“I doubt we will suffer more than a few rose thorns in our fingers,” Valentine replied, forcing his gaze away from Marissa, and beginning to shuffle the papers back into a pile.
He should feel guilty. But it wasn’t as if he was going to steal Marissa from his brother—well, not unless she wanted to be stolen—and besides, George was showing a singular lack of interest in her. She was his houseguest and it was up to him to keep her entertained, that was all.
But he knew he was telling himself lies. When Marissa smiled at him with her warm, dimpled smile he felt himself go hot all over. She was making him do things, think things, he couldn’t remember doing or thinking in years.
Truly, he was entering dangerous waters.
Chapter 5
During dinner, the expedition was discussed again, and when Jasper informed Lady Bethany of their intention of setting off the following morning for the village of Montfitchet, she said that if they were going searching for a rose then she had better come, too, to keep an eye on them all.
Jasper expressed his pleasure at her joining them and raised his glass in a toast. “To the quest!”
“To bringing the Crusader’s Rose home to Abbey Thorne Manor!” Valentine added.
“Where it belongs,” Marissa finished, before she thought to stop herself.
He smiled knowingly at her over his glass and she felt her heart give an odd, uneven thud.
He’d removed his neck cloth again, and the neck of his shirt was open. When he leaned back in his chair she could not help but notice his shoulders and the way his hair curled about the strong column of his neck.
He was very masculine.
He was the sort of man women noticed and watched and dreamed of marrying.
Marissa felt embarrassingly warm and flushed being in his company, but she refused to accept there was anything out of the ordinary with that. Even the fact she wanted to touch him, and she wanted him to touch her, was surely not so very wicked. Marissa knew about fast women, she and her friends had discussed the subject at length, and decided that as long as one only used one’s feminine attributes on the man one loved and wanted to marry, then it was acceptable to be “fast.” The question was, did her wanting to run her hands over Valentine’s shoulders and back and wind them around his neck fall within those guidelines?
He wasn’t the man she wanted to marry. He wasn’t the man she was in love with.
Like most girls of her station Marissa was a virgin. Although she had had her share of stolen kisses, some more pleasurable than others, she’d never experienced the dark pleasures of the flesh. What happened in the marriage bed was vague, and until she met George she’d not considered it overmuch, but she was sure he would make her laugh and they would muddle through somehow.
Now she found herself thinking of Valentine instead of George and she didn’t feel like laughing one little bit.
She was shocked by her own thoughts, but she was also intrigued and unsettled.
They’d only just met!
She hadn’t wanted to be part of his search for the Crusader’s Rose, but when Valentine spoke of it the passion sparked like fire in his blue eyes. In response, something flared inside her, too. He made this adventure exciting—Valentine Kent was exciting.
How could she explain that to the Husband Hunters Club?
“Oh, by the way, I plan to marry George, but in the meanwhile I thought I might become infatuated with his brother…”
Her friends would think her flighty, but Marissa knew she’d never been that sort of girl. She was serious and cautious, more inclined to intellectual pursuits than balls and parties. For some reason Valentine Kent was having an odd and uncharacteristic effect on her.
Not that it would last. He was everything she had sworn to reject. A botanist with a quest, a man who found expeditions to find plants the highlight of his life, a man who poured over musty old books and dried specimens and whose conversation consisted of names in Latin. If she married such a man it would be as if she never left home.
George was her choice; George would give her a life completely different from the one she had. So what if he enjoyed a game of cards or a horse race? At least he would never force her to stand in a downpour armed with nothing more than a notebook and pencil while he crouched over plants exclaiming, “Magnificent. Look at this, Marissa. Have you ever seen anything more beautiful?”
Marissa gave a little shudder at the thought. The next time she turned her eyes to V
alentine on the other side of the table, she found she could look at him with almost complete indifference.
After dinner, Jasper and Lady Bethany went out for a stroll in the garden before retiring. As she rose from her chair, Marissa’s grandmother raised her thin eyebrows and gave her granddaughter a questioning look.
Marissa didn’t need her to say what was on her mind. She was wondering why Marissa had involved herself in this expedition when she usually went out of her way to avoid such tedious adventures. She would want an explanation.
Restless and unsettled, Marissa rose and went to the window, gazing out over the moat and the park beyond. There was a copse of trees, dark against the fading twilight. They looked a little sinister, especially when a cloud of rooks flew up from the boughs and began a noisy protest.