Slightly Tempted (7 page)

"Have you ever considered," she asked him, "how fortunate we are to have been gifted with so many contrasts?" She turned around in a complete circle and then closed her eyes and breathed in deeply so that she would not ignore the smells.

"Male and female?" he said. "Near and far? Up and down?"

She turned her head to look at him with interest though of course she could no longer see him clearly at all. If she had asked that question of Rosamond or Captain Gordon or a dozen other of her acquaintances, she would have drawn nothing but blank stares.

"Light and shade, sound and silence, company and solitude," she said.

"Sacred and profane, large and small, war and peace," he added. "Beauty and ugliness."

"Oh, no," she protested. "There is no contrast there. Everything that is ugly to us is doubtless beautiful to someone or something else. The slimiest slug is probably beautiful to another slug. A storm, which brings rain and chill to someone intent upon a pleasure outing, is beautiful to a farmer who has been anxiously watching his parched crops."

"And what looks large or small to us will look quite different from the perspective of an elephant or an ant," he added. "Opposites are merely two sides of the same coin-one cannot exist without the other."

"Precisely." She stepped closer to him. "So contrasts are inextricably linked. They are only a way for us to process information, to understand, to appreciate. Past and future, for example. There are no such things really, are there? There is only now. But if there were not those contrasting perceptions, we would not be able to organize our lives or our thoughts. We would be overwhelmed by everything happening at once and a thousand decisions having to be made all at the same moment."

"We would be dying as we were born." He chuckled suddenly. "Thisis why we stepped into the forest?"

"Dalliance was your idea," she reminded him. "Mine was to escape the tedium of a grand squeeze of a social event for a short while."

"I am slain," he said, slapping one hand over his heart again. "All this was arranged for your delight,ma chère, and it istedious ?"

"Not at all." She stepped a little closer again. "It is magical, a feast for the senses. But it is only now, when I can also be aware of the darkness and silence and peace of the forest that I can fully appreciate the lights and the gaiety and the laughter. Having a picnic here, Lord Rosthorn, was an inspired idea, and I thank you for it." She smiled very brightly and very deliberately at him.

Her eyes had grown accustomed to the darkness. He was smiling lazily back at her.

"Youare an enchantress," he said. "You have turned the tables on me, have you not, Lady Morgan Bedwyn? You have played me at my own game and talked philosophy at me when I would have been talking dalliance. You have even provoked me into talking philosophy back at you. But I am not so easily diverted from my baser instincts. I really must steal a kiss from you. And since you have bravely claimed that I will not be allowed to steal a second or a third, I had better make the most of the initial theft."

For the first time she felt a little frisson of fear. Though perhapsfear was not quite the word since she did not believe he would really grab her and seduce her against her will. They were also still close enough to the picnic area that screams would surely bring other people running.

What she felt was a quickening of her breath and a weakening of her knees and a realization that she had stepped far too close to him for comfort. And an understanding that it was not, of course, fear that she felt at all.

It was desire.

Shewanted him to kiss her.

Consequently, she almost took a step back. She almost turned and hurried away. For she had played with fire and was likely to get burned after all. More, she was close to showing him how easily she could be dallied with, how easy a prey she was to a practiced rake.

Annoyance came to her rescue-as well as her Bedwyn pride. How ridiculous! He was but an idle rake when all was said and done.

She took another step forward and tipped back her head.

"Oh, you will steal nothing," she said, her tone cool, her voice admirably steady. "I came out here fully intending to be kissed. You have not been clever at all, Lord Rosthorn, only mildly diverting. Kiss me."

For a few moments he did not move. He lounged against the tree, his arms still crossed, and regarded her with obvious amusement. She raised her eyebrows and gazed back. And then he uncrossed his arms, pushed himself away from the tree, and cupped her face in his hands.

She expected something aggressive, something fierce, something forceful and masterly. Something, quite frankly, that would be earth-shattering. But his lips, when they touched hers, were warm, soft, slightly parted, and feather-light. If for the first moment she was disappointed, however, she soon changed her mind. While her lips remained still, his moved. He brushed them softly over her own, licked them lightly with his tongue, nipped gently on the lower one with his teeth, and then curled his tongue behind her lips to stroke over the moist, sensitive flesh within. The warmth of his breath caressed her cheek.

The effects of the kiss, she discovered, were not confined to the area of her lips. The whole cavity of her mouth ached, and then her throat and her breasts and her abdomen and her inner thighs. By the time he lifted his head away, she understood how even a single kiss could be a dangerous thing. She could feel his body heat from her eyebrows to her toes. She was shockingly aware of his maleness.

He dropped his hands to his sides.

"Very nice,chérie, " he said. "Very nice indeed. One could only wish that Belgian forests came equipped with mattresses and that chaperons-even ones as lax as yours appears to be-came with no sense of time at all. But we must, alas, be returning to my guests and the safety of numbers."

He offered her his arm with a courtly bow.

And so, Morgan thought, giving him a hard look before taking his arm, he had perhaps won this round of hostilities after all. For of course, he had not kissed her properly, not as one imagined a rake would kiss, not-surely-as he had intended to kiss her.

He had toyed with her instead.

He was a wily foe. She wondered if he would now have tired of the game and would be content to forget her existence after this evening while he went in pursuit of other prey.

Wulfric and Aunt Rochester would have an apoplexy apiece if they could see her now, she thought suddenly. And with good reason. She had taken on the challenge of outfoxing an experienced rake who for some unknown reason had marked her as his newest victim. And she was really not sure which of them had won.

Perhaps it was a stalemate.

