She squeezed his arm, understanding. “I should find it terribly lonely, having only myself to please. I always appreciated my responsibilities. They suited my talents.”
“Putting your nose into other people’s business?”
“I believe you, sir, put your nose rather pointedly into my affairs this morning,” she answered. “So I consider us square.”
Lightly he brushed a finger over the tip of her nose. Everything inside Henrietta melted.
“You incited a riot in the London Tavern, spent the night in the watchhouse, and have taken in the illegitimate child of a duke’s daughter. I look a paragon compared to you.”
She gave a watery laugh, grateful for his levity. “Yes, I’ve tied my garter in public, to be sure. Perhaps you ought to take refugewith the Pennyroyals. Staid, respectable people who might reform you, as your friend Perry suggested. Not a sad rattle like me.”
He steered her into a side gallery, empty of people, and paused beside a waist-high pedestal. The painted vase bore a muscled warrior wearing nothing but a short cloth about his hips, offering his helmet to a stately lady who held a shield and spear. Minerva again, accepting the homage due her as a powerful woman.
Henrietta would never be a Daughter of Minerva now.
“I haven’t thanked you.” Darien drew her closer to him, his smile full, his eyes gentle. “For charming my child from Celeste. She might have been lost were it not for you.”
She thrilled as he stroked a thumb over the arm of her jacket. Oh, this man. She was lost to sense around him. “Do you forgive my meddling, then?”
“On the contrary, I am glad to know she is in good hands, in the event that—I mean, if anything were?—”
Had the thought of fatherhood left him speechless? His baffled look made something light and airy bubble in her chest, dislodging the tight lump of loss.
Entirely against all strictures of propriety, as if he were hers that she might make such an intimate gesture, Henrietta placed her hands on either side of his face. She felt the warmth of his skin through her gloves.
“Lord Darien Bales,” she whispered, falling into his violet eyes. “Lord Daring. If only the world knew the man I see.”
She would remember later that she had been the one to lose her head. She would remember, later, how his gaze flicked past her powdered hair before he bent his head, meeting the lips she raised to his. At the moment, all she could do was quiver with relief.
She had wanted this since that morning, when he carried her through the watch house in his powerful arms. She had wanted this, truth be told, since the moment outside St. James Palace when she looked up from her torn skirts into his gentle, laughing eyes.
She tumbled headfirst into their first real kiss. He was not trying to scold her, or teach her a lesson, or master her. He desired her, took delight in her, and they stepped into that enchanted world together.
His thumbs brushed her ears as he cupped her cheeks, his fingers reaching into the soft hair pinned at her nape. It was a slow, hot, blossoming sort of kiss. His whole mouth was in play against hers—his firm lips, his nipping teeth, his exceedingly agile tongue. The rest of the world swirled away as if whisked behind a velvet curtain.
Her body came alive, heat and light traveling down the taut, alert cord forming at the center of her body. The kiss was a sweet dance, full of wonder and invitation, and she followed his lead as trustingly as she had followed him across the floor at the Bicclesfield ball.
After a long while they surfaced for air, and she found herself anchored by his hands around her face. Her own hands twined around his shoulders as if to pull herself up to meet him. Heat radiated off his body, and his scent, spicy and familiar, swamped all thought. His expression mirrored her own, warm, astonished.
Who knew a kiss could be like that? Playful, molten, intoxicating enough that she had forgotten who she was, that they were…in a broad museum gallery with any number of people in the next room, examining the Egyptian mummy.
A cold shock rushed to every part of her body, quenching the soft echo of his kiss. He looked around, and she forced her head to follow his gaze.
They were not alone in the room.
Marsibel wore a blank look, her mouth parted in shock. Rutherford looked nervous and appalled. At least half a dozen people stared with expressions that ranged from stupefaction to unholy glee, with murmurs, chuckles, here and there a hiss. Miss Forsythia Pennyroyal put a hand to her mouth with a cry.
“You!” she choked. “You! But you’re—you’re—” She turned and rushed from the room, her heels clacking on the floor.
“D-D-Darien?” Rutherford stuttered.
Darien smiled with triumph and determination and something else, something Henrietta might have called satisfaction if she were not still, stupidly, trying to conceive that she had just been caught with an infamous seducer in a very public kiss, a kiss that would leave her reputation thoroughly and utterly in tatters unless he?—
“Rufie.” Darien’s arm curved possessively about her waist. She felt the heat and solidness of him through her stays. “Miss Pomeroy. You may be the first to congratulate us. Miss Wardley-Hines has consented to become my wife.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
“Well, that tears it!” Charley smacked down the glass he’d just emptied of Darien’s best whisky. “Mauling m’sister in full view of the Pennyroyals? It’s the leg-shackle for you, that’s certain!”
