She ought to have turned and run without stopping—over the bridge and all the way back to the house. There she ought to have grabbed Bertrand, dragged him up to the east wing to pack their bags, and then dashed down to the stables with him, retrieved their carriage, and sprung the horses all the way home to Elm Court.
That is what she ought to have done.
Instead she stood her ground. And swallowed. And frowned. And dropped her bonnet to the grass.
For she wanted him too. Though she didnotsay so out loud.
He was searching her eyes with his own. “Is it possible to pretend the summerhouse debacle did not happen?” he asked her.
“The proposal with all your very sensible reasons for making it?” she said. “My refusal in all its starkness? The kiss that followed despite it all?”
“No,” he said. “I did not suppose it could be done.”
“But perhaps it is possible to put it behind us,” she said. “To dismiss it for the idiocy it was.”
“Itwasidiotic,” he said. “That proposal.”
“It was,” she agreed. “So was my response.”
“You could not think of anything whatsoever that would induce you even to consider marrying me?” he said.
“I believe those were my exact words, or close enough,” she said.
“It was idiocy?” He raised his eyebrows.
“Yes,” she said.
“And the kiss?” he said. “Idiocy?”
Idiocy under the circumstances, yes. She shrugged.
And he took one more step closer, set his large hands on either side of her waist, and drew her forward until she was pressed to him all the way from her bosom to her knees. She looked into his eyes the whole time and saw depth there, not just the usual hard blankness. There was uncertainty too, perhaps. Yearning, maybe. Desire, definitely. She raised her hands and set them on his shoulders. And was shot through with such a charge of lust that she almost lost control of her knees. At least, she assumed it was lust. She had never before felt anything quite like it. It was more than just desire.
And he kissed her.
His lips were parted, and soon hers were too, and he ravaged her mouth with his tongue. She was no idle spectator while he did it. She sucked his tongue deeper, made inarticulate noises when he stroked the tip of it over the roof of her mouth, pressed herself closer to him, twined one arm about his neck, and pushed the fingers of the other hand into his hair. One of his hands spread over her upper back while the other went lower and pressed her to him.She could feel the hardness of his desire through the layers of their clothing, and it half frightened, half excited her.
He was so terribly large. The whole of him. All breadth of shoulders and chest, all hard muscles and masculinity. Powerful arms, large hands, firm thighs. And he smelled enticingly musky with a cologne her brother did not use, or any other man she had ever been close to.
Both hands were now below her waist and pressing her to him. His head had moved back from hers and they were gazing into each other’s eyes again.
“Estelle,” he murmured.
“Lord Brandon, I—”
“Say my name,” he said softly. “Let me hear you say it.”
“Justin,” she said, and watched him inhale slowly.
“You agreed to come here for two weeks,” he said. “A little more than a week remains. At the end of your stay I will make a new offer. In quite different words. Unless, that is, you stop me before I can even launch into speech. It is my hope that by then your answer will have changed.”
“You intend tocourtme?” she said.
“One of the genteel arts,” he said. “I never learned how it is done. But I hope to change your mind... Estelle. How that will happen, I do not know. I must think of a way.”
“Why?” she asked. He was still holding her to him. She still had her arms twined about his neck. A thick, powerful neck. He had the body—and the hands—of a laborer, she realized. And she lusted after him. She would not even pretend to herself that she did not.
“I want you,” he said again, returning his hands to either side of her waist. “But I know I cannot have you outside of matrimony. And there. I have opened my mouth and stuck a large foot inside it again. I have given the impression that I would marry you for sex alone—which, by the way, I didnot even mention in the summerhouse. I do indeed want you. But I also wantyou.And thereisa difference, the one purely physical, the other more... But I am stuck for a sentence ender.”
