisted.

“No. He heard about the accident and came to inquire after us. Then he left. That is to say, he left after settling a dispute in the stables about treating Belinda’s wound.”

Lizzie’s dark eyebrows went up. “A dispute? Is that what took you so long?”

“I dared not leave,” Charlotte said, and that at least was the absolute truth. “Lizzie, Fewkes was horrible. Mr. Carsington said he was drunk. Thanks to Mr. Carsington, Fewkes lost the argument, but he was furious, and now I’m worried he’ll make the grooms or the horses suffer for it. Papa must be told as soon as he comes home.”

As always, Lizzie understood what was important. “Of course, my love. But have your bath and leave it to me. I’ll tell your father.”