Joseph swallowed hard. He thought of kissing her then. Dipping down, lips on lips, just a taste. For now. Until... until he could do it properly. Until they weren’t surrounded by boots and umbrellas. Until she was ready.
His brain scrambled for the next correct thing to say. “Being a servant, I’m guessing, is not so very different from being a mother.”
She smiled at this, still studying the hat.
Joseph said, “For example, if it is a cold day, you must stand ready...” he plucked the hat from the peg “...with a hat. To keep bare heads warm.”
Gently, he settled the hat on Tessa’s head. She giggled but did not duck away. It was too large and dropped over one eye. She shoved it back.
“If a ride is in order, you are ready with gloves.” He plucked a pair of fine leather gloves from the shelf and tucked them under his arm. He held out his hand. Smiling cautiously, Tessa reached out. Joseph took her hand and began to work the large, soft glove onto her fingers. She turned her hand, helping him slide it on. Her skin was soft and warm, her fingers nimble. The only sound in the room was the rustle of leather and the sound of their breathing.
When one glove was on, she was ready with the other hand immediately, holding it out. He slid the second glove in to place.
“And if it is very cold and wet,” he said, taking a greatcoat from a hook, “you’ll need this.” They locked eyes again as he slid the heavy coat around her shoulders.
The coat enveloped her and he stepped closer. The heavy wool would easy wrap around them both. She licked her lips, and Joseph felt his pulse all over his body.
Casting around for any excuse to touch her, he took up the lapels of the coat and joined the collar loosely beneath her chin. His hands brushed her face and she sucked in a little breath. She raised her face, smiling at him. He ran a thumb along her cheek a second time, never breaking her gaze. Her mouth was open, just a little. He tugged the collar, the slightest possible tug, and she stumbled closer still.
He scanned the walls; he was running out of garments in which to drape her. In the back of his mind, he thought, this was possibly the strangest seduction in the history of the world. He was putting clothes on her body instead of taking them off. They were in a bloody boot room, for God’s sake. He almost laughed, almost gave up and laughed at his own feeble attempt, but before he could pull away—
She leapt up and kissed him.
One moment she was staring up at him, the next she was against him, her arms wrapped around his neck, her lips pressed against his.
The hat fell off, the coat dropped. Behind his neck he could feel her peeling off the gloves.
For the blink of an eye, Joseph froze, not believing. And then he growled and scooped her into his arms.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Tessa had kissed, perhaps, dozens of men in her lifetime.
Beaux and suitors, men she met at balls, men who had plied her with flowers and poetry and jewelry. Some she enjoyed, others were more like conquests.
But no kiss, not in all her twenty-three years of kissing, ever compared to the kiss that she... she...seizedin the boot room of his earl’s cellar.
And seized it, she had. She’d listened to his story, she had stood very still while he touched her fingers and her wrist and her face. She heard the rise and fall of his breath and the low, crackling register of his voice. She had witnessed his restraint.
Restraint was something about which she also had a fair amount of knowledge. Old Tessa or New Tessa or the Man in the Moon, she had always known when a man wanted to kiss her but held himself back. She’d known when they were too chivalrous or too afraid or when they simply did not know how to go about it.
Clearly, Joseph Chance knew how to do it.
Whether he was afraid or chivalrous or some other reason, Tessa could not say, she only knew that she wanted him, and he wasn’t initiating, and this would be up to her.
“Tessa,”he breathed when she dragged her mouth from his to suck in a breath.
She turned her face, offering her cheek, and he came down with a growl, dragging a raspy line of kisses along her jaw. The roughness of his whiskers and his labored breath, so very close to her ear, plunged her into a pool of sensation. She closed her eyes and dropped her head.
They had kissed at Berymede many times, and Tessa had enjoyed those kisses, but she had also kept herself just a little bit removed.
Well, hermindhad been held back, even while she quite enjoyed being in his arms. Her mind hovered just north of the baby growing inside of her and just south of her ultimate goal of getting Joseph Chance into bed, the sooner, the better.
Any kiss had the potential to evolve into sex, and if she could possibly maneuver it, she had known every kiss must try. Most things she had done at Berymede had had some ulterior motive, kissing included. She hadn’t been entirely sure what she’d done to spirit Captain Marking from kissing her to... what he did to her, but if she could possibly compel Joseph to repeat it, she had known she must.
In the last eleven months, as she’d lain awake missing Joseph, she wondered how, if he did come back—reallyback, all the way to her arms—how would she manage intimacy with him?
And now that it finally happened—well, now that kissing had happened—she felt tenuous... relief. She felt no fear, at least not of the kissing. And she wanted to continue kissing very, very much. When she thought about it (her brain was not entirely analytical in the moment), she would describe herself asravenousto kiss and kiss and kiss.
