“Oh, yes, almost forty! And Mama was twenty-six when she set her cap at Papa, and I donotwant to be still unwed at that age, Bertram. It would be utter failure. Forty thousand pounds, and I still cannot find a nobleman willing to marry me. It is humiliating, and I must not allow it to continue. You have given me this opportunity, for which I am exceedingly grateful, and I am set on making the most of it. Three men… two, I suppose, for the marquess is not an option — a future duke is bound to look amongst his fellow peers for a wife. So two possibilities, but how to choose? And I only have two more weeks. I must force the issue, I think. I shall kiss each one in turn, and that will tell me which of them I should marry.”
“You cannot be serious,” he said. “Think of what your stepmother would say.”
“She would be all in favour of it. She wanted me to kiss you, if you recall.”
“Bea, I strongly advise against it,” Bertram said in alarm.
“Because we might be discovered? Pooh, I shall take good care not to be.”
“No, because…”
He stopped, wondering just how much to elaborate. Bea was certainly very forward in her behaviour, but she was still a total innocent and he did not wish to spoil that innocence by warning her of rakes. There were one or two, the charming Lord Grayling amongst them, who might take advantage of Bea’s naivety. They were dangerous. But his own friends… none of them would do so. She could safely kiss Medhurst or Brockscombe with no fear that they would misunderstand, or try to take things further.
“Just be careful,” he ended lamely. “Make sure you are not discovered.”
“Of course,” she said happily.
“But where will you start? Medhurst or Brockscombe?”
“Yes, it is difficult, is it not? And I have never been kissed before, so I have no point of comparison. I think I should kiss some neutral party first, just to see what a kiss without any expectations might be like.”
Bertram laughed. “And where will you find such a person?” Then he understood the expression on her face, and his stomach turned over in the most alarming fashion. “Oh, no, no, no, Bea! You must not look at me like that.”
Slowly he backed away from her, but just as implacably she pursued him, laughing. Step by step he retreated, hands raised in defence. Step by step she followed, until he was backed up against the wall and could retreat no further. Then, still chuckling, she placed her hands on his shoulders.
“It is only a kiss, Bertram. What are you so afraid of?”
His resistance crumbled. She was right — what was there to fear? It was only a kiss, only Bea, only an old friend asking a modest favour. Where was the harm?
Slowly his hands dropped and he allowed her to move nearer, to press herself against him. His head inched towards hers. There was a moment’s awkwardness as they worked out how to arrange their noses, and then… then…
The warmth! Surprise that Bea threw herself into kissing with the same enthusiasm as everything else in life. Astonishment that it was not at all how he had imagined it.
That was his last rational thought before his brain melted into nothingness. But he could stillfeel…
He felt the weight of her body leaning against his. He felt a wisp of her hair tickling his nose. He felt the softness of her muslin gown as his hands crept round her waist, the fabricbunching under his fingers. He felt her chest rising and falling, heard his own blood drumming in his ears, his heart racing, a strange noise at the back of throat.
He was drowning, lost in a thousand unfamiliar sensations, and yet he wanted more of them. He wanted —needed— to hold her this way, to kiss her, to taste her sweetness, to hold her against him for ever. He adored her with a passion so intense he could not understand why he did not burst into flames.
Abruptly, she pulled away. “Can’t… breathe…” she whispered.
He was crushing her against him, he realised, squeezing the breath out of her. “Sorry… so sorry…”
At once he released her, but for a moment she stood immobile, staring up at him. She took a breath, odd and uneven, then another, her eyes a deep, mysterious blue. Then, without a word, she turned and fled.
Bertram’s legs would not hold him up a moment longer. He slid down the wall to land with a plop on the floor, oblivious of the dirt coating it. What on earth had happened?
For a long time he sat, quite incapable of a single coherent thought, living again through that all-consuming kiss, while the fires within him slowly became less intense, and the churning emotions subsided into something more recognisable… more manageable. A state where he began to feel as if he were slowly coming back to earth.
But not coming to himself… or at least, not himself as he had been. He would never be that Bertram again. This was a new, altered Bertram, one who knew passion and exultation and joy in the company of a woman. His life was divided by that kiss — the time before, grey and dreary, and the time after, alive and colourful and vibrant.
As his logical mind finally emerged, shaking, from the storm, only one question arose — how was he ever to exist from now on without more of those kisses… and of Bea?
13: Experiments In Kissing
Bea ran. There were no words, nothing she could say without revealing how shocked she was. Dear heavens, were all kisses so earth-shattering? And Bertram was a dear friend, but there was no love between them. Indeed, he was entirely indifferent to her, yet if his kiss could reduce her to this quivering heap of turmoil, what would a kiss from her future husband be like?
She fled to her room, but Harper was there sorting out stockings, so she ran on, first to the Long Gallery and then to the little gallery above the chapel. The room below was empty now, and the gallery deserted. She closed the door, and succumbed to a bout of near-hysterical weeping.
