And on.
Somehow, her hands found his shoulders. His mouth angled over hers, deepening the kiss. His tongue traced the seam of her lips, begging entrance she could not deny. She opened for him, and then he was licking into her mouth, and the taste of him invaded her much the way his scent had. Deep and dark and mysterious, sweet with a bitter hint of coffee.
This kiss was not like anything she had experienced before.
This kiss, she knew instinctively, would ruin any others that would come after it. This kiss was air, it was sunlight, it was a heartbeat.
Necessary.
He made a low sound in his throat. A soft hum of acquiescence escaped her. She was kissing him back, learning how to mold her lips against his, how to move her tongue, to dip it inside his mouth. Somehow, her hands were no longer on his shoulders, but rather in his hair. The thick strands felt delicious to her fingertips beneath the barrier of her own gloves.
She had never before touched a gentleman’s hair, but the Earl of Hertford’s glossy light-brown locks were soft and thick. He kissed her harder as she caught the strands in her grasp and tugged. He liked it, she discovered, and she liked it too.
She liked it too much.
She likedhimtoo much.
This was meant to be an exercise in aiding her sisters, she reminded herself as her tongue forayed into his mouth. She was kissing him to strike him from the list. Testing him. She did not like him. This kiss meant nothing.
Nothing at all.
“Eugie!”
In the end, it was not the practical concerns of her rational mind which made her end the foolishness to which she had succumbed, but rather the sound of her name echoing through the garden. The sound of her name called in the voice of one of the sisters she intended to protect.
Grace, as it happened.
A sobering reminder, indeed.
Eugie took a step backward, abruptly severing the kiss, although it was the last thing the most sinful part of her truly wished to do. She knew her sister, and if Grace was looking for her, it meant her sister was in trouble of her own.
She pressed her fingers over her tingling lips, staring at the earl who had just radically altered everything she thought she had known about herself. “I must go. I should never have…”
The earl’s expression was inscrutable, as always. He was rigid and beautiful and perfect, as if he knew not a care in the world, when all Eugie knew was cares. Bearing a fortune for one’s dowry was not as trouble-free as others would like to believe. She was renowned and reviled in equal measures, and half the polite world believed horrid falsehoods about her.
Likely, the earl was among them.
“Forgive me, Miss Winter,” he offered suddenly, breaking the hollow quiet of the silence that had descended between them.
“Only if you forgive me, my lord, for my inexcusable lapse in judgment,” she forced herself to say.
But her swollen mouth disagreed. And so did the heat boiling through her veins. Everything else said kissing him had been wondrous. Perfect.
“Of course,” he told her, sounding horridly stilted for a man who had just kissed her until her knees had turned to pudding. “We shall strike it from our minds, and it will most assuredly never happen again.”
“Eugie!” called Grace once more.
“Most assuredly not,” she agreed, still lingering in spite of her words, mesmerized by his mouth. His handsome face. That way he had about him, so unlike any man she had met before, which made her feel beautiful and graceful and worthy all at once. And not just because he wanted her fortune, either.
But that was all a fantasy as well, wasn’t it? For surely, every gentleman in attendance at this godforsaken house party was looking for a wealthy wife. Namely, herself or one of her sisters.
And thinking of her sisters reminded her she needed to protect them.
And thinking of her sisters made her think—
“Eugenia Flora Winter!” Grace hollered, her voice growing nearer. “You may as well answer me, for I know you are the only one mad enough to go traipsing in a frozen garden.”
“Apparently, she is wrong,” Eugie blurted to the earl. “There are two of us mad enough to do so. Three, if you count Grace.”
