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“I am afraid that Lord Balfour is preparing to leave for some afternoon business in town, though if there is an important matter you wish to discuss, I am certain he would wish to know,” the butler explained, looking at Philip with a raised eyebrow.
“Oh, no! Please, do not disturb him!” Philip insisted, shaking his head perhaps a little too vigorously. His internal questions had already been answered the moment the butler confirmed the duke was in residence. Clearly, the duke and his family trusted the son of his closest friend with their daughter. Yet after having a tutoring session with her, Philip wasn’t even sure that he could trust himself.
In the darkness, Philip couldfeelher. She was warm and small and fragile, pinned beneath him on the parlour couch. Lady Lockhart, with her floral perfume and intoxicating aura, writhed beneath him as he kissed her plump rosy lips.
With eyes closed, he could feel her and the way she reached up to cup her palms around his face. Her fingertips gently scratched the roots of his hair close to his temples, and she kissed him back with such passion that it made his head spin.
It was no longer day as it had been during their tutoring session. The parlour was no longer filled with dazzling summer sunshine. Instead, the room was almost entirely dark save for a single candle burning upon the table beside the couch. It was just enough light to see by when Philip finally opened his eyes and pulled back momentarily to catch a glimpse of the beautiful woman’s face.
Her dark, thick lashes shadowed her high cheekbones with her eyes closed and her rosy lips pursed. She was prepared for another kiss, and the way her back arched and she writhed beneath him, said she was ready for far more than kissing. Her hair, no longer braided, cascaded all around her in waving curls, and Philip could no longer fight the urges that had been crawling at his insides all morning.
Reaching around to the back of her head, he ran his fingers through her hair, gripping the roots as he lowered himself down to kiss her passionately once more. Heated desire welled in his groin, and he felt himself growing harder and harder with every moment their bodies touched.
Then, just as suddenly as the dream had begun, Philip suddenly sat bolt upright in his bed. Almost an entire day had passed since his time with Lady Lockhart, and he had gone to bed that night thinking of how much he had enjoyed their time together. Yet even though he had been thinking of her when he had closed his eyes and fallen asleep, he had never expected to dream so vividly or passionately about her.
Feeling the hardness of his erection, almost painful beneath the satin sheets, he groaned and reached beneath to adjust himself into a more comfortable position. It was infuriating and painful to touch himself, to need such a release, and he quickly told himselfthis has nothing to do with Lady Lockhart. It is merely due to my lack of intimacy of late.
In fact, Philip couldn’t quite remember the last time he had been intimate with a woman. There had been dalliances in the past, both with commoners and noblewomen alike, affairs that had lasted for only one or two meetings at best and never came to anything more. Yet, he couldn’t remember ever having felt quite so impassioned as he had in his dream.
Telling himself once more that it was merely down to his lack of having a woman in his bed, he tried his hardest to push all thoughts of Lady Lockhart out of his mind, reminding himself that it was likely only down to the fact that she was so beautiful. She was attractive and alluring and intelligent, but he was merely deprived. That was all it could possibly be.
After waiting several minutes for his eagerness to subside, he finally pulled back the covers and clambered from his bed to pull back the heavy drapes at the bedroom window.
As he had expected, the horizon was just beginning to lighten with the first signs of dawn, and when he pushed open the window, the birds seemed to immediately begin to sing as though they had been awaiting his rising. It appeared that even they did not wish to disturb his passionate dreams.
As he gazed out over the lawn, watching the first early morning birds sweep down to check for worms in the dewy grass, he couldn’t help thinking of Lady Lockhart once more. He had seen her more than once on the grounds of Christ Church, watching the birds on the lawns there as they flitted to-and-fro.
She had watched them, and he had watched her, though now he knew that her being there had been more than merely admiring the birds and other wildlife. She had been listening, not just to the twittering and the buzzing, but to the lectures going on in the lecture halls beyond her reach.
A pang of sympathy clawed at Philip’s heart, and suddenly he was more determined than ever to ensure that his next tutoring session with Lady Lockhart went just as swimmingly as the first had done.
Father was right to question my desire to study medicine,Philip thought grimly, still gazing at a blackbird that appeared to have found a worm at the very centre of the lawn,I do believe I am going insane.
Philip had never believed he could have so much fun tutoring another person. He had spent so long focusing on his own education that he hadn’t realised how wonderful it could feel to impart his knowledge onto someone else. And Lady Lockhart was quite possibly the perfect student. Beautiful, determined, and intelligent, she listened and questioned, and they even argued over this philosophy and that theory.
With every session they shared together, they each seemed to learn something, not only about the subjects they were discussing but also about each other. Even more so, Philip learned about himself.
He learned that he liked who he was whenever he was around Lady Lockhart. He felt as though she brought out the absolute best in him, and he often chuckled to himself, wondering what his professors might think of him if they saw him so content and ill at ease with learning.
Lady Lockhart challenged him and made him feel like no other woman ever had. She surprised him and caused him to surprise himself. Everything was so easy, and their time together was filled with laughter, learning, and quiet understanding. Everything was simple and magical, and the summer days never seemed quite long enough.
Philip could only hope that Lady Lockhart felt the same way, and often he feared that every session would be their last, fearful that she might suddenly become the lady he had once assumed she would be, that she might turn around and say she had changed her mind about learning.
Yet every day, she surprised him with a welcome smile and another book for them to share together.
Chapter 8
With every one of Mr Radcliffe’s visits, Daisy was more and more surprised with herself. Never had she been bothered by the thought of what others might think of her, and yet every morning, especially those when she was sure that she would see him, she found herself preparing and preening for several minutes longer in her bedroom mirror.
She would pick from her favourite dresses and ask her lady’s maid to try out new hairstyles in the hopes that she might even manage to get a compliment from the earl’s son.
And she so often did. The compliments made her heart flutter and her stomach somersault with delight, and before long, they became almost like a drug. Her desire to hear praise from his beautiful lips was almost intoxicating, and she greatly looked forward to every moment they shared together.
How did it ever come to this, Daisy?she asked herself one morning as she stopped at the mirror in the hallway to check once more that every hair was in place atop her hair. She had chosen that morning to pin her hair in a delicate updo with several curls falling loose around her face.
A black choker necklace with a pearl droplet at her throat drew the eye to her slender neck, a feature that her stepmother had often told her was her best, along with a sly and jealous tone.
Seeing that the pearl wasn’t quite sitting right in the dip between her collarbones, she leaned forward and reached up to adjust it, looking in the mirror to ensure that she had moved it to the perfect position.
