How the Marquess Was Won (18 page)

And yet.

He drew in a long breath. Exhaled at length.

Phoebe must have seen his plans in his eyes. “Don’t,” she urged on a panicked whisper. “You’d best not. Please—”

He took hold of her other wrist, gently, as if she hadn’t spoken at all, and Phoebe let him take it, because his touch turned her bones to water. And as he pulled her toward him, he gave his head a regretful, incredulous little shake, as though neither of them had a choice in the matter, as if he were at the mercy of momentum. Which appeared to be true, as her head was already tipping back to meet his lowering lips, and later she could not have said how that had happened, only that his will in that moment was hers.

His lips landed softly on hers at first, the merest bump of his warm firm mouth against her soft one. And then he coaxed hers apart with his. More shocking than the kiss was the
relief
, as though she’d longed for this her entire life, for him, for this kiss. It nearly buckled her knees. Her body seemed to know precisely what to do and what it wanted, and her sense dissolved against the onslaught of sensation. Her breasts crushed against his hard chest, the button of his shirt was cold against the skin of her collarbone. His mouth like cognac, the kiss spreading like slow fire through her veins, until she was molten. When her body blended against his with such wanton ease he might as well have been the missing part of her, he loosened his grip on her wrists, clearly satisfied she was going nowhere. She wasn’t quite sure what to do with her hands, so she settled them on the front of his shirt and slowly curled her fingers into it. The linen was hot from being next to his skin. And this seemed so unbearably erotic she moaned low in her throat, a shameless animal sound, pure need.

And when she did he muttered a hoarse word that may have been
Christ
or an epithet or her name, something raw and helpless and very enthusiastic. He shifted abruptly so that his hot hands were sliding over her back to cup his hands beneath her arse and lift her with shocking deliberateness against his cock.

And through the fine fabric of her twice-sewn dress, she felt him: enormous, inexorably male, shockingly hard. His hands were furling up her dress; she felt the air on the backs of her stockinged calves. Their lips clung and parted, then returned more hungrily, their tongues twined and tangled, teeth once clashed gracelessly. But the kiss never seemed deep enough, penetrating enough, because what he wanted was more than a kiss and she wanted what he wanted, and she was at the mercy of that.

Help.
The word rang in her head, though she didn’t know whom she was entreating or what she wanted. She was endlessly spiraling, in a fever induced by the heat of his body, the taste of him. His cock was so hard it hurt to be held against it, and yet she pressed herself closer, as close as she could, because every time she did pleasure cleaved through her, built upon itself, doubling, trebling, until she was trembling with urgency.

And suddenly her head was bare. She felt the air on her hair, the back of her neck. Her bonnet had been knocked free and was bouncing around the back of her neck.

His mouth traveled to the place her pulse thumped in her throat, bare to him now. He made a desperate sound in his throat, and his lips traveled lower, and she arched backward to abet him.

His mouth had just skimmed the bones at the base of her neck, so close, so close to the swell of her aching taut nipple, when:

“Oh,
Juu
ules!” Lisbeth trilled again.

Her voice echoed.
“uuu . . . uuu. . . . ules . . .”

Christ! That voice was close now!

They froze in the midst of what amounted to climbing each other.

“Phoooeeeebeee!”

Now without the echo.

The marquess stepped back so abruptly she staggered forward.

He righted her by clapping his hands on her shoulders.

They stared at each other. His eyes were dazed and hot. Their breathing was a low roar.

A breeze rattled the leaves on the trees, and to Phoebe it sounded like so much ironic arboreal applause.

Finally, gingerly he lifted his hands from her shoulders, as if worried she was so kiss-drunk she might topple. Or disappear like a mirage the moment his touch left her.

Satisfied, he lowered his hands to his sides and seemed to, with an effort, hold them very still.

She touched her fingers to her lips. They burned; she’d taken from him as savagely as she’d given. It was an excellent sort of pain. Her skin felt everywhere feverish.

But she left the other hand on his chest, and watched as it rose and fell, rose and fell, with the bellows of his breathing. And as if she couldn’t help herself: she slid it inside his shirt, between the gaps in his buttons . . . over his hot skin.

He hissed in a breath. “Phoebe.” His voice was hoarse, curt. A warning. He wrapped her wrist in his hand again.

But in case she never kissed him again, she wanted to feel for herself what she’d done to him. And wonderingly, she savored the hammer blows of his heart against her palm.

Until he gently, gently, lifted her hand away. Gave it back her.

And unwrapped his fingers from it, one at a time, prolonging the time he was touching her.

Until they were no longer touching at all.

Which seemed wrong all of a sudden.

She considered that one of them ought to say something, but she could think of nothing appropriate, and couldn’t imagine what he might say that would be at all the right thing. The language she knew—the King ’s English, and all the precious facts she’d acquired over the years that could be used to explain or sum up or keep the world at bay—were useless here. This was another language entirely.

“Juuuu-
ules
!” Lisbeth sang out. Her voice seemed closer now, but it was impossible to know just how close, given the way sound tended to ricochet off and pool in the little valleys between the hills, the way the breeze picked it up and dashed it about through the trees, playing tricks. “Phoeeeeebeeee! Where have you got to?”

She still sounded brisk and playful.

But they were startled seconds later to hear the crunch of footsteps and the
huh huh huh
of the old hound.

Bloody hell!

Jules and Phoebe realized at once they were essentially trapped in the clearing. And one of them had an erection and the other one was pink in the face and in the lips and her bonnet was askew and her dress was hiked up in the back.