CHAPTER IV

ASIGNIFICANT NUMBER OF HIS GUESTS NOTEDtheir return to the main picnic area, Gervase observed, and the direction from which he had come. The same people would have noted his circulating among them earlier with the same lady. They would remember how long he had been with her at an entertainment where even husbands and wives were not expected to remain in each other's company for long.

By tomorrow-or even later this evening-they would have remarked on their observations to others who had perhaps not noticed. He and Lady Morgan Bedwyn would be an item within a very short while, he did not doubt.

As he had planned.

The trouble was that he found himself rather liking her. She was not by any means a simpering chit. And she had backbone. She had played him very well at his own game, and he still had not decided if she had won or not. He had, of course, intended to kiss her far more lasciviously than he had.

He had decided instead to throw her off balance.

But here she was walking at his side, looking cool and ever so slightly bored and oozing aristocratic hauteur from every pore. He might have resented her cool demeanor if he had not been almost sure that hehad ruffled her somewhat.

"Alas," he said with a great sigh, "there is one duty I could not avoid no matter how hard I attempted to run and hide from Monsieur Pepin. I must announce the beginning of the dancing, and I must lead off the first set with the lady of my choice-or the first lady who will consent to dance it with me. And let me see now-I ought to know since Pepin showed me the program and suggested that I commit it to memory. Yes, yes, the first set is to be a waltz. You must dance it with me,chérie . You really must. You waltz well, and I can be sure of not shaming myself before all my guests by treading on your toes.Will you dance it with me?"

He looked at her with a mocking smile and was gratified to see her lips twitch.

"Oh, very well," she said with every evidence of disdain.

It was interesting that she had accepted. Very interesting indeed-though she was very careful not to show that she waseager to waltz with him, of course. She was such a worthy foe. He was sorry that hatred had led him to her and that hatred kept him in pursuit of her. But it was an irresistibly pleasurable thought that word of this evening and her indiscretion in spending so much time in his company would almost without a doubt reach Bewcastle in England.

He led her toward the wooden dancing floor. He handed her up onto it, joined her there, and addressed himself to his guests in the expectant hush that fell. The dancing would begin, he announced. The first set was to be a waltz. He invited them to take their partners and join him andhis partner. Then, without waiting for the floor to fill with prospective dancers, he nodded toward the leader of the orchestra.

The music began immediately, and Gervase set a hand behind Lady Morgan's waist, took her right hand in his, and moved her into the steps of the waltz.

And so they danced virtually alone for the first minute or two, until other couples had gathered around them and joined in. For that minute or two they were exposed to public view again as they danced that most intimate of all dances. He smiled down at her and-instead of looking either shocked or embarrassed, as well she might-she looked boldly back, her perfect eyebrows arched high over her perfect eyes.

He concentrated his attention on the waltz and despite himself got caught up in the exhilaration of it while he smiled into her eyes and wove her in and out of the other dancing couples. The outdoors was a perfect setting for the waltz, he thought. They seemed part of the forest, he and his youthful partner, part of the night, part of the very dance of life itself. She tipped back her head to look up at the stars wheeling above the swirling branches, and laughed.

"Ah,chérie, " he said, his voice low, "we move together in perfect harmony, you and I . . . on the dance floor."

"You are a master of the speaking pause, are you not?" she said haughtily, her smile vanishing.

He laughed softly.

The pursuit, he thought, was going to take longer than he had expected. But he was not sorry. He was going to enjoy it every step of the way.

He had no chance to return her in person to her chaperon's table when the dance ended. A gentleman took her hand and tucked it firmly beneath his arm almost before her feet had stopped moving.

"Thankyou, Rosthorn," he said with stiff courtesy. "I will take Lady Morgan back to Lady Caddick's side."

Lord Alleyne Bedwyn looked much like his eldest brother, especially now, when he was clearly annoyed. Gervase had no previous acquaintance with him, but he had seen him a couple of times about Brussels and had greeted him on his arrival this evening.

Gervase bowed to Lady Morgan and smiled before she was whisked away.

Ah, this was promising, he thought as he looked after them with narrowed eyes. If Bedwyn had noticed and been offended by what he saw, then others would have noticed too.

How fortunate for him that she had such a sorry creature for a chaperon.

WELL,MORG," ALLEYNE SAID AFTER HE HADwalked her firmly into one of the avenues and they were no longer being jostled by the crowds, "you have been having a grand time of it tonight."

"I imagine," she said, "that everyone is green with envy at not having been the first to think of a moonlit picnic in the Forest of Soignés."

"I daresay," he agreed. "But you know very well what I am talking about. You have not gone falling in love with Rosthorn by any chance, have you? I thought you had more sense."

"Fallen in love with . . . Are youmad ?" she asked him. "I do not fall in love with every gentleman who deigns to pay me some attention."

"I am glad to hear it," he said dryly. "But I certainly don't know where Lady Caddick's sense can be, allowing you to walk about with him after supper as if you were an old married couple and then disappear into one of these avenues for so long that I was about to come after you, andthen letting you jump up onto that floor and waltz with him when you were the only two there. You will be fortunate if you are not the subject of some pretty nasty gossip tomorrow. You will be even more fortunate if it does not reach Wulf's ears. I thought she was a responsible chaperon. So, apparently, did Wulf if he allowed you to come here under her care."

"She has done nothing irresponsible," Morgan said crossly. "Neither have I. It is quite unexceptionable to stroll with a gentleman with whom one has an acquaintance. Even Aunt Rochester would not argue with that. And I have been granted permission to waltz. Lady Caddick did not know Lord Rosthorn intended to begin dancing before other couples joined us. Neither did I."