The light faded from Evangeline’s face. “My father chose my first husband. I was very young—too young to understand how different Lord Cunningham and I were. My second marriage was less decorous; I did have more hope of loving Lord Courtenay, but ... your parents were wiser in love than I was.”
“But Sir Richard.” Joan peeked at her aunt. “You love him.”
A veil came down over Evangeline’s expression. “We are talking about you, and whether you wish to encourage Lord Burke.”
Put that way ... yes, she did. “He makes me feel attractive,” she confessed. “No one else does that.”
“He finds you very handsome, judging from the way he looks at you.”
“He also makes me want to hit him at times,” Joan added.
Evangeline smiled. “It sounds very promising to me! I never understood why people think a marriage should be unalloyed bliss and agreement.”
“So you think I should encourage him.”
“He arranged a balloon expedition, just to impress you. He asked you to dance—he even argued for your acquiescence. I’ve heard enough gossip to know he’s not regularly out in decent society, and certainly not to dance with unmarried young ladies. Even if you wish to blame all that on your brother,” Evangeline said as she pursed her lips, “I’m quite certain Douglas never told him to look at you as if you were a fascinating riddle he can’t stop thinking about and longs to solve.”
“Well, that feeling is mutual,” muttered Joan. Tristan Burke was an enigma to her, but somehow she seemed unable to stop thinking about him. The shilling, still where he had slipped it inside her glove, was like a talisman of his promise to kiss her again. “But in other respects I think we might drive each other mad.”
“I recommend you let him kiss you,” said Evangeline.
Joan’s eyes nearly popped from her head. “What?”
“First, it will prove he wants to kiss you—that he views you as a desirable woman. Second, you can tell a great deal about a man from the way he kisses. A light peck means little; men kiss their sisters so. A devouring kiss that goes too far often means a man’s interest is limited to ...” Evangeline coughed delicately. “Improper attentions. But a kiss that coaxes and seduces and tempts, rather than demands, a response ... that is the sort of kiss that a man bestows when he wants to win a woman’s heart.”
“How on earth can you tell the difference?” asked Joan when she could speak again. Her face must be scarlet. Her heart pounded in her ears. He’d already kissed her, and so far it had only confused things even more.
“By how much you want him to kiss you again.” Evangeline must have misinterpreted her stunned silence. She leaned forward to take Joan’s hand. “A kiss—onlya kiss, mind you—is not ruination. I daresay your own mother allowed your father to kiss her before she agreed to wed him. A woman must be sure of her feelings before she pledges herself to one man for life.”
“Thank you for the advice,” Joan managed to squeak. She excused herself and hurried from the room, her hands trembling and her heart thumping. The shilling seemed to be burning a hole in her palm. She stripped off her glove and shoved the gleaming coin deep into the drawer of her writing desk. She slammed the drawer shut and sat for a moment, hands gripped tightly together, replaying the kiss in her mind with her aunt’s words as guide.
It had not been a light peck, as a man might give his sister. Had it been devouring? If so, she was somewhat shaken to admit she’d wanted to be devoured, because it felt so ... so ... good. But he hadn’t done anything but kiss her. She remembered with acute clarity how she’d ended up pressed against Tristan, but he hadn’t tried to touch her bosom, even though he’d called it delectable. As she knew from50 Ways to Sin, when a man truly wanted a woman, kissing was merely the prelude. Not that she would dare engage in the debauchery Constance described, but ... one couldn’t help wondering...
Joan took a deep breath and ran her fingers lightly down her throat, over her breast, trying to imagine it was Tristan touching her. Her flesh responded by tightening, and her nipple rose into a hard knot of exquisite sensitivity. She shivered. Would Tristan touch her like Sir Everard touched Lady Constance? Would he want to make love to her and pleasure her until she nearly swooned? She stroked herself again, thrilled and startled by the sensations. Janet had scolded her many times that it was wicked even to look at one’s naked self in the mirror, but Lady Constance reveled in baring herself to Sir Everard’s admiring gaze.
