Page 30 of The Rogue and the Viscountess

He chuckled, through there was a roughness to it, because he ventured his hand to the top of her knee, stroking, and she did not stop him. Her lower lip quivered, and her cheeks wore that delicious rose. He wanted to lick her all over, now he knew she tasted like strawberry cream.

“I’ve no doubt she wants to show you off everywhere. A real viscountess, under her roof. She can hardly credit her good fortune. The one thing I’ve done right in the last three months is bring you to her.”

“She sat me down for the lecture this morning on the families in the area.” She leaned back on one hand, shifting her weight. Her skirts were cool against his hand, her flesh warm and smooth. He feathered his fingers upward, upward, and her eyes fluttered closed. “The Guys, the Methuens. The Northey family at Hazelbury Manor. The Awdrys at Notton House. The Dickinsons at Monk’s Park, Johnathan Bennet at Guyers House, but I can’t recall…who lives…at Hartham.”

He’d reached his prize and teased his fingers into the most, warm core of her. It was an effort to hold back, keep teasing, when he wanted to plunge a finger straight inside. Claim her. See if she would clench around his fingers the way she had tightened around his cock when she found her pleasure last night, and this was the way he could keep her, if there were no other way. This was the way he could hold her fast.

He found the small nub at her core and rubbed gently with the pad of his thumb. “You’re very good at this. Remembering who is who.”

“You’re very good at this,” she whispered, eyes still closed. Her breath fluttered across her lips, and her thighs trembled and tightened as he stroked. A surge of primal joy, of possession, streaked through him. For the first time in months, he was fiercely glad to be who he was, where he was. Pete Wilkins, the Baronet Wilkins of Easton, pleasuring Prunella Price beneath a rowan tree dripping with autumn berries as red as the crescents she was biting into her lips as she surged, then shuddered against him. He leaned over her and kissed her, plunging his tongue into her mouth, needing to taste her.

He could take her right here beneath this tree, with the sheep watching, and she would let him. This woman belonged to him, and she knew it. She clutched his arms, fingers digging into his skin as she urged him toward her, and he nearly roared with the satisfaction of knowing he pleased her, she wanted him with a craving that made her abandon all propriety, and—

“Lord above, I can see the two of ye, and so can everybody from the house,” came a woman’s voice.

Prunella’s eyes popped open. “Jenny?”

Chapter Eight

Prunella Price reflected, as she walked back to the house with Jenny, knowing Pete was watching her from behind, that she had never before been the kind of woman that people would travel miles for.

The most Edwin had done was cross a room, worming away from the crowd of women wanting to talk to him so he could take refuge with Prunella, who had never—before the startlingly stupid accident of Fate that left her widowed—been a figure of drama.

Now, she almost felt she were in a play. One that went from silly comedy to passionate, tearing emotion and back to silly comedy again. If only Jenny could have heard Lady Wilkins going on in the drawing room that morning about all her fine neighbors who would be eager to make the acquaintance of a viscountess. Dowager viscountess, Prunella had reminded her, but it mattered little. Lady Wilkins had secured herself a prize, and she meant to show it off proudly.

Prunella had sought refuge in a picnic with Pete, but she should have known that man wouldn’t clear her mind. He only made everything more complicated.

Actually, that wasn’t true, Prunella realized, only half listening to Jenny’s chatter as the maid walked beside her. The passion she shared with Pete made the world stand out clearly in the most vibrant shapes and colors. Everything was obvious as she lay in his arms in the aftermath of pleasure.

She wanted to be near him, where the world was bright and clear and beautiful, and where she could see that slow, sweet, sunny, gap-toothed smile of his every day of her blessed life.

Her heart twisted in her chest, beneath the prim little demi bodice she’d worn over the white round gown specifically because it made her look like a Meissen shepherdess, and she wanted Pete to see her like this. She had made her excuses to Lady Wilkins precisely because she wanted to picnic with Pete like a country dame and pretend that large, fat, heavy sheep closing around her, trying to nose into her basket, didn’t frighten her near to death.

It was everything else in her life that had become foggy, blurred. Who was she, now that she was no longer Lady Penrydd, now that another man held her husband’s title and another lady had taken her place? If she couldn’t obtain her jointure, or the new Penrydd wouldn’t condone her living alone—and he had the power to order her about, since he held her purse strings—what would become of her?

The same bleak options she’d had before. Living out her days in Lydia’s shadow, her unpaid companion, smiling and smiling through all of Lydia’s bitter remarks, trying to piece out bits of pleasure for her own days when she possessed nothing that belonged to her.

Or she could go back to her family in Huntingdonshire, help support her sisters in their marriages, be a prop and support to her aging parents, be the smiling widow who pretended she was happy with her lot because she really had no choice about anything.

She certainly couldn’t stay here as a kept woman or superannuated guest. That would look strange, to Lady Wilkins most of all.

She could marry Pete. If he wanted that.

Her steps faltered.

“And we was all the way back to Box Hill with that chaise and post boy, nigh to Somerset, when I realized, ye might need me, milady.”

Or saw her chances at finally escaping her tiny village slipping away, Prunella thought. “So how did you return?”

Jenny blinked. “Walked.”

“But that’s…” Prunella didn’t know how far, as she hadn’t noted the markers along the road. “Miles.”

“Near five or more,” Jenny said. “And I come back to the Hare an’ Hounds, I did, and with enough askin’ I found out the gent as took ye. The brewer said he’d bring me wit’ his cart, and here I am.” Pride threaded her voice, but she sent Prunella a reproachful look. “Just in time, it seems to me.”

“Too late,” Prunella admitted.

Jenny’s eyes widened. “Will we be stayin’ here, then?”