She leaned across the table toward him as she had done a few times the evening before, her face eager. “What would you have done if your mistress had been here?” she asked, and instantly turned poppy-red.
He grinned at her. “I know just how it feels,” he said, “to realize what you are saying only when the words are already escaping your mouth, Mrs. Hunter. I’m sure you have a good-enough imagination to know just how I would have spent this day with Jude. But you are not my mistress, I did say there was not much here to entertain alady.”
“That was the stuff of nightmares,” she said. “I shall be waking up for the next several months shaking my head and grimacing over that one.” She helped herself to another piece of toast and spooned a generous pile of lemon curd onto it.
The earl watched her in some amusement. Life must never be dull with Rosamund Hunter around.
“Now, if you were a gentleman,” he said, taking mercy on her after watching her for several seconds as she spread and respread the lemon curd on her toast, “we could play billiards. But you are not, so we can’t. Price did say there were some books here somewhere, though I have not yet found any.”
She set her knife down and looked eagerly across at him. “Oh, but I do play billiards,” she said. “I asked Leonard to teach me, and he did, though he laughed at me a good deal. I never could beat him, but then no one else could either, and I would never let him humor me and allow me to win. He was very good.”
The earl raised his eyebrows. “Then billiards it will be for this morning,” he said. “Perhaps the snow will have stopped falling by this afternoon and we can get some fresh air. You can make some snow angels for me.”
She laughed. “Oh, but there are no children here,” she said. “One can do that and build snowmen and throw snowballs only when there are children to entertain, or someone is sure to accuse one of being childish.”
“I promise not to accuse you of that,” he said, raising his right hand with mock solemnity. “And snowballs, did you say? I know a thing or two about snowballs.”
She laughed.
She was a widow, one part of his mind was thinking. The young widow of an older man who had been dead for more than a year and of a man who had been ill for three years before that. An attractive widow. Perhaps she would not be averse . . .
He shook himself free of the thought and sipped on his second cup of coffee.
A little flirtation, perhaps? But under the present circumstances, a little flirtation would be impossible. If he once touched her and she did not slap his hand away, he would take her up to his bed and make of his life a hopelessly complicated business. She was a lady.
No, better to forget the whole thing before it took root in his mind.
“Shall we find the billiard room?” he asked when it became obvious that she was not going to eat the toast on her plate.
Billiards seemed safe enough. It was a masculine game, a slow and rather dull one. Something that could be made to last through the morning. And Mrs. Hunter obviously took it seriously. She concentrated on making her shots and really played quite well.
But the Earl of Wetherby discovered something new about billiards. It was perhaps the most erotic game invented by man. If he stood at the opposite side of the table as she readied her cue, his eyes were drawn to her breasts, brushing the table, one sometimes flattened against the rim. He was only thankful that the neckline of her dress was high. If he stood behind her, he could not keep his eyes from a rounded and very feminine derriere as she leaned over the table and the wool of her dress clung to her.
Before the morning was half over, he had to resist the urge to tear at his cravat and rush out into the falling snow to cool himself off. He would find those books before luncheon, he swore to himself, and they would spend the afternoon in the sitting room, one at either side of the fire, reading, like an elderly and comfortable married couple.
“I win,” she said, turning to him with a bright smile.
“So you do,” he said. “You had a good teacher, I see. Did we decide on a prize?”
“No,” she said, laughing. “It was always a kiss with Leonard and me. But since we kissed each other whoever won—though it was always him, of course—it was rather silly, as I used to tell him.” She suddenly turned that poppy-red shade again.
“Well, then,” he said, hearing his words even before they came from his mouth but quite unable to change them, “a kiss it will be.”
She looked up at him in shock and embarrassment and caught her lower lip between her teeth. Her upper lip gave more than ever the impression of being upturned.
He took her face between his hands, watched her release her lower lip, and lowered his mouth to hers. He did not part his lips, but kissed her lightly, feeling the softness of her, the warmth, the moistness of her lower lip. He did not hurry. His nostrils were teased by that seductive scent.
“Mm,” he said, raising his head and looking down into a pair of large dark eyes, “your husband was a very sensible man. Having to give such prizes would console any man for losing a game.”
She swallowed awkwardly. “It was just nonsense,” she said, “as I always used to tell him.”
If he just touched her once, he had thought at breakfast. He still had her face cupped between his hands.
“May I call you Rosamund?” he asked. And he certainly had not planned those words in advance.
“Yes,” she said, turning sharply away and fishing a couple of balls out of a side pocket of the table, “if you wish.”
“Will you call me Justin?” he asked.
