“I want to be a woman whose expectations of the world are appropriate. What do you want to be, Dr. Andrews?”
What did he want to be?
There could only be one answer to that.
“I want to be the man who exceeds yer expectations.” He was startled by how strong his voice was.
He willed himself to get up and was surprised to find his will had overcome his writhing intestines and he was, in fact, moving across the short distance between the two carriage seats.
“And I dinnae. “
He sat beside her.
“Want.”
He took both her hands.
“To be appropriate.”
And he leaned down and put his lips to hers.
He had never kissed anyone. He remembered practicing kissing by putting his lips to a looking glass when he was eighteen and about to finish his training as a physician. He thought his medical degree meant he might look for a wife. But he had joined the navy and never courted anyone. He had had no opportunity. And he had had no interest—French Letters or no—in seeking paid female companionship. He had spent his adolescence treating the ravages of syphilis and the clap in the whores of Edinburgh and the men who went to whores and the wives of men who went to whores. He knew enough to avoid that.
He was completely without experience.
And kissing a looking glass had no relation to kissing Arabella.
Her mouth was so soft, so warm.
He had not expected to kiss her today—well, not ever, in truth—so he was glad he had shaved carefully this morning, thinking of her cheek against his in the cottage. Yes, he was glad that there were none of his ginger whiskers to abrade those delicate pink lips, that cupid’s bow.
He took off a glove and cupped one of her cheeks.
He kissed her again.
She was allowing it. No, more than that. She gazed up at him and angled her mouth toward his. Her lips were slightly parted.
He felt such a rising excitement in himself. Yes, naturally, his member was engorged—how could it not be?—but it was more than that.
Could the kissing mean to her what it meant to him? That she was to be with him, now and forever? Should he say this to her?
No. Let him continue to kiss her. She seemed to like it. He knew he liked it. If she did not want to look into the past, let him also not look too far into the future.
For now, there was kissing. And it was glorious.
It was the lightest of brushes, a tender and brief pressure. So different from the other kisses she had had. The only other kisses she had ever had. Those from Giles. Those grasping, greedy kisses.
But this was different. The first kiss and the kisses that followed were a giving, not a taking. They were offers. They seemed to ask nothing of her. Even the hand on her cheek was a gift—his tenderness, his warmth suffusing her cheek surely already flushed by her outburst of temper.
She had not expected this from him. First, because she had thought he did not share her feelings. In the past and now. Second, because he was a man bound by propriety. He had not wanted to sit in her cottage with her alone until she had begged him to stay. For him to do this meant—
He pulled away.
She looked at him and her surprise at his kisses turned into longing at the sight of his mouth, his gentle green right eye and the mischievous lock of auburn hair that tumbled over his left eye.
“You kissed me,” she whispered.
“Aye.”
