She kissed him back. This time, her fingers swept down his shoulders, over the hardness of his chest. Inside his coat, her hands found the soft fabric of his waistcoat and the hard, unyielding planes of his body.
It was as if they were propelled back in time to the moonlit gardens. Desire replaced all else. Never mind they were in the library, at a country house party attended by countless other guests, that these kisses by the light of day were far more dangerous than the kisses they had shared the night before. She was lost. Caught up in him. Her mind was a jumble of words and pleas that did not make it to her busy lips.
Yes. More. Never stop.
As if he heard her, Wilton kissed her harder, deeper. Those lips moved over hers with such tender finesse just as they had in the gardens. Kissed her breathless, senseless, until her knees threatened to give out. She clutched at his waist beneath his coat, holding him tight. He was a lean man, and the heat of him was almost scalding.
Why had she never touched a man thus before? Learning all the ways his body was different from hers was invigorating. Delicious. Wicked.
Wrong.
But she was not going to stop.
And neither was he.
Wilton trailed kisses along her jaw. Down her throat. The graze of his teeth against her sensitive flesh had a moan spilling from her.
“Tell me,” he whispered.
And still, she wanted to withhold the truth. To prolong the moment. To prolong the madness of his kisses and this spell he somehow cast over her.
“No.”
“Curse you.” He kissed to the hollow at the base of her throat, his tongue flicking against her skin.
Liquid desire drenched her core. This made no sense, her reaction to him. Yet somehow, it made all the sense in the world. She had never been the sort of person who did things in the ordinary way. She flouted convention. She ignored the rules. She kissed gentlemen. She posed for paintings. She laughed and danced and sang and did not fit into the mold which had been cast for her. Of course she would also find herself helplessly drawn to the least likely man at the country house party.
The man who had overheard her deriding him to Melanie in the picture gallery.
The man who nervously delivered puns.
The man who was proper and boring and stern.
He cupped her breast through the bodice of her gown.
Oh! He is most certainly not being proper or boring now…
A giggle stole through her wild thoughts. A young, impish giggle she recognized all too well. Wilton heard it too, for he stiffened beneath her touch.
Ewan, that scamp!
Charity and the viscount hastily disengaged in time to see the towheaded lad running across the Axminster, laughing as he went. Of all the interlopers to have witnessed their scandalous interlude, at least the young, mischievous lad was the most harmless. He would neither know enough to tell anyone what he had witnessed nor summon outrage and demand Charity and Wilton marry.
“Ewan, what are you doing in the library?” she asked, exasperated and doing her best to pretend she had not just been caught in a passionate embrace with the man at her side.
Of course, no answer was forthcoming. Instead, Ewan snatched up a pillow on one of the chairs before racing from the library.
When he had disappeared into the hall beyond, Charity sighed with relief and turned to Wilton, who was watching her with a guarded expression.
“That was badly done of me, Lady Charity. I beg your forgiveness.”
It was not his apology she wanted, and Charity had to tamp down a surge of disappointment at his reaction. As he had done last night, he kissed her with such delicious passion, only to withdraw and return to his icy, proper shell.
Was there more to the viscount than the face he presented to the world? But then, if there was, why should she care? After her stay at Fangfoss Manor, she and Auntie Louise were on to the Continent and all the freedom it entailed. She had no intention of returning to England. Charity’s parents, who doted upon their heir and her elder sister, would scarcely miss her. Mama and Papa already considered her a lost cause. And with two children who had done their duties and married well, producing the required progeny, what need had they of the prodigal daughter, anyway?
“Lady Charity?” the viscount prodded now, tearing her from her thoughts.
“You are forgiven, of course,” she said. “I daresay I was as complicit as you. Ewan will not carry a tale, however. You need not fear word of our indecorousness will spread.”
