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“Very well,” Stephen said, adopting an air of martyrdom. “I can forgo the pleasures of Almack’s in favor of two hundred miles of travail on the Great North Road. I have no use for the dance floor and it has no use for me.”
“A spy,” Constance said, sipping her drink. “A fine idea. How soon can you leave?”
Chapter Seven
Althea’s kiss was as contradictory as the woman herself. Her grip on Nathaniel’s lapels was ferocious, while the press of her lips to his was delicate. She invited with her mouth, she demanded with her hands.
He could refuse neither the demand nor the invitation, and took her by the shoulders to guide her two steps, such that her back was against the garden wall. Nathaniel managed this without breaking the kiss, for there would be only this one foray into madness, and when it was over he could permit no others.
Althea settled back against the hard stones with a sigh that feathered past Nathaniel’s mouth. She slipped one arm around his waist, inside his jacket. The other hand went to his nape, as if to hold him still for her exploration.
Cinnamon and sweetness flavored her kiss, and when she took a taste of Nathaniel he wrapped her close. Arousal should have been a foregone conclusion when a man had been without intimate pleasure for so long, and yet, it wasn’t.
He could have ridden into York any evening during the past six months. Instead, he’d galloped Loki like a madman, stayed up all night reading the philosophers, and become too fond of the brandy decanter, but he’d felt no inclination to seek out a woman.
He was becoming in truth the recluse he sought to present to the world, and that realization honestly infuriated him.
Althea’s kiss stirred long-dormant desire even as it soothed years of unhappy emotion. She pressed herself nearer and urged Nathaniel closer too. His senses awoke, not like a man rising from a night of slumber, but like a creature coming out of hibernation after months of torpor in some cold, dark cave.
The scent of mossy stones, rosy woman, and dewy grass blended with the song of a single bird, and the rays of a sun determined to burn away the night mist. The sheer sweetness of the kiss gilded desire with tenderness, and when Althea at last sank against him, her cheek pressed to his chest, Nathaniel could not step away.
She remained in his arms, her back to the wall, her fingers stroking his nape. He seized more details to savor when the company of brandy and philosophers had paled, as it inevitably did.
Her ladyship wore no stays, and her figure was natural and full. When Nathaniel grazed his nose along her cheek, she shivered a bit, suggesting he’d found a sensitive spot. The floral scent of her soap concentrated where her neck and shoulder joined, and he resisted—barely—the urge to taste her there.
That, he must not do. His body would have happily turned the moment into an interlude for which his honor would never forgive him.
“You ought to be going,” he said, making no move to let loose of the lady. Had five words ever torn a larger hole in a man’s heart?
Retrieving Robbie from the hell the old duke had consigned him to hadn’t been a choice. When Nathaniel had pieced together the truth, he’d simply acted, certain that Robbie would have done the same for him had their circumstances been reversed. No loving sibling left his ailing brother to rot upon the moor in the care of strangers.
Only gradually had the consequences of that choice become apparent. Robbie hadn’t been prepared for rescue, and while he’d longed to return to Rothhaven Hall, he’d imposed conditions that Nathaniel had agreed to too readily.
Anything for my only brother.
And now, anything had become everything.
And everything had expanded to include dealings with a woman who, in the space of a single kiss, could bring back to life a heart that had become as shuttered and bleak as Rothhaven Hall itself.
Althea stroked a hand over Nathaniel’s chest. “I know something now.”
While I have been rendered nearly witless.“What do you know?”
She gave up the support of the wall and purely held Nathaniel. “You do not want to be alone. Not really. You choose it, though I haven’t a clue why and I dislike this decision of yours exceedingly.”
He endured her caresses as he would strokes with the lash, and he held still lest she cease petting him. “Interesting. I dislike the thought of you currying favor with gossips and tabbies. Any man worthy of you won’t like it either.”
Althea kissed his cheek, sighed, hesitated, then slipped from his embrace. “I have learned something else, something about myself.”
She looked a fright, her hair half-undone, her hems damp, her boots muddy, and yet, she was the loveliest sight he’d ever beheld.
“What else do you know?” He tucked a curl dangling behind her left ear back among its kin.
“I know that I will never curry favor with anybody again. I will socialize, I will favor my neighbors with my company, I will condescend in the most gracious sense of the word, and in a few worthy cases I will offer friendship, but my days of currying favor are over. Thank you for that, Rothhaven.”
His was not a worthy case. She stated her conclusion politely but clearly, as a lady ought. “I am pleased to hear it.” He could not tell her to go, not again.
“Farewell, Rothhaven. If ever you have need of me…”
