“I didn’t know you went to my aunt,” Cecelia said with evident surprise in her voice. “So it was no mistake at all meeting you at Lady Whitwell’s masquerade ball.”
“I’m afraid it was not.” He grimaced at being the one to share this truth with Cecelia. “Your aunt told me you needed someone who could bring your adventurous spirit back.”
Cecelia looked up at him from beneath her bonnet, her eyes shaded by the darkness of the forest. “And you wanted a woman who wanted you for yourself…even as you hid behind charming flattery?”
“I suppose that’s why you’re so perfect for me.” He gave a wry smile. “No other woman would have been able to see through my façade.”
“And you trust me?” she asked.
“I do.”
She lifted her brows with exaggeration as though encouraging him to speak from his heart. After all, this was why he’d wanted this walk alone with her.
“Lady Venerton.” He shook his head. “She was a woman I thought I favored when I first began seeking a wife. She, however, was merely seeking a fortune.” He went on for the better part of an hour or so as they walked, explaining how he had overheard her speaking with Ludlow’s wife and promptly left England the following season.
“That’s why you looked at her as you did?” Cecelia asked when he’d finished, her face relaxing with what appeared to be relief.
“She stands for everything I narrowly escaped,” he replied earnestly. “And makes me appreciate what I have now.”
He stopped walking and reached out to entwine his fingers between hers. She stepped toward him, bringing their closeness into more intimate proximity.
“I thought…” She gave a small, embarrassed smile. “I thought you fancied her.”
Philip scoffed in disgust. “Good God, no.”
Cecelia’s slender hands came up and held his face as she pushed up onto her toes and pressed her lips to his. The kiss was as unexpected as it was delightful.
He enfolded her in his arms, drawing her more firmly to him, assured at their privacy in the empty forest. After all, what harm was there in a kiss?
His palm cradled the back of her head as he stroked his tongue over hers until their mouths slanted against one another. Droplets of rain flicked down at them, but they ignored it as they were enflamed with desire.
Philip only paid attention to the outline of her body under his hands, to the way his blood roared and how his cock ached with a maddening need for this woman. She didn’t want him for his wealth. Rather, she encouraged him to be his true self.
She accepted him as he was.
He caressed all of her, starting at the curve of her bottom, skimming up her waist, over the sides of her breasts before cupping one in his right hand. She cried out against his mouth, a hoarse moan that was lost in a rumble of thunder.
The rain came down with a fury then, refusing to be ignored as it pelted them with icy water. As though Oberon himself was enraged that love might blossom between Hermia and Demetrius. Or perhaps Shakespeare, at the rewriting of his story.
Philip pulled off his jacket and held it over Cecelia to keep her from as much of the rain as possible with such an inadequate cover.
He turned around to guide her back to the picnic site and found them surrounded by forest, the clearing long since disappeared somewhere in the distance. The sky had darkened with the fury of the storm and left their visibility greatly diminished. Still, he led the way he assumed they had come, in the hope they would happen upon the safety of the carriage soon.
Except he had been too embroiled in his emotions as he’d spoken to Cecelia. He hadn’t paid attention as they wound around trees and avoided roots.
The rain lashed down harder, leaving them blinking, half-blind, against the deluge. There was nothing to guide them back, no stream or clearing or recognizable stone formation. Nothing but an endless stretch of bloody trees.
Cecelia tripped beside him and crashed down before he could drop his jacket to catch her. He bent and scooped her into his arms, leaving the damn jacket where it lay.
“Are you hurt?” He looked her over as best he could in the murky light. The soles of her slippers had begun to come apart, with one barely hanging on about the heel; the footwear was not meant for weather such as this.
She shook her head. Her bonnet drooped over her face, and her hair was plastered to her brow. With a flick of her wrist, she tugged off the bonnet and tossed it aside to join the jacket.
Lightning flickered and highlighted the silhouette of a nearby cottage in the darkness. Without another thought, Philip carried Cecelia toward the shelter and hoped to God someone was home to welcome them inside.
7
Pain burned up the side of Cecelia’s right leg. She hadn’t been entirely honest when Philip asked if she’d been injured. Something had scratched her when she’d fallen, but the middle of a rainstorm was hardly the time to mention it.
