Page 27 of Impetuous

“Why, yes.” He cast an amused look at her. “You don’t think that I am going to slog through all those books on my own, do you? Oh, no, my dear Miss Verrere, if I search through the attics with you, then you have to help me search my library.”

Cassandra beamed. “It will be my pleasure, I assure you.”

“However, it looks as if we shall have some difficulty searching your attic.”

“What do you mean?” Cassandra glanced at him, startled.

“I mean, your aunt and cousin are difficult people to maneuver around.”

“Oh.” Cassandra sighed. “Yes. I am so sorry. Joanna seems to have set her cap for you in a most inflexible way.”

“Mmm.”

“I am sure it is most improper, but I think that the best way to handle the situation is to do what we did today. We will have to continue our search in secrecy.”

“You are a woman of great intellect—not to mention kindness.”

“What, to not make you endure Joanna’s and Aunt Ardis’s company?”

He grinned. “Did I mention that you are also exceedingly blunt?”

“No.” She grinned back. “You did not need to. It has been pointed out to me before.”

It was ludicrous, Philip knew, to be enjoying himself so much, to be sitting here and smiling over this woman’s behavior, which was definitely not what one would expect or want in a lady. And yet he could not deny that just being with her lifted his spirits immeasurably. Somehow being here in the backwater of Dunsleigh, meeting Cassandra in secret and crawling about through an old musty attic with her and her siblings, made him much happier than any of the entertainments at the far grander and more sophisticated Arrabeck House. No doubt his friends, if they knew of his odd start, would think that he had run completely mad.

“Miss Verrere,” he said, his face suddenly serious, and he reached out to take her hand. “I had another reason for coming here.”

Cassandra’s nerves began to race at his touch. She had not stopped to put on gloves in her mad dash from the house, and she could feel the warmth of his bare skin against hers. He did not release her hand, and she made no effort to pull it away.

“What is that, sir?” she asked a little breathlessly.

“I needed to apologize.”

“Apologize?” She looked puzzled. “Oh. You mean for the way we met—indeed, sir, you have already done so, and it was not your fault. You need not speak of it.”

“No. Not that, although it was scarcely behavior worthy of a gentleman. No, I am speaking of the way I acted the following morning, when we were in the maze.”

“Wha—oh!” Her thoughts went to the end of their conversation and the way he had kissed her then.

“Yes,” he replied grimly. “That. I behaved like a cad. I have no excuse, other than my own lack of control. You…seem to have a certain effect on me.”

“I do?” Cassandra was astonished at the idea that her charms might have driven a man to lose control of himself.

Sir Philip had to chuckle at her expression. “My dear lady, that is scarcely the way to respond to a gentleman’s apology. You make me want to prove all over again why I kissed you the other time.”

“Oh!” Cassandra hadn’t the slightest idea how to respond.

“I do not apologize for the feelings that I had, you understand. I— Well, looking at you now, I feel the same desire to kiss you.” His voice dropped huskily on the words, and Cassandra went weak in the knees. She could remember no other man who had looked at her in quite the way Sir Philip did now.

“What I apologize for,” he continued, “is that I put you in an uncomfortable situation. That I made you feel that I had not listened to your words, or that all I was interested in was a, well, a physical relationship of some sort. I wanted you to know that I do not and would not ever regard you as anything less than a perfect lady. I did not intend to demean you in any way.”

“I, uh…” Cassandra could not continue to meet his eyes, for the look there affected her breathing in the most peculiar way. “I accept your apology.”

“And I want you to know that I would never…push myself on you. I would not use this situation or our working together in the attics to—to take advantage of you.”

“Please—you need not apologize. I would be less than honest if I pretended that the fault was all one-sided.”

She glanced up and saw a look of intense male satisfaction cross his face. “Then I was not the only one who felt the attraction?”