“You were going to. I refuse to hear it. I wanted to kiss you. You knew I wanted to kiss you. You wanted to kiss me. We kissed.”
She hadn’t known a kiss would have so many dimensions. He had also touched her breast, and all of this had been the revelation of a lifetime. All of it merely suggested to her that there was more to discover. She was terrified she would never learn it, and yet somehow relieved, too.
She knew they had both paced along a dangerous precipice.
He finally smiled, albeit faintly. “That is a fair summary of events.”
“I do not consider that we are engaged. I do not consider myself compromised. I will not tell a soul. I do not consider myself ravished.”
He took this in, wordlessly.
But she could hear his breathing, slower now. Why did it seem so precious, the sound of him recovering from passion? Just... the sound of himliving. Why did it make her feel so tender?
Finally, his mouth tipped at the corner. “If you do not consider yourself ravished, perhaps I went about it the wrong way.”
“I cannot say that I have anything to compare it to,” she said carefully, slowly, “but I should like to say it felt as though you did everything perfectly.”
Some fierce emotion suffused his face then—a blaze of raw longing, of vulnerability. So beautiful and bright her breath hitched.
It was gone before she could decide what it meant.
There was a little pause.
“So what you mean to say is that you were curious,” he said carefully. “And it was a new experience.”
It was a moment before she understood. He’d offered these words to her as a safe option, for both of them. Curiosity: that was all this feverish interlude was. It needn’t be spun into a story. It needn’t have ramifications. It needn’t mean anything at all. It could be just another souvenir of her time in London.
And while this was a relief, it still somehow felt like a betrayal of both him and herself when she said, “Yes. I was curious. And my curiosity was satisfied. Thank you.”
He nodded. Pulled in a long breath and released it slowly.
“You best go inside now. I’ll wait here to make sure you’re inside safely.”
They both knew full well they could not enter the house together.
He’d used the word “home,” which somehow didn’t seem inappropriate, because if The Grand Palace on the Thames was anything, it was a home. And for a mad moment she wished it was, that he would be there and they could tumble from this carriage into a bed, and he could show her every other thing she knew he knew.
Chapter Fifteen
Two days later...
“A penny for your thoughts, Kirke,” Delacorte said, as he blew a stream of smoke skyward.
He stared across at Delacorte in the smoking room. “Have you any pennies left or are they all in the Epithet Jar?”
Mr. Delacorte’s week had been somewhat rough on account of losing to Kirke in chess more often than he was accustomed. Tonight he’d let fly with a quietly heartfelt “SHITE!” which had made all the ladies jerk in surprise, and Dot had accidentally stuck herself with the needle with which she was embroidering.
Granted, she accidentally stuck herself with a needle almost nightly, epithets or no epithets, and had once sewn her own sleeve to her embroidery.
But Delacorte had been mortified and contrite, and he had lost another penny.
“You’re glaring at the wall opposite. I’m just grateful I’m not standing in front of you, or I expect my waistcoat would show scorch holes.”
“This is just my usual face,” Kirke said idly.
Hardy and Bolt, who had taken up the corners of the room with their cheroots, laughed.
Kirke was, in fact, idly, caustically imagining a special room for every vice. A compartment in which a man could privately succumb to his basest impulses, then exit with impunity back into the civilized world.
