He did not use force. She might have pulled away from him. And though he would have teased and cajoled, he would not have forced her. No, she could not blame him. She knew that even as she went into his arms and lifted her own over his shoulders and about his neck.
It was a hot embrace, hotter than any other she had experienced except on one certain night. But this was no fantasy. She did not think for one moment that it was. With her mind quite clear and her eyes wide open—the eyes of the mind, that was; her physical eyes were closed—she allowed his hands to roam her body and his mouth and tongue to caress her own and the rest of her face and neck and throat.
She had no excuse.None.She felt the muscles of his shoulders with her own hands, and his face, and the slight roughness of his jaw. And she twined her fingers in his dark hair.
"Diana," he was murmuring against her throat, against her ear, against her mouth."So beautiful.So sweet.So very sweet, love. Diana. Diana."
He wanted her. He did not say so, but the evidence was there for her, and it was indisputable. He wanted her. And she wanted him, with an ache that drugged her mind again. It had been so long.So very long.And it had never been exciting.Never anything but briefly and mildly pleasurable.But she ached to be possessed again, to feel her femininity affirmed again.And with him.With him it would be good.Very good.
Her forehead was pressed to his cravat. She could feel him drawing deep breaths and having some difficulty letting them out again. She lifted her head from him and looked into his face. His head was thrown back against the pillar, his eyes tightly closed, his teeth clamped onto his lower lip.
But he felt her eyes on him and looked down. His eyes were mocking, and he raised one eyebrow. "Diana, Diana," he said, "mustyou always tease me witless when circumstances are not at all ideal?A music room that might be invaded at any moment, a forest with a hard and uneven floor, a cold stone tower.You could not possibly be available when there is a soft feather bed at our elbow, I suppose?"
She could think of not a single thing to say. There was soft grass just beyond the doorway, and warm sunshine.And solitude.And he must have felt her desire.And her surrender.He might have made her his.
Oh, gracious heaven, she would have become a number on the Marquess of Kenwood's list. She would indeed. Willingly, without even a token fight.
"No," she said, "I am not available. Not to you."
One corner of his mouth lifted, and he lowered his head to set his forehead against hers briefly. "Liar, Diana," he said. "What a brazen liar you are."
He kept one arm about her shoulders and led her out into the courtyard. The sun seemed suddenly very bright and very warm.
"If you feel as I do," he said, "you need to do some recovering before riding back to Rotherham Hall. Let's sit down and soak up the warmth of the sun, shall we?"
She stiffened. "That sounds like the beginning of seduction to me," she said. "I think I would prefer to ride."
"Diana," he said, his voice amused, "I think that moment has passed, don't you? Let us just sit and talk for a while. I want to know more about you."
"What?" she asked cautiously, sitting down on the grass beside him nevertheless and arranging her skirt decorously about her. She leaned back on his arm, which he had stretched out to cushion her against the hard stone wall against which he leaned.
"Why do you not have children?" he asked.
"I don't know." She looked down at her hands. "I think perhaps it was . . . Teddy was very sick as a child, and he was never robust. I don't know. Perhaps it was me. We never talked about it."And how strange to be talking about it now with the Marquess of Kenwood.
"Did you wish to have children?" he asked.
"Yes.Always."She turned her hands over to examine the backs of them. "They would have livened up the parsonage. I used to cry about it—sometimes. I always feel so very envious when I see a woman with a newborn baby. I can never understand how so many women leave their children shut up in a nursery while they carry on with their own lives as if they had never had mem."
"You are still very young," he said. "I will hope for your sake that the fault was in Teddy and not in you."
She laughed rather self-consciously. "I have never talked about this with anyone before," she said.
He hunched his shoulder so that her head slipped against it. "People so rarely talk about anything that matters," he said. "We fill silences and so often live with a deeper silence and a greater loneliness."
She was too close to him to look up into his face. But she was startled into silence. He sounded very serious. There was no trace of the usual teasing mockery.
"My father was a philanderer," he said. "All his adult life, it seems, until his death. I am like him, Diana. I come by my way of life honestly. I was only sixteen years old when he died, still too young to understand what drove him or to know if he had any redeeming depths to his character. Perhaps he did. I only knew that he hurt my mother almost daily. She used to come to the nursery or to the schoolroom when she was most upset. I suppose it comforted her to be close to her children."
Diana sat as if frozen. She felt him swallow awkwardly. "She did not realize how it affected us. My sisters are suspicious of men. They do not expect happiness from any relationship. I have learned a wiser lesson. I have learned never to get close to any woman. Never close enough to destroy her."
"It is not a wise lesson," she said.
He chuckled, but there was no amusement in the sound. "You shared a very private feeling with me," he said. "I have merely returned the compliment, Diana. Let's forget it now and enjoy the sunshine."
They sat quietly side by side for perhaps five minutes, her head resting in the hollow between his neck and shoulder, his arm about her shoulders.
"So, Diana Ingram," he said at last, looking down at her face. His voice sounded more normal again. "We have a little more than a week left at Rotherham Hall. What is going to happen between you and me in that time? Are we going to do what we both want to do?"
