“Ed.” His heart thundered at the use of his nickname. She tipped her head back, her hand coming to his jaw, and caught his gaze. In her eyes he saw a flame that matched his. A fire that had smoldered for years but now flared into its fullest fury. “Don’t stop,” she said.
And so he didn’t. Desperately, he took her lips with his.
With both hands he picked her up and spun around to sit her on the back of the chaise longue. She wrapped her legs around his waist and sank her fingers into his cravat, pulling and yanking until the knot came free.
Desperate to feel her body beneath his palms, he ran his hands up her sides, his thumbs grazing her stomach, her chest. But instead of a neckline and soft, soft skin, there were folds and folds of fabric—the edge of her waistcoat, the frill of her shirt, the soft linen of her cravat.
Thank God, because if fingertips had grazed skin, he wasn’t sure he’d be able to stop. And he needed to stop. This was madness.
They were in a library with hundreds of his peers just outside. She wasn’t Fiona, she was Finley, and being caught in this charade would be disaster.
“We can’t,” he said. “Not here.” Dragging himself away from her was the hardest thing he’d done in years. His body stiffened in protest. His cock pressed hard against his breeches, straining to be free.
Her chest rose and fell, over and over, and he could tell the moment her mind cleared. Her cheeks, flushed pink with desire, reddened and her pupils focused as she realized where they were and what they’d been doing. “Um…help me find my pins?”
Together, they gathered the hairpins Edward had tossed on the floor, and haphazardly constrained her curls until she could shove them beneath her wig.
“Do I look all right? Do I look like Finley?” she asked.
“Every man who looks at you and doesn’t see the beautiful woman beneath it is both blind and stupid,” he muttered. She was the sun, and if she were to enter a London ballroom as herself, every lord of thetonwould fall to his knees in worship.
When her costume was back in place, he cupped her face in his hands, kissing her gently. “This isn’t over,” he murmured, his forehead resting against hers. He didn’t know what that moment meant; he just knew that he couldn’t carry on as if it hadn’t happened. There was no moving on with his life this time.
She curled her fingers into his shirt frills. But he would never know what she was about to say, because at that moment, the door to the study opened. “Ned? Are you in here? You’ve always said it’s rude to—” Charlotte stopped in her tracks as her gaze landed on Edward and Fiona, leaning against each other.
He sprung backward, but it was too late. Charlotte’s eyes narrowed. They focused in on Edward’s untied cravat, traveled to his rumpled hair, then shifted to Fiona, who was staring steadfastly at her shoes, her cheeks aflame.
“Well,” Charlotte said, closing the door behind her and turning the lock, which in hindsight would have been a good thing for Edward to have thought of earlier.
“I can explain,” he said, not entirely sure what the explanation would be. They would have to come clean to her at some point. But right here, right now was probably not the best place.
Charlotte approached them with a leery expression. She took Fiona’s chin in her hand, raising it so the two girls were eye to eye. She turned Fiona’s face to the right and then the left, studying it.
Fiona swallowed.
Charlotte smiled, and then she tucked a scrap of Fiona’s hair that Edward had missed underneath Fi’s wig. “I must say, this is starting to make more sense.”
Chapter 20
They didn’t remain at the Macklebury ball much longer. Fiona watched Edward dance with two more debutantes while she stood by the refreshment table and feigned interest in a conversation about horses. Soon after, Charlotte—unsatisfied with her brother’s promise to explain the situation when they returned home—complained of a headache and the family left. Just in time, according to William, who had apparently had a run-in with Lord Chester.
Thud. Thud.Sitting at the dressing table, Fiona tossed her slippers into the growing pile of clothes in the corner of her room. She had refused Edward’s offer of someone to attend her but was beginning to see why the upper classes required valets and lady’s maids. The constant changing of clothing, the intricacies of each outfit, they all contributed to the pile, and she’d had no time to clean or press them herself.
She pulled and tugged at her cravat before sliding it off and laying it flat alongside the wig she’d removed as soon as she’d gotten home. Then she started on the buttons of her waistcoat.
In another room, Edward would be doing the same thing. Her pulse quickened at the thought of him slipping one button after another. Of him pulling his shirt from his waistband. Of him unlacing the fall of his breeches.
A hot flush crept up her neck. Their kiss had ignited a fire within her. All the physical sensations of their time together had lain dormant for so long but now bubbled up to the surface—the rasp of her fingertips through the coarse hair on his chest. The feeling of his breath, hot against her ear. The warmth that pooled between her legs.
During their first affair, they had never taken it too far beyond the bounds of propriety. Their clothes had stayed on, even if their hands roamed beneath. He’d been quite resolved in that manner, to her frustration.
That same wanting, that same desire that consumed her then thrummed through her now, as if no time had passed.
She considered going to him. There was no reason not to. She was twenty-five years old, a true spinster, and she’d decided long ago that marriage wasn’t for her. She would have her cottage and her work. If she chose to take a lover to fulfill other needs, then that was her business alone.
She and Edward would never have a happily ever after; their lives were too different, but there was no reason they couldn’t be happy for now. Just until her matches sold and her court case was over. Then she would return to Abingdale with wonderful memories of him.
Knock. Knock.Fiona’s heartbeat picked up pace. “Who is it?” She struggled to keep her voice even.