Only an imbecile would come to the wrong conclusion about what they’d gotten up to.

Thus began the frantic hissing whispers.

“Your dress is—” He gestured broadly.

“Your hat . . . !” She pointed at his head.

“
Your
bonnet!”

Jules’s hand shot out and he tugged her dress down from behind, gave it a cursory hurried patting to smooth it while she tried in vain to untangle her bonnet ribbons, which seemed to have entwined with her hairpins.

“Thank you,” she said on a frantic abashed whisper.

“Not at all,” he replied under his breath.

For heaven’s
sake
. Why on earth were they being
polite
?

The hound gave a rusty, disinterested bark from what sounded like an uncomfortably close distance.

They were both a little wild-eyed now.

“Your—is still—” he hissed urgently, gesturing at his own head.

She clawed at her bonnet ribbons again, but they were knotted hopelessly. She nearly lynched herself trying to free it. Her hands were trembling and useless.

Woof!
the dog said again. And they heard the crackle of footsteps, too, over leaves and twigs.

“Smell something, old boy?” Waterburn’s voice now.

Rank fear,
Phoebe thought.
Or perhaps mortification has a smell.

“Do you hear voices, Lord Waterburn?” Lisbeth called. “This way, I think.”

Phoebe abandoned her bonnet efforts instantly.

“We can’t both stay here.” She was light-headed with panic.

“Too right. You stay. I’ll go!” Jules lunged to the left, ready to plunge through a hedgerow.

She seized his elbow. “No! Not that way! You’ll end up in a bramble. I know the woods, so
I’ll
go—”

He seized her elbow as she lunged to the right.

It was like a reel gone violent.

“For God’s sake, we can’t
both
go crashing off like deer through the underbrush,” he hissed.

And Jules knew with despairing, crystalline clarity he’d been wise to avoid the illicit affairs other men seemed to find so invigorating. He’d only barely gotten an illicit affair under way and his dignity was already in jeopardy, what with the beaming in church and the bonnet purchase and now this. He
cherished
his dignity.

An “affair”? It was just a kiss.

Well, two kisses.

Nevertheless, two kisses in a clearing did
not
qualify as an affair. And as embarrassment was
hardly
an aphrodisiac, it was unlikely to become one. So he told himself.

“You’re not as familiar with the woods,” she pointed out. “I grew up here in Sussex.”

“
I
might get
lost
?” He’d gained an octave, which wasn’t easy to do when one was whispering. “
I
might? These woods are dense and it isn’t safe for a woman to wander about alone. You will stay and I will go.” He said this curtly and dismissively and pulled away from her grasp.

If she’d been a cat, her fur would have been erect with outrage. “I never just . . .
wander
.”

“For the love of
God
, woman . . .” he growled. He clapped an exasperated hand to his forehead, which sent his precariously perched hat tumbling off.

He spun about, lunged for it, missed, bounced it futilely a few times off of his fingertips, and one final valiant lunge to capture it merely served to bat it across the clearing.

It cart-wheeled merrily over the ground and came to a rest well out of his reach.

Just as the top of Lisbeth’s shining head and her exquisite profile came bobbing into view over the top of the hedgerow.

“Erk!” was the last thing he said before he threw himself to the ground and slithered on his belly over the wet grass, aiming like a lizard for the hedgerow. His boot heels were just disappearing from view behind it when Lisbeth appeared, humming happily to herself. She was followed by Waterburn, who was followed by the hound.

Phoebe was frozen. She felt certain she would never forget the image of a marquess vanishing like a lizard into a hedgerow.

“Phoebe does wander off now and again on walks all by herself,” Lisbeth was telling Lord Waterburn, “but she knows this part of Sussex fairly well, so I shouldn’t worry. I thought I heard voices right about here. Didn’t you hear them, too?”

The ensuing noncommittal syllable from Waterburn could have meant anything. Phoebe doubted he was expending very much concern over whether she might have gotten lost.

She could almost feel Jules’s triumph radiating from behind the hedgerow:
You never wander, Miss Vale?

“I walk but I don’t get
lost
,” Phoebe called out loudly, cheerily, pointedly . . .

. . . and prematurely. Because: Bloody hell! His
hat
. She’d forgotten about his hat!

It throbbed with significance on the ground like a great poisonous toadstool right where Lisbeth would see it the moment she entered the clearing.

She snatched it up, wondered why on earth she would do that since having it in her hands was hardly better than leaving it on the ground, then thrust it behind her back in both hands as Lisbeth burst into view and came to a surprised halt at the brink of the clearing.

Lord Waterburn’s towering blondness hovered over the top of the hedgerow and his boots crunched to a halt as he dispassionately surveyed his surroundings. He was still cradling the musket. Likely he considered the day a sort of purgatory, one in which he was destined to wander and wander and never shoot anything.

“Well, there
you
are, Phoebe!” Lisbeth sounded pleased. “It
is
just you?”

Chapter 13

S
he took a cursory look about the clearing to ascertain the truth of this, but it was clear she’d already drawn that conclusion. And Phoebe knew a quick, sizzling irritation that Lisbeth didn’t at all doubt she was alone and not doing anything untoward with anyone, let alone a marquess. She was tempted to touch her still-burning lips again to prove to herself she had indeed been kissed, because the mere appearance of the glowing and no doubt eminently kissable Lisbeth made it seem an impossibility.