With the Honorable Neville Freyne? An intense dislike for the man stiffened Lucien’s shoulders.
“Once Mama fell sick, I thought looking after Papa and the boys would be my life.”
Lucien’s eyes narrowed. “Is that what you wanted foryourself? To remain a dutiful daughter, sitting at your widowed father’s knee?”
What a waste that would be, Lucien mused as he peered down into her animated face. All of that laughter, cleverness and courage hidden away in life as a spinster.
“I suppose I’ve been too preoccupied to consider what I want. It is high time I puzzle it out.” There was something about the way she lifted her chin just a fraction. Something brave.
Lucien didn’t need any time to discern whathewanted. He’d felt every curve of her body on the lakeshore, but that was pure chance. This pull he experienced now was different. A choice?No, aneed. He couldn’t take his eyes off of the smudge of icing near her lower lip.
Could a man taste her sweetness? He’d be a fool to try. He’d regret it forever if he did not.
He threaded his fingers back through the silky fall of her unbound hair, tipped her face up, and lowered his mouth to her cheek. Her breath caught as he trailed kisses down to the bit of icing, tasting it. Tastingher. She gasped, and he caught the alluring sound with his mouth, exploring the plush velvet of her lips. Flames licked through him as he traced the seam of her lips with his tongue and she opened, letting him inside, the contact almost too potent, too intense. He gathered her in his arms, molding her body to his, and she kissed him back, her fingertips easing up around his nape to draw him closer. Her palm cupped his neck, brushing the sensitive strands of his hair, her touch devastatingly feminine and eager. The points of her nipples puckered, hard against his chest, only the thin lawn between them. A throbbing began in Lucien, low, primitive and unexpected. So damned dangerous.
After a long, searching moment, he drew away. “You taste like vanilla and sugar and cream,” he murmured, tracing a fingertip over her bottom lip. “So damned sweet.”
Grace stared up at him, wide-eyed. “It’s the cake.”
He laughed for the first time in God knew how long, and her face turned scarlet.
“I’d better go,” she stammered. “Before…”
Before someone discovered them? Before he kissed her again? Before he lifted her onto the table and did what his body was clamoring to do?
She spun away, but he caught her arm, gathered up the handkerchief with its purloined cakes.
“Don’t forget these,” he said, pressing the bundle into her hands. She snatched it up and fled.
He watched her, her wrapper streaming out behind her, her feet bare, dainty and doubtless so cold he wanted to warm them in his hands. Her words echoed through him.
No, Lucien thought. It wasn’t the cake he’d tasted in that kiss. Grace Elliot tasted like something else entirely. Something he could never have.
Redemption.
Grace presseda hand to her burning cheek and fled up the stairs, groaning in despair.
It’s the cake…?
What kind of absurd thing was that to say after Lucien Harcourt had kissed her until her toes curled, and every inch of her skin seemed afire? There were a hundred things she could have said to him.You taste like sin. You kiss like the devil himself. Why, thank you very much for showing me what I’d have sacrificed if I’d remained cloistered at The Willows.Now, she sounded like an absolute ninny. She’d been embarrassed by their encounter at the lake, but that had been her brother’s mischief. This disaster was her own making. How would she ever face him again?
She darted into her room and shut the door a trifle too hard, the sound seeming like a gunshot. She leaned her back against the portal. What if she’d awakened someone? What if someone discovered…. A chill whisked through her nightgown, and she looked down at the open front of her wrapper, suddenly aware she hadn’t taken the sash Lucien had set aside in the kitchen. Evidence of her nighttime escapade.
For a moment, she thought of retrieving it, but she didn’t dare go downstairs again in this condition. No one would knowit was hers, would they? And the sash would be the last of the kitchen staff’s concern when they saw the mess she’d left behind.
Lucienhad left behind, she amended.Hewas the one who had startled her. Creeping up behind her in the middle of the night, stealthy as a tiger, scaring the life out of her! Kissing her until she couldn’t string three coherent words together. Her heart raced as she remembered every sensation.
It wasn’t as if she’d never been kissed. Certainly she and Neville had done so after their betrothal, but those were the tentative fumblings of inexperienced youth. A trifle too eager, a bit awkward. Lucien had kissed her with the skill of a man who knew all the secrets of awakening a woman’s body. How to set every nerve ablaze…
And she’d fired off the most ridiculous reply ever, her nightgown smeared with icing as he pressed the handkerchief filled with cakes into her hand. How would she ever face him again? She would have to, she thought. She’d invited the Harcourts to The Willows.
Oh, God, what was she thinking? Her cheeks burned with a mixture of embarrassment and excitement as she remembered those moments in the kitchen.
The truth? Deep down she wanted to repeat the night’s escapade…
“You can come out now.The last of the guests are gone.”
Lucien looked up at the sound of Arkwright’s voice, his friend strolling, uninvited, into the study.