Oh, help. Was this what it was like to be pursued by a man? To be wanted? Her skin felt too hot and too tight for her bones and blood. She squeezed her eyes shut and pressed her knees together, for the ache in her breasts had spread all the way down her body. It was one thing to be titillated by reading a story about a man touching a woman, and quite another thing to imagine a particular man touchingher.
She opened her eyes and caught sight of her reticule, lying where she had thrown it on her bed. With a start she jumped up and went to get it, pulling out the new issue of50 Ways to Sin. She stared at the simple cover illustration. Despite what she had told him, there was little of love or romance about these prurient stories. They were as wicked as could be, and she wondered if he really didn’t know what they were. And if he knew, would he dare to get them for her without having some hidden motive? It seemed impossible anyone could be unaware of them, but he was unlike anyone else she knew. He didn’t attend most society events; Joan could count on one hand the number of times she’d seen him at balls or soirees before that fateful meeting at Douglas’s house. If he kept company with Douglas, he probably spent his days at boxing matches and horseraces, and his nights at gaming clubs and taverns. Every woman in town might be talking of50 Ways to Sin, but as far as she could tell, Tristan avoided most women...
Except her.
She put the pamphlet aside, suddenly alarmed by what thoughts it might inspire. Who would have guessed that being courted could be so unsettling?
Chapter 20
When Tristan thought about the balloon voyage, he was left with two distinct impressions.
First, he would enjoy winning back his shilling. He’d spent an unpardonable amount of time watching Joan’s mouth, and had come to realize it was damned near perfect, just the right shape and a very appealing shade of pink. He thought about kissing her when she exclaimed aloud in delight, as they hovered above London, and he thought about kissing her when she pursed up her mouth in affront because he said the word “pantalets.” He even thought about kissing her when she declared a desire to kick him, which probably ought to be taken as a warning sign of insanity, but he never could resist a challenge.
Which all led to his second impression, that he was playing with fire by continuing to see her. Douglas Bennet had asked him to see that she didn’t waste away in unhappiness. Tristan could excuse ballooning as a means of fulfilling that promise. He could not, in any way, excuse his increasingly lustful thoughts about Bennet’s sister, and the more time he spent around her, the more numerous and more lustful his thoughts became. When Joan listed every undergarment a woman could wear, all he thought about was removing each item from her body, possibly while he won back his shilling.
This inspired real alarm in his breast. A few weeks earlier, he’d thought her the most intractable Fury. Now he was thinking about having her naked while he kissed her into happy oblivion. That was not only the way to madness, it could even lead to worse: marriage.
Tristan viewed marriage as something to be avoided at all costs. It was a trap, baited with a pretty face or a plump dowry, but a trap that sprang shut with alarming quickness, and had only one way out: death. Men had stepped into it willingly, of course, but how many of them regretted it later? Once the dowry was spent and the bride lost her bloom, all that was left was imprisonment, one man and one woman chained together in eternal matrimony.
People had told him his parents cared for each other. He wondered if it was true. If so, love hadn’t been enough to keep his father at home with his wife and son, instead of venturing out in a fierce storm and drowning. And according to Tristan’s childhood nurse, love had sent his mother to her grave soon after, her heart broken over her husband’s death. None of it spoke well of love matches, and as for the other kind ... he could remember all too well the evenings at Wildwood, when he was forced to sit quietly in the corner while his uncle drowsed by the fire and his aunt embroidered in frosty silence, the only sound the crackling of the fire. God alone knew what had drawn those two together, but it looked like the worst sort of hell to Tristan. He had sworn he would never find himself in that miserable existence, penned in by a woman’s demands and disapproval.
Although, in fairness, it did seem unlikely that Joan could ever be like Aunt Mary. When he tried to picture her embroidering by the fire, the image rapidly devolved into one where she cursed her thread and threw the thing into the fire, whereupon he laughed and kissed her until they ended up making love on the hearthrug. He could just picture her, head thrown back in desire, skin bathed in golden firelight, her perfect lips sighing in passion, urging him on as he drove himself deep inside her...
