Rose (Flower Trilogy) (35 page)

“ ’Tis my own decision, remember?” She reached around him and opened the door, then eagerly pushed him inside, slamming it behind them. “Kiss me, Kit.”

’Twas not a request he could deny.

The summerhouse was cool and dim, her mouth warm and welcoming. Her intoxicating scent seemed to wrap around him, filling his head, making his throat close almost painfully. His hands found the lacing down the back of her gown, and as he loosened it, baring the silky skin beneath, it hit him with the force of a hammer striking a nail.

Rose was going to be his . . . for all time.

Despondency had held him in thrall these past days, but now it simply melted away as his heart took flight. The loss of the Deputy Surveyor post seemed insignificant next to the joy of winning Rose. Perhaps he would never be a titled man, but love, it suddenly seemed, was much more important.

Devil take it if his sister hadn’t been right all along.

Kit’s hands smoothed warm down Rose’s back, and she closed her eyes and leaned into him. His kiss was almost desperately tender, and she felt it in her skin, a tight tingling, in her stomach, a melting sweetness, in her heart, an erratic rhythm that sent her blood racing through her veins.

This was right, so right she couldn’t imagine what had taken her so long to realize he was meant to be hers. She should have known from that first startling kiss, from the first time he touched her and made her feel things no man ever had.

He pushed her gown off one shoulder, his lips searing a path on the newly bared skin. Her knees weakened, and she threaded her fingers into his hair. “Kit,” she murmured, “I love you.”

His head shot up and his eyes bored into hers, that look he had that made her wonder if he could see right into her.

She felt the answering flutter in her stomach, the gathering heat lower down.

And her mother opened the door.

Rose whirled around, hiding her bare back, jerking her gown back onto her shoulder. “Mum. I’ve asked Kit to marry me.”

“Oh my,” Chrystabel breathed, apparently not noticing her state of undress. Her eyes grew suspiciously shiny.

“You’re supposed to let the man propose.”

“Question Convention,” Kit quoted with a shrug. He moved closer, trailing a finger down Rose’s spine where her mother couldn’t see it.

It took all she had not to squirm with delight. “He asked me first, but I refused him. After the wedding, we’re taking a trip to Italy.”

Kit’s hand stilled. “We are?”

“And France. Everywhere there are beautiful buildings. I have my inheritance—”

“I can afford to travel. Especially now,” he added dryly,

“without the Deputy Surveyor post to tie me.”

She breezed over that. “But first, we’ll go to the Queen’s birthday celebration at Whitehall. I wish to show the courtiers the sort of man it takes to win me.”

He laughed, a joyous sound that rippled right through her. “She’s planning my life,” he told her mother.

“Get used to it,” she said.

“Six months,” Chrystabel said. “You’re my last daughter.

This is my last chance to throw a wedding that will be talked about for years.”

Rose shook her head. “Two weeks. Violet and Lily only had to wait two weeks for their weddings.”

Her mother made a big show of sighing. “Three months.”

“I want to be married before the Queen’s birthday,” Rose insisted. “One month.”

“Don’t I get a say in this?” Kit asked. “I vote for tomorrow.”

One month it was, and Rose felt victorious.

But her mouth dropped open at what Chrystabel said next. “Kit, I know you’ll be working here occasionally over the next weeks, but I think it would be best for you to go home to Windsor in the evenings. There will be no eight-month babies, understand?”

“Mum!” Rose exclaimed.

Kit just slowly turned red.

Rose recovered first. “Kit would never even think of compromising me.”

“Oh, yes?” Her mother lifted her chin. “Then perhaps the two of you aren’t meant for each other.”

With that, she turned on her elegant high heels and left.

“Five minutes,” she called over her shoulder. “I’m sending for your sisters and their families—we’ll have a celebration supper.”

“Five minutes,” Rose said the moment her mother was out of earshot. “Hurry.”

“We cannot finish this in five minutes. Not if I’m to be able to face myself in the mirror afterward.” Kit took her by the shoulders and turned her around to refasten her gown.

“Your first time should be slow and special.”

“Are you sure?” Rose asked.

“I’m sure.” Laughing, he tied the laces and pressed a warm kiss to the back of her neck. “Come along, before I try anyway,” he added, taking her hand to pull her out of the summerhouse.

