His features creased into a frown. “You probably won’t believe this, but I was locked in a broom cupboard!”
She smothered a laugh at his outrage. “But that’s terrible! Who would play such a cruel trick?”
She held her breath, waiting for him to condemn James, but he merely shook his head.
“I never saw. It was dark, but whoever it was, they were a beast of a man.” He glanced up and down the narrow path, as if to make sure they were completely alone, and lowered his voice even more. “Or maybe not a man at all.” His brow crinkled. “This might sound foolish, Miss Worth, but I rather think the presence that attacked me might have been . . . not quite human.”
With an encouraging lift of his brows, he waited for her to be suitably intrigued.
“You think you were attacked by some kind of ghost, Mister Willingham?” she managed.
He nodded and rubbed his jaw. One side, she noticed, was faintly bruised; he’d tried to conceal the worst of it with powder.
“Indeed. One moment I was walking to meet you, the next I felt a huge, malevolent presence hovering just behind me. I tried to turn, but I was struck by a blinding pain.” He shook his head. “I must have fallen insensible. When I awoke, it was to find myself locked in some kind of storage closet.”
Kitty sent him a doubtful look. “I must say, that does sound rather . . . unlikely. Surely specters don’t go around locking people in cupboards? Perhaps you fell prey to a practical joke from one of the other guests.”
Charles’s golden hair caught the sun as he shook his head. “I don’t think so, Miss Worth. Haven’t you heard the tales? Castle Keyvnor is famous for its interfering spirits.”
“Or perhaps,” she continued lightly, “you just changed your mind about meeting me.”
He squeezed her arm. “Absolutely not! I promise you, nothing short of a supernatural intervention could have stopped me from being there.”
Kitty had to turn her face away to hide her smile. If Charles wanted to salve his masculine pride by imagining he’d been bested by a ghost, rather than a flesh-and-blood rival, who was she to argue? And at least James didn’t have to worry about being challenged to a duel, or something equally stupid.
Charles heaved a theatrical sigh and clasped her hand to his chest. “You poor thing. Did you wait for long, up in that draughty old tower?”
“Wait? Uhm, no. Not long.” Kitty willed the guilty blush in her cheeks to subside. “And it wasn’t all that cold. In fact, I found myself rather warm.”
“Oh, good.”
Now was the time to be shameless. She turned and caught his gaze. “So, you did, in fact, want to kiss me?”
His blue eyes widened. “I did. I do.”
She tilted her head toward the leafy hedge that made up the start of the Castle Keyvnor maze and sent him a provocative smile. “Then perhaps you’d like to take a walk in the maze with me?”
Charles looked as if he’d just won a fortune at cards. “I would be delighted.”
As soon as they were out of sight, and certain that no other guests lingered nearby, Kitty pressed herself back against the leafy hedge and lifted her face to Charles in clear invitation.
A smile of triumph curved his mouth as he leaned forward. She caught a hint of his floral pomade and quashed her instinctive recoil. She didn’t want him to smell like James.
His lips pressed hers and she closed her eyes, determined to enjoy the moment, to give him a fair chance. But where James had been slow, savoring her lips as if he had all the time in the world, Charles’s kiss was urgent and greedy.
His lips were wetter, softer. Sloppier. His tongue probed her mouth as if he were trying to reach her tonsils, and his impassioned groan as he caught the tops of her arms and pulled her against his chest made her feel like a dressmaker’s mannequin being manhandled into a shop window, rather than a woman being coaxed into passion.
A great surge of indignation and disappointment flooded her. James had kissed her as if he wanted to wring every last drop of pleasure from it. As if kissing were an end in itself. His lips had been both a promise and an invitation.
With Charles she felt rushed, as if kissing weren’t a journey of discovery, but a necessary, brief stop on the way to their final destination. It just felt wrong.
He tasted of peppermint, not wickedness.
He smelled of flowers, not cedar and sin.
Kitty turned her head and managed to wedge her palms flat against his chest. She shoved him back and took a gasping breath.
Charles glanced down at her with a confident smile, certain she’d be swooning from this demonstration of manly ardor.
