“Ah.” Her voice was a breathless whisper. “The very best place to go.”
“Yes.”
“Together.”
“Yes.”
Her eyes roamed over his face. They were large and dark and long-lashed and fathomless.
“It is longer than six years since I was kissed properly,” she said.
“Properly.” He swallowed. “And for me too—the same length of time. Perhaps we were both kissing for the last time on the same day at the same hour, more than six years ago, but we were kissing other people, not each other.”
“Your colonel’s niece?”
“Your husband?”
They both smiled.
“It is far too long a time,” she said.
“Yes.”
“Perhaps,” she said, “we ought to do something about it.”
He tried to think of all the reasons they shouldnot—or at least all the reasonsheshould not.
“I am sorry.” Her cheeks flushed and she turned her head rather jerkily to gaze through the window again.
He tipped his head slightly to one side and kissed her. And one thing was immediately certain. His sexual appetite hadnotbeen killed or even suffered damage. Her lips were soft and warm and moist. They were parted and slightly trembling. She turned fully toward him, and her hands came to rest on his shoulders.
He opened her mouth with his own and slid his tongue inside. She sucked it inward and pressed it to the roof of her mouth with her own tongue. He felt a pleasure so exquisite that he almost forgot about his cursed canes.
And then her face was a few inches away and her hands were on either side of his face, her fingers pushing into his hair. Her eyes were luminous and steady on his, her lips full and rosy and still moist and still inviting.
“I am sorry,” he said. “I am handicapped. I cannot hold you.”
“Perhaps that is a good thing at this precise moment.” She smiled suddenly and looked young and very pretty. “Or perhaps it is just that we are both starved andanykiss would feel good.”
“A lowering thought.”
She dropped her hands to her sides, still smiling. But reality was intruding.
“I really ought not to have stayed when I discovered that Lady Matilda had gone,” he said. “You will be horrified when you relive this afternoon after I have left.”
“You presume to know my thoughts, do you?” she asked him. “Myfuturethoughts? This was a horrid day before you came, Sir Benedict. I do not at all regret that Matilda has gone, but I do resent the fact that she left me feeling as if I were somehow in the wrong. And then it rained and I knew we could not ride. And the rain was dreary and I felt restless and lonely and utterly self-pitying. Self-pitying people are not pleasant company, even to themselves. And then, when I was at my lowest ebb, you came. And you somehow coaxed me into talking to you as though you were a trusted confidant. And then you flirted with me. For a few moments you bore me off with you to the sunshine above the clouds in a hot air balloon, wrapped together in warm furs and bound for a place far, far away. And then you kissed me. I am no longer at a low ebb. You can haveno ideawhat I will feel after you have left. But I do assure you it will not be horror.”
Good Lord! He thought she might find later today that she had deceived herself. He felt distinctly uncomfortable himself. This wasnotthe way a gentleman behaved. “Your sherry will not be getting cold,” she said, moving past him, “but my tea certainly will. Shall I put some biscuits on a plate for you?”
“Just one,” he said as he followed her more slowly across the room. “Thank you.”
She fetched him his biscuit and sherry while her dog settled at his feet again.
“How old were you when you married?” he asked.
She smiled at him as she sat down and picked up her cup and saucer. “You are good at arithmetic, are you, Sir Benedict? Let me save you the bother of doing mental calculations. I was seventeen. Matthew and I were together for a year before his regiment was sent to the Peninsula. I spent the next year at Leyland Abbey. After Matthew was brought home, we came here, where we lived for five years before his passing a little over four months ago. That makes me twenty-four.”
“You saw through my ruse, did you?” He laughed. “So you have been unkissed and celibate since the age of eighteen.”