Holding his hand wasn’t enough. Now that she’d decided he would be hers, she wanted to touch him all over. “She cannot keep us apart for a whole month.”

“Of course she cannot,” he assured her. “And I don’t think she’s really going to try.”

But a week later, after Kit had spent three more days working at Trentingham and Chrystabel had managed to make sure he and Rose weren’t alone together for more than ten minutes, Rose had her horse saddled and rode over to visit Violet.

“Before we were betrothed,” Violet told her, setting aside a fat philosophy book, “she left Ford and me alone together constantly. Of course,” she added, “that was probably because she was sure he’d never want me that way at all.”

Rose had been pacing her sister’s pale turquoise drawing room. “Violet!” She stopped and turned to face her.

Her sister’s eyes looked earnest behind their spectacles.

“You know it was so. Mum was certain he was wrong for me, and I wasn’t interested in men or marriage, anyway.”

“But after. After you became betrothed—”

“Those two weeks between our betrothal and marriage, we never managed to find ourselves alone. Very strange.”

Ten days later, Kit had completed the greenhouse, but he and Rose had still not found time together for much more than a kiss. When he said only half-jestingly that he was loath to return until the day of their wedding—still two entire weeks away—Rose took Harriet, a carriage, and a coachman, and drove to Oxford to visit Lily.

“Mum did the exact same thing to me and Rand!” Lily exclaimed. Swiveling on her petit-point stool, she turned away from the beautiful inlaid Flemish harpsichord Rand had surprised her with after their wedding. “I couldn’t understand it. Before we became betrothed, she left us alone all the time. But after—”

“Exactly!” Rose sat in one of the drawing room’s brand-new lemon yellow chairs.

Lily’s cat rubbed against her skirts, and she leaned to pick it up. “ ’Twas torture.”

“Gemini. I know.” Sheer torture.

“Is Kit becoming bad-tempered?”

Rose nodded morosely. “Mum said she doesn’t want any eight-month babies.”

“Ridiculous.” Lily rhythmically stroked the cat’s striped fur. “Besides, at this point it would be more than eight-and-a-half. No one would dare even comment. Unless . . .” She eyed Rose speculatively. “You’re not already with child, are you?”

“Of course not! Kit and I have never—”

“Never?” Lily’s blue eyes widened in patent disbelief.

“Never?”

“That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you.” Rose’s fingers gripped the chair’s gilt armrests. “We haven’t had ten minutes alone together since we became betrothed!”

“But before—”

“Before? What kind of woman do you think I am?” she huffed, knowing quite well what kind of woman she was.

The kind that would have crawled all over Kit given half a chance—before their betrothal,
he’d
been the one to display all the self-control. And after . . . her mouth dropped open as she stared at her sister. Sweet Lily. “Don’t tell me you and Rand—before you were married—”

“Of course we did,” Lily scoffed. “We couldn’t keep our hands off each other. And Violet and Ford—”

“Violet, too?”

“Violet didn’t even wait until she was betrothed.”

“What?”
Did she not know her sisters at all?

Lily nodded, still calmly stroking the cat. “Ford
seduced
her into marrying him.”

“No.” Not serious, bookish Violet.

“Yes. He and Rand planned the whole thing one night when they were drunk.”

“That sounds like Ford and Rand,” Rose conceded with a sigh. “But I cannot believe both you and Violet . . . Good God, I’m the one who’s supposed to be forward, and the two of you . . . Gemini, this is so unfair!”

“And I imagine you’re all worried about the first time, too.”

“No,” she said quickly. She wasn’t. Not of that piddly one-time pain she knew her sister was referring to.

“I don’t believe you. No one should have to go through their wedding worrying about their wedding night. ’Tis supposed to be a special day, and how could you possibly enjoy it? I felt so sorry for poor Judith.”

They were both silent a moment. “I hope she’s happy,”

Rose finally said.

“I’m certain she is. And I’m certain her wedding night went just splendidly, too. But
you
are not going to have to worry about yours.”

“I’m not so sure,” Rose said miserably. “Mum is so vigilant, you’d think I was the Crown Jewels and she’d been hired to guard me.”

