Page 45 of The Lady Knows Best

“I—” Heat swept into her cheeks, which was absurd. “I saw them kiss.”

“Shocking,” he teased. They were standing too close together for comfort.

Though what she felt when he was near wasn’t exactly discomfort either.

“And what was the story about you and Bellis having tea with Ashborough?” he asked.

“Oh, that.” Her laugh was tinged with nostalgia. “He came to Dublin with Cami. In the spring of ’98. Galen had been badly hurt at the start of the uprising, and the house was in an uproar. Paris was—” she began, then caught herself with a little shake. Though more than a decade had passed, there was still no call for her to confirm the rumors about her brother’s involvement with the rebels. “Gabriel took it upon himself to amuse us while Cami set everything to rights again, as she always did. I’ll never forget his kindness to two frightened little girls.”

“You must have been pleased, and perhaps rather surprised, by your sister’s choice of husband.”

“Oh, they weren’t mar—” Heat prickled her cheeks. Eight-year-old Daphne hadn’t given much thought to the fact that Cami and Gabriel had traveled from London to Dublin, unwed and unchaperoned, and none at all to what might have transpired on the journey. Now, however, she understood things differently. “That is to say, I think that visit might be why she decided to marry him.”

Surprise flared in Miles’s eyes. He clearly understood the more scandalous implications of her tale.

How had she been so easily led to speak of her past, when she had intended to get him to reveal something of himself?

“What of your family?” she asked. “Would they—will they be at your wedding?”

“All that I have, yes,” was his cryptic answer. “Including the Earl of Ryland, I hope—he has been like a brother to me, since we began at school together. But beyond that . . .” His shoulders rose and fell in a shrug of acceptance, if not quite indifference. “Much of a bachelor’s acquaintance does not accompany him into married life.”

She had forgotten, for just a moment, the sort of world in which men such as he moved—and would continue to move. He might not introduce his friends to his wife, but neither would he abandon them. He would settle the new Lady Deveraux somewhere in the country and return to his Town pursuits as soon as she was with child, if not before.

She made a mental note to include that warning in her essay.

“I suppose,” she said, suddenly eager to change the subject, “this cannot be a topic of great interest to you. Young women spend more time thinking about weddings.”

“While men think only of wedding nights, I suppose?”

How could his tone be both seductive and self-deprecating?

“No,” she said, without stopping to consider how it would sound. “Women think about those too.” Impossible not to be at least a little curious, or to wonder at the meaning of some of the more ribald whispers exchanged among the matrons.

“Do they?”

Without her having been aware of any movement, the distance between their bodies evaporated. He had dipped his head lower, and his whisper at her ear made her feel shivery and weak all at once. He wasn’t touching her, and yet she could not work up the will to step away.

“This is a drawing room,” she reminded him, determined to regain some measure of control over the situation, even if she couldn’t seem to control herself. “Not a darkened library. No chess game tonight.”

Her scalp prickled as his warm laugh ghosted over her. “For a young lady who insisted upon a proper courtship, you have a remarkable curiosity about impropriety. Would you like me to show you exactly what went on in the library that night?”

She lifted her chin to face him. “Is that some sort of threat?”

“A promise,” he murmured. She felt the words as much as heard them; her movement had brought her mouth within an inch of his.

Perhaps it didn’t matter who initiated the kiss, though she rather feared she had been the one to close the remaining gap between their lips. Without any conscious effort, she found herself on the balls of her feet, with her fingers curled around the lapels of his coat, urging their bodies closer yet.

Until a few nights ago, she hadn’t understood all the fuss about kisses. Hadn’t known the delicious pleasure of it all, how a man’s mouth could be soft and hungry all at once.

But of course, that’s why such knowledge was kept from young women.

Or perhaps kisses weren’t always like this? Perhaps it was simply his kisses—their kisses....

No, she couldn’t think like that . . . couldn’t think . . .

His lips moved over hers with slow deliberation, savoring. He seemed to be intent on discovering and devouring every curve of her mouth, learning her taste.

A man who looks like that. . . . A man who kisses like that. . . .