And she was still aching in all the places he had been last night. All the places she wanted him to revisit soon, drat her traitorous body.
“How is your toe?” she asked him, aiming for a safer subject.
One that did not involve lovemaking, hearts, or their painful past.
“If I tell you it is sore, will you offer to kiss it for me to ease the pain?”
She rolled her eyes. “No.”
“Pity. But then, there are other portions of my anatomy I would rather have you kiss.”
He was being a devil. Taunting her, tormenting her. Saying everything he knew would prod her until she snapped.
She smiled sweetly, thinking two could play at this game of his. “I am afraid you will be doomed to disappointment, my lord. I would sooner kiss a squirrel.”
“Hmm.” He drummed his fingers on the table, and she tried not to notice how long they were, how strong. “A squirrel, eh? You do know those little vagabonds can prove quite vicious, do you not?”
“Surely safer than lords from one’s past.”
“One’s present and future now,” he reminded her.
As if she required theaide-mémoire. “I remain firm on the choice of squirrel over viscount.”
Besides, said viscount would be in her past soon enough, if all went according to plan.
“We shall see about that, darling.”
It was almost as if he had heard her unspoken thoughts. Her gaze slipped once more to his hands, which she had always loved to watch and which she had loved even more when they had been on her. When those wicked fingers of his had been pleasuring her, inside her.
She forced herself to look away.
Heavens, was there a fire in the hearth? Why was she so dratted overheated? She resisted the urge to fan herself and hoped she was not perspiring. Her palms most certainly felt sticky. Was her forehead shining like a freshly polished parquet floor?
Oh, why did she care?
And why did the way he called herdarlingin that silky baritone make an ache blossom between her thighs?
Determined to ignore him, she tucked into the food awaiting her on her plate. The eggs were divine, the fruit ripened to perfection. It called to mind the tray he had sent her the night before, the matched sparrow pictures in her chamber.
One thing was certain.
Shelbourne was just as much a stranger to her now as he had been before. The devil she knew had fast proven himself to be the devil she didn’t know at all.
Chapter 12
Two years earlier
What is love? For years, I believed it the fodder of poets and writers. I thought it a fiction, a deception those with weaker constitutions perpetrated upon themselves. Surely there could be no other soul in this vast world who would make me feel as if I had found my purpose. There could be no one I longed for with a yearning that kept me awake at night, no one for whom I would happily sacrifice all my previously held notions. No one I could give my life to hold in my arms, to kiss her lips, make her mine. Nothing would make me sacrifice my honor so thoroughly. Nothing except one emotion, not so much an illusion after all. Nothing except one woman. Her name is Julianna, and I am hopelessly, foolishly in love with her.
~from the journal of Viscount Shelbourne, 1883
“Did you ever experience a moment where you knew everything had changed? Where this inexplicable feeling hit you, right in the heart, and you understood nothing would ever be the same?”
Julianna’s query cut through the stillness of the night. They had been meeting at midnight in the darkened corridors of Farnsworth Hall every evening for the last few days. As on previous occasions, they had made their way to the Palladian temple overlooking the lake.
They sat together on one of the cushioned benches lining the perimeter of the temple, Julianna’s stockinged feet in his lap. An afternoon spent playing lawn tennis had left her with sore soles, and he had been more than happy to offer his services. Since she had agreed to allow him to court her, he had not attempted any advance further than lifting her hem and untying her boots this evening.
He paused at her question, meeting her gaze through the flickering light of the decades-old oil lamps in the temple. “Haveyouever experienced such a moment?” he parried back.