Lily’s cat leapt out of her arms to join a sparrow and a squirrel that seemed to be chatting on the windowsill. She and Rand had only moved to Oxford from his father’s estate last week, just in time for Michaelmas Term to begin, but her animal friends had found her already.

“We’ll just have to get you two away from Mum,” Lily mused, watching the squirrel feed the bird a bit of nut.

“We’ve tried.”

“Not with my help.” She absently rubbed an old scar on the back of her hand, then brightened and focused on Rose.

“I know! We’ll tell Mum that the three of us girls want one more sleeping party before you are married. And we’ll tell her it’s going to be here. She’ll never come this far just to check on us for one night.”

Rose shook her head. “Kit is too honest for his own good—I’m not sure I’d be able to talk him into such a deception.”

“Kit won’t even be involved. Instead of sleeping here, the three of us will meet at Violet’s and then go to Windsor and surprise him.” Lily grinned, obviously pleased with her plan. “He’ll put us up, won’t he? Has he room?”

“At his house?” Rose had never realized Lily had such a devious mind—and she’d never appreciated her sister more. “Good God, yes—he could billet an army. Wait ’til you see it.”

One evening a week later, with only a week left before the wedding, Kit was summoned by his butler to find Rose and her sisters on his doorstep.

For a moment he couldn’t find words, but that didn’t matter, because ’twas only a moment before Rose launched herself at him, kissing him enthusiastically.

Laughing, he set her back. “What are you doing here?”

“We’ve come to have a sleeping party,” she informed him gaily. “With you.”

For a moment he thought his heart might stop, then it raced out of control.

The shock must have shown on his face, because Lily laughed now. “Not all three of us,” she clarified. “Violet and I will share a chamber; Rose assured us you have one to spare. Mum thinks we’re all at my house.”

“Does Rand know about this?”

“Of course he does. He thought it was a capital idea.”

“Mum tried to keep
them
apart after they were betrothed, too,” Rose put in.

“This place is gorgeous,” Violet said in an awed tone as they stepped inside.

“Goodness, yes, Kit.” Lily turned in a circle, taking in the tall entry with its stone walls, white ceiling, and black-and-white floor. “I thought the house you built for Rand was special, but this . . .” She peeked into the drawing room. “May we have a tour?”

By the time the tour had finished, Kit’s heart had slowed, and he too thought the visit was a capital idea. His cook prepared a lovely venison pasty for supper, but he and Rose couldn’t get through it fast enough. He felt a mite awkward showing her sisters to a chamber and then leaving them there rather early—but not awkward enough to spend the evening twiddling his thumbs while they played music and sang or did whatever else ladies usually did to pass the hours.

Besides, he didn’t own a harpsichord.

In any case, the guilt evaporated the minute he got Rose to his own chamber and into his arms for a proper kiss.

He’d kissed her many times, but this kiss was different, the result of deprivation heightened by a sense of the forbidden. He explored her mouth hungrily, her unmistakable response making something twist in his gut.

When he finally pulled away, she gave him a suddenly shaky smile. “How is Ellen?”

He turned her around and started unlacing the back of her gown. “Fine, according to her husband.”

“Her husband?”

“She still won’t talk to me. I’ve stopped by six, seven times—but she stares right through me.” As the laces came undone, he kissed his way down her slender back. “I don’t fancy being invisible,” he murmured against her skin, smiling to himself when he felt her shiver.

“She’s coming to our wedding, though, isn’t she?”

“According to Thomas, no.” Rose looked gorgeous with the gown open down her graceful spine. Tempting beyond words. “Let us not talk about my sister, shall we?” He dropped to his knees, pressed a kiss to the small of her back. “We’ve much better things to think about.”

She turned, sinking her fingers into his hair as she looked down on him. “I’ll go talk to her tomorrow morning before I leave.”

The dress hung from her shoulders, poised to drop.

“Hmm?”

“Ellen. She’s my friend as well as your sister. I want her at our wedding.”

He sighed and got to his feet. “This isn’t really about Ellen, is it? You’re anxious. That is why you keep talking.”

He saw her swallow hard. “I’ve never done this before.”

“But you want to, don’t you?”

“Good God, yes. But . . . Lily said everyone is anxious the first time.”

He winced. He’d never bedded a virgin, and now he knew why. “If it hurts, I’ll stop,” he promised.