Chapter Four
An early snowhad fallen, blanketing the landscape in white. While the snow was lovely to gaze upon, transforming the countryside with its tranquil beauty, Alistair appreciated the precipitation for a different reason entirely.
It gave him an excuse to drive about in a sleigh with Freckles.
Alone.
Seated side by side.
He handled the reins with expert ease, trying his best to stem the flow of heat that arrowed directly to his groin each time her soft body jostled his. It was a devilish form of torture to be so near to her and yet be unable to touch her.
In fact, it was bloody well hell.
Now that he had tasted her sweet, pink lips and run his tongue over her silken skin, his cock was having a difficult time understanding the finer points of propriety.Mine, railed the beast within him, longing to claim and conquer and take.
He could not blame it, for he was accustomed to taking what he wanted, when he wanted it. The ladies he had bedded in the past had not been ladies at all, nor had they been the sort who wore white dresses and required wooing. They had been demireps and wicked widows, the furthest one could get from prim innocence and virginal misses.
The furthest one could get from Freckles, and while his body didn’t recognize the distinction, his mind did and was glad for it. He cast a glance in her direction, noting the stiff manner in which she held herself, staring straight ahead. Her profile was shaded beneath a bonnet trimmed by a spray of silk roses. Her hands were buried in a fur muffler, the blankets over her lap hiding much of her from view.
“You are quiet, Freckles,” he observed at last, wondering what could so absorb her thoughts as to render her speechless. Unusual, that.
“The same could be said for you, Warwick.” Her tone was tart, but she still did not face him, keeping her gaze trained anywhere but upon him.
“I was admiring the view.” Although the words rolled fluently off his tongue, they were not empty flattery. He turned his eyes back to the vista ahead.
“The country looks the same today as it does every day after it has snowed,” she clipped.
Intriguing. Freckles was not, nor had she ever been, a lady of brevity. What had her at sixes and sevens? Could it be that he was the source of her cool affectation—or, to be more apt, her reaction to him?
He found himself grinning. “That is decidedly not the view I spoke of.”
When he threw another quick glance in her direction, her luscious lips had thinned into a straight, unwelcoming line. “You need not feel obliged to flatter me. There is nothing I dislike so much as insincerity.”
“I am being nothing but sincere, Freckles.” It was his turn to frown. “You insult me. Why would I flatter you?”
“I should think the answer as obvious as the reins in your hands.” She paused. “You cannot even bring yourself to address me properly, and yet you claim to be entranced by my beauty, a beauty which no other man has ever been so affected by.”
Ah. Her reaction to him was not what had her tied up in knots. Her pride was. Judging from yesterday’s stringent litany of questions, she believed his interest in her to be caused by an ulterior motive. Her words returned to him.
It cannot be because of my dowry, can it?
Guilt stabbed through him at the reminder, banking the fires of lust raging in his veins. She was not entirely wrong in her assumptions, and he had neatly sidestepped her query by kissing her rather than answering. He should have told her the truth. Would have, had he not feared that in doing so she would reject him. Regardless of his pressing need for a wife with a substantial dowry, he wanted Freckles, and no other.
So, he had kissed her senseless, as much because he wanted to as because it helped his cause. He was more than aware he was a proficient kisser and that the ladies did not find fault with his face or form. If using that knowledge to his advantage made him a cad, then it couldn’t be helped.
Her objections needled him, for they forced him to take a closer look at himself.
“Here, now.” He cast her another, searching glance. “I have always called you Freckles. It is your sobriquet, is it not? And as for the rest, I merely said I was enjoying the view. I would never utter such folderol in the name of courting a lady.”
She sent a furtive look in his direction at last, one delicate brow arched. “Folderol?”
His gaze met and held hers for a beat before he returned his attention to the horses. “I have not once, in all my years, told a lady I was entranced by her beauty. Nor would I.”
He said the last with earnest conviction, for while he was no angel, neither was he a silver-tongued devil. It was not in his nature to ply his conquests with idle chatter. He far preferred deed over word. A cleverly placed kiss, a tender caress, the glide of his tongue over achingly sensitive, smooth female flesh.
Freckles had nearly come out of her skin when he had licked the hollow behind her ear, and he had fantasized all night about doing it again while he was planted deep inside her and she clenched around his cock. She had smelled of violets there, and something else that was distinctively feminine and purely hers. Decadent. Sweet.
Bloody mesmerizing.
