“We weren’t alone. Not really,” she began. Her dimples flashed into view. “We were at a summer house party, in the country. One where both of our families attended.”
“Go on.” He inched ever so slightly closer to her.
“After dinner, the hosts arranged a small dance. But it was ever so hot that year, and they’d opened the terrace doors, so that guests could dance indoors, and then slip out into the cool of the night between sets.”
“Mm. Very considerate hosts.” He considered asking the name of these illustrious hosts, then decided he didn’t much care.
She glanced at him, a slight smile playing at her mouth.
His groin went tight. Deliciously so.
“You hadn’t yet asked me to dance, though you had danced with nearly every other female in attendance, single or otherwise.”
“How uncouth of me.”
“Quite.” Her silver eyes gleamed with feminine mystique. “But I was not hurting for dance partners, either. I think you might have been a little jealous.”
Now he did trace the tender skin at her nape. It was every bit as soft as he’d imagined. A few curling tendrils had escaped her coiffure and he toyed with them, winding them around his fingertip, gently, so as not to pull a single strand.
When her lips parted and she drew a shuddering sigh, his cockpulsed to life.
He eased closer still, stretching out his legs before him and sliding down into a recumbent sprawl, head lolled back on the upper cushion. “Were you flirting with the other men, Georgina?”
“No, of course not,” she said, taking instant umbrage, which he hoped would distract her from his fingers, exploring her warm, supple skin.
“None of this tells me how we ended up kissing.”
Her chest rose and fell with the force of her breaths, which were coming faster.
“One of my dance partners offered to get me a glass of lemonade, and suggested I await him on the terrace. I informed my mother, who said she would join me the moment she saw him returning from the refreshment room with the beverage.”
“And I slipped out after you.”
She smiled and, once again, studied her hands in her lap. “You did. You called to me from the shadows from the path leading into the gardens, just off the terrace. I went toward your voice—”
“You little minx. What if it had been someone else?”
Her eyes met his. “I’d know your voice anywhere, Theodore Arlington.”
A curious warmth flooded his chest. “Would you? Go on, then.”
“I couldn’t find you. It was quite dark, as the gardens were unlit and supposedly off limits, and just as I intended to turn back, you called again.” She grinned. “I said, ‘I must get back. Lord Rolston will be looking for me.’ That’s when you materialized beside me. You said, ‘I’ll walk you back, in that case. Only, I thought you’d like to make a wish in the faery fountain.’
“You see, there was a folktale that held if an unmarried woman tossed a hair pin into the fountain under the light of a half-moon—”
“Ahalf-moon? Not a full moon?”
She slanted him a suppressive glance. “Do you want to hear thetale or don’t you?”
“Oh, I do, darling.”
His easy capitulation appeared to mollify her, and, if he wasn’t mistaken, that banked hunger in her eyes was no longer so banked.
“You led me along the garden path, holding my hand the entire way as I could not see two feet in front of me.” Her eyelids drifted closed. “But soon I could hear the trickle of the fountain. Then I smelled roses. It seemed like a hundred blossoms scented the air.”
“Roses,” he murmured, reaching one hand to feather over her mound of springy curls. “Your favorite,” he stated, unequivocally.
She gasped and opened her eyes. “Yes. You gave me my first. A long stemmed, pink rose, when I was still a girl.”
