“You are not,” she hissed, still yanking at her bodice. “You are lounging.”
“I am recovering.”
“You are indecent!”
He fastened another button. “All the more reason not to leap up and open the door too hastily. Decency takes… time.”
Hetty made a strangled noise. She did not entirely understand what he meant, but the way his eyes glinted as he said it made her want to throw the nearest cushion straight at his head. Instead, she shot him a murderous glance. “You look like sin.”
Theo grinned. “Appropriately so.”
Another knock rattled the door. “Hetty, if you do not let me in this instant, I shall fetch Lottie to pry the lock open!”
“Be patient!” Hetty cried.
“You were far less patient a moment ago,” Theo muttered.
She gave him a look more vicious than the first, then glanced about in mounting frustration. Her hair was a hopeless tangle about hershoulders, half-fallen from its pins. With no ribbon in sight, she wrenched the silk tie from around her own wrist and began twisting it up fiercely as though she might strangle decorum back in place.
Theo watched her for a moment, before smiling. “Shall I hide behind the curtains, then? Under the desk, perhaps? Your sister will never think to look.”
For one awful instant, she pictured it: Georgie bursting in to find him crouched like some monstrous jack-in-the-box. “No. Absolutely not. If she sees you, she sees you. It is better than finding you skulking in the furniture like a common footpad.”
Theo rose at last, one hand pressed to his injured side. “As you wish. Though I confess, never in all my life have I been so abruptly vacated. My lap feels the loss most grievously.”
Hetty narrowed her eyes, cheeks aflame. “You are fortunate I intend to marry you, Theo Winslow. Else you would be dead.”
“I cannot conceive of a man more blessed,” he teased, and then his smile softened. “I do mean it, Hetty.”
Her throat tightened, though she could not have said why. “You had best mean it. For I am already half-ruined and it is far too late for second thoughts.”
He stepped closer, his hand warm as it cupped her cheek, and bent to kiss her with a tenderness that stole what little remained of her breath. “How could I think of aught else?” he said against her lips, “when you are all I want?”
When at last he drew back, she looked up at him with wide eyes. “If you are jesting with me, Theo, I shall never forgive you.”
“I would never jest in this.” His thumb brushed over her jaw, and he hesitated. “You are – ”
“Huzzah!” cried Georgie as the lock at last yielded and she swept the door open, Lottie close at her shoulder. Both sisters stopped short, their triumph suspended in astonishment at the tableau within: Hetty caught fast in Theo’s arms, her lips scarcely parted from his. For a breath, the room was still, before Georgie’s eyes grew very round indeed, and she clapped her hands together. “Oh! Now I positively understand why you missed supper, Hetty!”
Chapter 21
Even as he stood before the altar of St Bartholomew’s, a quiet parish church tucked between the cobbled lanes of Mayfair, Theo found his thoughts most unholy. Try as he might, he could not summon his mind to the solemnities of the occasion; it was fixed with shameful insistence upon the memory of Hetty’s thighs trembling around his hands and the yielding warmth that had so sweetly invited him further the night before. His blood stirred hot at the recollection and he shifted his stance, resisting the urge to adjust his breeches in full view of the Tolliver family, his mother, the vicar, and no fewer than three aunts fanning themselves to death in the third pew. This, he reminded himself with desperation, was a house of God – though at present, all he could think on was the sound of Hetty’s breathless cries and the knowledge that, had her sisters not interrupted, he might have driven her to the heights of ecstasy with his hand still buried between her thighs.
It had required every last ounce of discipline to retreat to the solitude of his guest chamber after their encounter in the library – alone, aching and hard as the devil. The moment the door closedbehind him, he pressed his back into it and sought relief with his own hand, biting down upon his knuckles to smother the groan that escaped when release seized him – ecstasy sharpened by the protest of his wounded ribs.
Now, standing beneath the nave of the church,Theo was wrenched back to the present by the pointed clearing of the Reverend Mr Peters’ throat. He straightened at once, schooling his features into those of a solemn bridegroom, quite grateful no one in the congregation could possibly guess at his most indecent thoughts. He drew a slow breath and, in that instant, made a silent vow: ribs and wounds be damned – this night he would not seek release unless it was within his wife’s embrace, and only when her pleasure had been secured before his own.
The thought of her innocence in such matters was at once humbling, maddening, and oddly tender. That she would look at him with such honesty, even when aflame with confusion, struck at the very core of him. How had he been so blind? All these years, he had squandered himself on passing fancies and tedious intrigues, when the only woman worth his undoing had been beneath his very nose – often quite literally, for though Hetty Tolliver was tall, he still towered over her by a head.
He adored her. He did, curse it. He adored her wit and temper and impossible stubbornness. He wanted every part of her, in every hour of the day, for as long as she would let him have it. He adored her, body and soul – though, at present, it must be admitted, her body occupied rather too much of his imagination. Oh, he would give her every reason to delight in the marriage bed. By God, he meant tospoil her so thoroughly that no scandal sheet could ever contrive a tale half so wanton as the truth.
Before he could chastise himself yet again for his wicked imaginings, the great doors at the rear of the church swung open and a blaze of sunlight streamed into the nave. A rustle of anticipation swept through the pews, and Lady Tolliver, seated in prideful splendour with her four remaining unmarried daughters lined up beside her like ladies at court, pressed an embroidered handkerchief to her eyes with theatrical fervour.
Beside him, his old friend, Jasper shifted. “Last chance, old fellow. Say the word and I shall hold them off while you make a dash for the vestry window.”
Theo managed a tight-lipped smile. “No, Deverell. I believe I shall remain precisely where I am.”
The music swelled, violins rising sweet and clear through the vaulted church. Hetty appeared at the doors, radiant upon her father’s arm, and in that instant, every thought, sinful or otherwise, was struck clean from Theo’s mind. He could do nothing but stare. She was a vision beyond reason, dressed in pink silk that fell about her like water, embroidered at the hem with the finest sprays of spring blossoms. No veil could obscure the firm set of her chin, nor soften the colour in her cheeks. She looked neither nervous nor meek, but brilliant, alive, and resolutely herself.
