“Or the time I thought to be a professional musician, even though my piano skills are decidedly lacking. Or the time I tried to smuggle a little statue from Lady Eltingham’s gallery?”
“Yes, Louisa, I remember all of those things.” And he remembered every prank they’d planned together and carried out. Most of these involved catching insects or small amphibians and putting them in places they did not belong. He probably should have tried to talk her out of some of those, too, but often, they’d been having so much fun together, he didn’t have the heart.
“You were not with me when I agreed to marry Rotherfeld, but now I suspect you would have tried to talk me out of that, too, had you been there.”
“I am less certain of that,” said Fletcher. “The decision about who you marry should be yours.”
“And my mother’s, at least according to her.”
“But you like Rotherfeld. You wouldn’t have agreed to marry him otherwise.”
“I didn’t know him. I realize that now. I know he’s kind and intelligent and unerringly polite. But in the last few weeks, I’ve tried to understand who he is as a man, and all I have so far is that he likes gambling and boring conversational topics, he hates art…and kissing him is like kissing a fish.”
“A fish?” Maybe Fletcher’s friends were right. He needed to give Louisa an alternative. “Did he do it right?”
“He admitted to not having much experience with women.”
Fletcher found that a little surprising. A handsome man like Rotherfeld? Was it true or was he lying? Fletcher took no issue with it if it were true—it could have just been Rotherfeldwas religious, or that he’d lived in gender-segregated spaces his whole life and hadn’t had many opportunities to interact with women. But if he were lying to Louisa…
“What should kissing be like?” she asked.
“I don’t know that I can describe it. But in my experience, it has always felt good.”
“Show me.”
“What?”
“Kiss me, Fletcher.”
Fletcher just stared at her. His heart was beating so hard and fast, he suddenly worried it might burst. He, of course, wanted to kiss her, he’d been thinking about it since she first said the wordkiss, but she was engaged to another man. “What about Rotherfeld?”
“I am not allowing you to compromise me. I trust you anyway. This is an experiment.”
“An experiment.”
“I just need you to… I need to know, all right? Show me what a good kiss is.”
He had a million reasons not to kiss her. She could use this knowledge to teach Rotherfeld how to be a better kisser. She could decide kissing Fletcher was also unpleasant. It was possible some women just didn’t like kissing. And kissing another man’s fiancée was definitely not how gentlemen comported themselves.
But he really, really wanted to kiss her.
“Louisa, I shouldn’t.”
Louisa made the decision for him. She practically lunged at him, faster than he could react. He caught her at the waist, but by then, her lips were already on his.
So he kissed her.
And it was spectacular. Louisa’s lips were soft and pliant, and she smelled like roses and berries and tea, and though he could feel her stays under her gown, just getting a sense of the real shape of her was sending arousal through his whole body in waves. She put her hands on his shoulders and stood on her toes to get closer to him, so he bent his head and parted his lips and licked into her mouth. He felt her sigh and knew he had her. When her hands came around the back of his neck and held him there, he knew Rotherfeld was the dead fish; it definitely wasn’t Louisa.
He and Louisa would be fiery together. His beautiful, hot-headed, amazing woman.
Except she wasn’this.
He broke the kiss and took a step back. He panted as he looked at her, unable to get his breathing back to normal.
“Louisa.”
Her fingers traveled to her lips, which she touched. “Isthatwhat a kiss is supposed to be like?”
