“Did you not – ” Theo stilled. “Well, I thought, when you mentioned Scotland…”
“I meant we might escape,” she said, rather too hastily with a roll of her eyes. “Not elope! Flee the border like a pair of highwaymen. Honestly.”
He did not laugh or jest, as she half-expected and wholly hoped he might. Scandal, after all, was infinitely easier to entertain than sincerity. Instead, he looked at her with an expression she could not easily read.
“Miss Tolliver,” he said, his voice low, “might I be permitted to ask a very foolish question?”
Her heart was beating rather wildly. “I suppose that depends upon the question and how very foolish it is.”
His eyes dropped to her mouth. “Do you still wish only for scandal?”
“I…” She could not seem to finish the sentence.
Theo stepped nearer – a mere inch, though it felt a perilous distance. He was not supposed to look at her in such a way: not as a childhood friend, nor an accomplice in mischief, nor even as a convenient almost-fiancé. He looked at her as a man might look at a woman he meant to kiss for no reason but the desire to do so, and as though he had been waiting for her to realise it.
He did not move at first. He only watched her, and then, with exquisite slowness, he bent his head.
“I ought not,” she breathed, though she made no effort to retreat.
“I rather hope you will,” he murmured.
When her lips finally met his, it was not with scandal in mind. It was not performed for Society’s eyes, nor to provoke whispers in drawing rooms. It was honest and immediate and disarmingly tender. He tasted of wine and warm laughter and something sweeter still. Her hands, as if with mind of their own, found the front of his coat and curled into the lapels.
The kiss deepened, his mouth moving unhurried and intentional against hers, his tongue darting out to part her lips. When his hand came to rest at the narrow of her waist, she felt – beyond all doubt – that this was no kiss of pretence or continuation of their farcical engagement, nor any calculated scheme for ruin. This was real, and that truth unsettled her more profoundly than any impropriety ever could.
When at last they parted, Theo’s voice came hoarse and a touch unsteady. “Well, that was decidedly foolish of us.”
“Yes,” she said softly. “Quite.”
“Shall we do it again?”
She ought to have said something sharp and practical or, at the very least, properly dissuasive, but instead, Hetty lifted her face to his with a breathless smile and murmured, “Yes, I rather think we shall.”
Theo kissed her again, this time with a boldness that stole the breath from her lungs. He slanted his mouth over hers, warm and sure, and she yielded to him without hesitation. He drew her closer still, until the heat of his form pressed wholly along hers, and she felt, with thrilling clarity, the strength that lay beneath his faultless tailoring.
“Theodore,” she whispered.
“No one calls me that,” he murmured into her ear.
“I know.”
He pulled back, though not any great distance, with eyes alight –blue and shining in the moonlight. “Then by all means, Hetty, say it again – preferably whilst engaged in precisely what you were doing just a moment ago.”
Hetty’s cheeks flushed crimson, but she did not avert her gaze. She scarcely knew herself in that moment – this version of Hetty Tolliver who longed, quite indecently, to kiss him over and over, who took delight in the pressure of his hands, the warmth of his breath, the scandalous pleasure of his mouth speaking her name. But whoever she had become, she was certain of one thing: she did not wish to stop. When he bent once more to claim her lips, it was with a slowerpurpose. One hand spanned her back, while the other cradled her cheek with such studied reverence that it undid her entirely. She parted her lips without thought or fear. She was not thinking at all, only feeling, and what a dangerous abundance of feeling there was.
When at last his mouth left hers, it was only to wander down the fragile line of her throat, where he pressed a kiss just beneath her ear, then lower still, to the sweep of her neck and the rise of her collarbone. He dragged his teeth wickedly against her skin, nipping before chasing the sting away with the soothing brush of his tongue. A sound escaped her then, and he answered in kind, a deep and wordless growl that reverberated not just in his chest but through her entire frame.
“You are not helping, Theodore,” she breathed, entirely without conviction.
He smiled against her skin. “Was I meant to?”
She laughed breathlessly and tilted her head to give him better access. Hetty could feel the dangerous pull towards folly – how terribly easy it would be to surrender and allow herself to be kissed into ruin beneath the stars.
Alas, the Tollivers were never long without calamity. A sharp bang echoed from the house behind them, followed by a screech of “Nell! Put down the poker this instant!” and the crash of what sounded very much like a pianoforte bench being upended in protest.
Hetty flinched. Theo sighed, removing his lips from where they were dangerously close to the curve of her breasts.
“We truly ought to stop,” she said, glancing towards the glow of the drawing room windows, “before someone sets the draperies alight.”
