"Oh," she said, "I will be looking no such thing."
"Perhaps I used the wrong pronouns, then," he said. "I see that I should have said 'me' and 'myself.' However it is,I am sure the countess will draw the most satisfactory conclusions, as will everyone else."
"But nothing has happened," she said.
His raised eyebrow only increased her indignation. "What?" he said. "A kiss is nothing? My kiss is nothing? I am devastated. I am sure the countess would expect no more than that, of course.Or anyone else for that matter.Except old Ernie.And perhaps Lester.But we certainly kissed, Diana. You are very good at it, too, if I may be permitted to say so. You do not clamp your lips and your teeth together as if the treasures beyond must be guarded at all costs. I seem to recall that you were just as generous with another part of your body, though of course my own stupidity prevented me from reaching those treasures beyond.Very lamentable."
"You are despicable," she said, flushing, "and you really are no gentleman."
"Ah, this is better," he said. "I admire you vastly with flashing eyes and stubborn chin, Diana. It promises well for the explosion of a certain universe on a certain much-wished-for occasion."
"Well, it certainly will not happen with you, sir," she said tartly. "If you may be certain about anything in your future, it is that."
"Ah, Diana," he said in that caressing voice that made the fine hairs on the back of her neck feel as if they were standing on end,' 'I would not count on that if I were you.'' He was laughing at her again. She hated it when he did that. It made her feel that he knew something about her that she did not know.As if she had a smudge at the end of her nose that she did not know about.She lifted a hand and brushed at her nose self-consciously.
* * *
Diana went to sit beside her mother-in-law, who was instructing a couple of footmen on the distribution of the food. The Marquess of Kenwood strolled over to join a larger group.
"Well, Jack," Lester said with a wink and something of a leer, "are you five hundred guineas the richer yet?"
"If I am," Lord Kenwood said,' 'you will not be the first to know, Lester, my boy."
His relative laughed, and the marquess moved on.
"I am sure Mama was vastly relieved to see you emerge from the woods with Diana when she left here with Thomas Peabody," Claudia said to him with a smile. "I think she thought for a moment that all her plans had gone awry."
"Ah," the marquess said, "she has discussed the matter with you, then?"
"Of course not," she said. "All her matchmaking schemes are a closely guarded secret from everyone except Papa. She does not realize that the whole world knows when she has decided to bring two people together, and it would be a shame to disabuse her, would it not?"
"Indeed," he said, "and to disappoint her. But I am afraid she will be disappointed on this one occasion."
"Perhaps," she said. "But I am far more doubtful about Ernest and Angela."
''Do you fancy him as a brother-in-law twice over?" Lord Kenwood asked with a grin.
"That is quite beside the point," she said. "The question is,does he want her for a wife? I believe she has doted on him since she was fourteen and he seemed like a very dashing young lord. Unfortunately, I think he saw her as a very troublesome child whom it was quite beneath his dignity to entertain."
"Hm," the marquess commented.
He chattered on with the larger group, reclining indolently on one elbow on the blanket, sucking on the end of a blade of grass, and resisting with all the power of his will the urge to jump to his feet and stride off through the trees alone.
He felt rather as if he were suffocating. And he was beginning to wonder in earnest if he were sickening for something. How could he have so mismanaged the past half hour? He had had her entirely to himself in the most opportune surroundings he could possibly imagine. He had a wager to win within two weeks with a woman who was as attracted to him as he was to her. He might have spent the time bringing her several steps closer to surrendering to that attraction, several steps closer to winning his five hundred guineas for him.
Yet somehow he had completely mishandled the situation. He had never done anything like it before.
He had held her and kissed her, yes. He might have taken the embrace almost as far as he wanted. There had been no resistance in her. Indeed, she had come to him quite willingly and had put herself against him and her open mouth against his with every appearance of total surrender.
But he had made nothing of the moment. What was the matter? Had he not desired her? He could not think of anyone more desirable than Diana Ingram. What was it, then?
Somehow he had been unable to empty his mind, as he usually did at such moments, and feel only woman. He had held her close against him, kissed her with warm, open-mouthed intimacy, been fully aware of how slim and shapely and desirable she was, smelted the fragrance of her hair as he remembered it from the inn, and—and what?
And had not been able to rid his mind of the knowledge that she was Diana Ingram, that she had been married to Teddy Ingram and had suffered a cruel bereavement at a young age, that she had a quick wit and high ideals, that she was attracted to him but unwilling to give in to that attraction, that she had a sweet soprano voice, that she had begun to penetrate aspects of his life that he always kept strictly private from women, and to suspect that there were some people and some things in his life that he valued. And that it would be mean and paltry to upset her life, as he surely would, with an affair that would be quite temporary and entirely physical.
He had wanted to kiss her just as he had kissed her, with warmth and awareness, with affection even, and without passion. He had not even wanted to bed her at that moment. He had wanted to hold her, to be with her, to to—.
Damnation! He was beginning to like Diana Ingram. And not just to like her in the way he must like all his women if he was to derive any pleasure from them. He was beginning to like her as a person, quite apart from his physical attraction to her.Almost as he liked his mother and Frances and Hester.
