AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Leticia,” he called softly, not wanting to startle her if she was hiding. She did not say anything in reply, but he heard sniffling. “Leticia,” he repeated, feeling a bit surprised, “are you crying?”
Leticia walked slowly forward then. The darkness had hidden her as she was wearing a gown made of forest-green silk. On one hand, she clutched shreds of a newspaper. In her other hand, she held a long strand of ivy. Richard surmised in her anger she must have ripped the leafy substance off the wall. “Of course, I am,” she whimpered as she dropped both the paper and the ivy to the ground. “Aren’t you supposed to do the gentlemanly thing and offer me your handkerchief?”
Richard reached into his pocket and extracted a white silk handkerchief. He made to smooth it out before presenting it to her. She scoffed as he did so, and her hand reached forward and snatched at the material. He moved a step closer to her, and as he did, he could see the moonlight reflecting her tears. They were not plentiful, but they had left smear tracks in the rouge that had been applied to the apples of her cheeks. As she dabbed at her face, the streaks went away, and she appeared to be herself once more. “All better now?” he asked hopefully.
“No,” she grunted. “How would you feel if every time you walked into a room every single person said something horrible about you?”
“Well…” Richard replied thoughtfully, “I would probably run out into the garden and hide away from them all.”
She blinked twice then snorted in derision. “Is that your way of saying I might be overreacting?”
Richard shrugged. “I don’t think it’s my place to say anything about your behavior. It’s not as if I’m your betrothed.”
Leticia pursed her lips together and narrowed her eyes. “You may not be my betrothed, but it was you who got me into this situation.”
“Yes,” Richard sighed heavily, “and I am very sorry about all that. If I could pay the gossip pages to stop printing that drivel, I would, you know.”
“I know.” She patted the handkerchief down her cheeks once more then crumpled it into a ball and held it out to him. He took another step toward her so that the distance between them was only a matter of inches then he took the handkerchief, smoothed it out, and tucked it back into his pocket.
Leticia chuckled drily. “You couldn’t have just stuck it back in your pocket as it was. You had to make certain it was folded just so.”
“There’s a right way to do everything. I try to stick closely to that whenever I can.”
“Oh, please,” Leticia groaned. “I do not wish to hear any further lectures from you on propriety.”
“Fine,” he replied, inching even closer to her, for there was something about her present mood that was drawing him nearer. It might be because she very seldom cried, and she now appeared gentler and more fragile, or it might be the way the moonlight shone on the edges of her hair, making her appear softer and less fractious than normal. “No more lectures. Besides, I cannot bring myself to scold you on your behavior when I am currently breaking just as many rules.”
“Rules?” Leticia inquired. “What rules are you breaking, Mr. Proper?”
Slowly Richard turned his head from one side to the other. “You see, Leticia, we are entirely alone right now. It is wholly improper for the two of us to spend this time together…even if we are courting.”
“Um…yes…wholly improper,” Leticia repeated in a mocking tone, but then, just as Richard considered taking a step backward to create space between them, she nervously licked her lips. He watched in awe as she lifted onto her tiptoes, puckered her lips, and allowed her eyelids to flutter closed.
He did not hesitate. In an instant, his arms were around her waist, and he pulled her as close as they could get. He pressed his lips to hers and felt a surge of passion radiate from his core.
“What are you doing?” Leticia whispered as her lips became inflexible. Richard did not move away from her but opened his eyes. She was staring straight at him, and even though her mouth was still touching his, she was not engaged in the kiss.
“Why must you always talk when I’m trying to kiss you?”
“Kiss me?” Leticia squawked as she took a step away from him. He released his hold on her waist and let her move. “Why would you go and do a thing like that? I was just crying. It cannot be satisfying to kiss a lady when her face is covered in tears.”
Richard shook his head in a dazed sense of puzzlement. “But you had stopped crying, and you seemed to imply that you wanted me to kiss you.”
“Oh,” Leticia gasped, “did I? Did I give you some sort of signal, letting you know that I wanted you to kiss me just now?”
“Well…” Richard grumbled as he reached up to straighten his tie, “as a matter of fact you did.” He stood on his tiptoes and fluttered his eyelashes. “I was quite sure that you were inviting me to kiss you.”
Leticia laughed boldly. “Richard, I had something in my eye. I was batting my lashes at you because I was trying to get it out. If I wanted you to kiss me, I would have—”
Moved by his instincts or perhaps by the fact that Leticia had now said the word “kiss” several times, Richard reached for her once more. “Shh…” he whispered as his lips brushed over the top of hers, “just for now…do be quiet.” Then, he leaned into the kiss. This time, Leticia did not start jabbering, nor did she back away from him. Instead, just as had happened during their second kiss in the church, their actions sculpted them together. Her hands went to his hair, and his went to her waist. He kept the kiss slow but deepened it by pushing his tongue toward her bottom lip. She faltered, and her hands stopped gripping his hair, but then, she opened her mouth slightly and allowed him to dip his tongue inside so he might explore the kiss further.
They stood there for several long minutes. Richard determinedly kissed her in a slow, methodical way. He didn’t want to set the pace, but he also knew he didn’t want to push Leticia further than she was willing to go. Just as her mouth broke free from his, and she moaned softly, he came to his senses. Part of him wanted to dip his head further and trail kisses all along her jawline, but the other part, a more rational part, ordered him to stop at once.
“Leticia,” he said, whispering her name as gently as their caress had been. Her eyes fluttered open once more.
“Hmmm?” she murmured.
“We should stop doing this at once.”
