Ten Things I Love About You (5 page)

The man all the men wanted to be.

And she didn’t even know his name.

It was best that way, though. She’d find out who he was eventually, and he’d do the same, and then he’d pity her, the poor girl forced to marry Lord Newbury. Or maybe he’d scorn her instead, thinking that she was doing it for the money, which of course she was.

She gathered her legs underneath her, not exactly kneeling but rather resting on her right hip. It was her favorite way to sit, utterly wrong for London but without a doubt the way her body liked to arrange itself. She gazed in front of her, realizing that she was looking away from the house. There was something fitting about that. She wasn’t sure which way a compass would point, though; was she facing west, toward home? Or east, to the Continent, where she’d never been and likely never would go. Lord Newbury didn’t seem the type to enjoy travel, and as his interest in her was limited to her childbearing talents, she rather doubted he would allow her to venture forth without him.

She’d always wanted to see Rome. She probably
would never have gone, even if there had been no Lord Newbury lusting over her wide, birthing hips, but there had always been the chance.

She closed her eyes for a moment, almost in mourning. She was already thinking as if the marriage was a
fait accompli.
She’d been telling herself that she might still refuse, but that was just the desperate corner of her brain trying to assert itself. The practical part of her had already accepted it.

So there it was. She really would marry Lord Newbury if he asked. As repulsive and horrifying as it was, she’d do it.

She sighed, feeling utterly defeated. There would be no Rome for her, no romance, no a hundred other things she couldn’t even bring herself to think about. But her family would be provided for, and as her grandmother had said, perhaps Newbury would die soon. It was a wicked, immoral thought, but she didn’t think she could enter the marriage without clutching onto it as her salvation.

“You seem rather pensive,” came the warm voice from beside her.

Annabel nodded slowly.

“Penny for them.”

She smiled wistfully. “Just thinking.”

“Of all the things you need to do,” he guessed. Except it didn’t sound like a question.

“No.” She was quiet for a moment, and then said, “All the things I’m never going to get to do.”

“I see.” He was quiet for a moment, and then he said, “I’m sorry.”

She turned suddenly, shaking the fog from her eyes and settling on his face with a frank gaze. “Have you ever been to Rome? It’s a mad question, I know, because I don’t even know your name, and I don’t
want
to know your name, at least not tonight, but have you ever been to Rome?”

He shook his head. “Have you?”

“No.”

“I have been to Paris,” he said. “And Madrid.”

“You were a soldier,” she stated. Because what else would he have been, seeing such cities at such a time?

He gave a little shrug. “It’s not the most pleasant way to see the world, but it does get the job done.”

“This is the farthest I have ever been from home,” Annabel said.

“Here?” He looked at her, blinked, then pointed his finger straight down. “This heath?”

“This heath,” she confirmed. “I think Hampstead is farther from home than London. Or maybe it’s not.”

“Does it matter?”

“It does, actually,” she said, surprising herself with her answer, because obviously it
didn’t
matter.

And yet it felt like it should.

“One can’t argue with that kind of certainty,” he said in a smile-tinged murmur.

She felt herself grin. “I very much enjoy being certain.”

“Don’t we all?”

“The best of us, perhaps,” she said archly, getting into the spirit of their game.

“Some say it’s foolhardy to be so eternally certain.”

“Some?”

“Oh, not me,” he assured her, “but some.”

She laughed, deep and true, all the way from her belly. She was loud, and uncouth, and it felt
wonderful.

He chuckled along with her, then asked, “Rome, I assume, is on your list of things you’ll never get to do?”

“Yes,” she said, her lungs still quivering from merriment. It no longer seemed so sad, that she would never see Rome. Not when she’d just laughed so hard and so well.

“I’ve heard it can be dusty.”

They were both facing forward, so she turned, her profile lined up over her shoulder. “Really?”

He turned, too, so they were looking straight at one another. “When it doesn’t rain.”

“This is what you’ve heard,” she stated.

He smiled, but just a little bit, and not even with his mouth. “This is what I’ve heard.”

His eyes … oh, his eyes. They met hers with the most startling directness. And what she saw there … It wasn’t passion, because why would it be passion? But it was still something amazing, something hot, and conspiratorial, and …

Heartbreaking. It was heartbreaking. Because as she stared at him, at this beautiful man who might as well have been a figment of her imagination, all she could see was Lord Newbury’s
face, florid and flaccid, and his voice rang in her ears, laughing, mocking, and Annabel was suddenly rocked by an overwhelming sorrow.

This moment … any moment like this …

They were not to be hers.

“I should be getting back,” she said quietly.

“I am sure you should,” he said with equal gravity.

She didn’t move. She just could not seem to make herself do so.

And so he rose, because he was, as she’d suspected, a gentleman. Not just in name but in deed. He held his hand down to her, and she took it, and then—it was as if she floated to her feet—she rose, and she tilted her chin, and lifted her eyes to his, and then she saw it—her life, ahead of her.

All the things she would not have.

She whispered, “Would you kiss me?”

T
here were a thousand reasons why Sebastian should not have done as the young lady requested, and only one—desire—why he should.

He went with desire.

He hadn’t even realized he wanted her. Oh, he’d noticed that she was lovely, sensual even, in a rather delightfully unselfconscious manner. But he always noticed such things about women. It was as natural to him as noticing the weather.
Lydia Smithstone has an uncommonly attractive lower lip
was not terribly different from
That cloud over there is looking a bit like rain.

At least not to his mind.

But when she’d taken his hand, and his skin touched hers, something flared within him. His heart leaped, and his breath seemed to skip, and when she rose, it was as if she were something
magical and serene, moving along the wind into his arms.

Except when she reached her feet she wasn’t in his arms. She was standing in front of him. Close, but not close enough.

He felt bereft.

“Kiss me,” she whispered, and he could no more deny her than he could his own heartbeat. He lifted her fingers to his lips, then touched her cheek. Her eyes met his, deep and filled with longing.

And then he, too, was filled with longing. Whatever it was he saw in her eyes, it somehow moved within him, too, gentle and sweet. Wistful, even.

Wistful. He couldn’t recall the last time he’d felt anything approaching wistful.

It made him want this kiss—want
her
—with the strangest intensity.

He didn’t feel warm. He didn’t feel hot. But something inside of him—maybe his conscience, maybe his soul—was burning.

He didn’t know her name, didn’t know anything about her except that she dreamed of Rome and smelled like violets.

And that she tasted like vanilla cream. This, he now knew. This, he thought as his tongue brushed against the soft inside of her upper lip, he would never forget.

How many women had he kissed? Far too many to count. He’d been kissing the girls long before he’d known there was anything else to be done with them, and he’d never really stopped. As a young lad in Hampshire, as a soldier in
Spain, as a London rogue … he had always found women intriguing. And he remembered them all. He truly did. He held the fairer sex in far too much esteem to allow them to melt into a hazy puddle in his mind.

But this was different. It wasn’t just the woman he wasn’t going to forget, it was the moment. It was the feel of her in his arms, and the scent of her skin, and the taste, and the touch, and the amazingly perfect sound she made when her breath twisted itself into a moan.

He would remember the temperature of the air, the direction of the wind, the precise shade of silver that the moonlight sprinkled upon the grass.

He dared not kiss her deeply. She was an innocent. She was wise, and she was reflective, but she was an innocent, and if she’d been kissed more than twice before this he’d have eaten his hat. And so he gave her the first kiss that young girls dreamed of. Soft. Gentle. A tiny brush of the lips, a tickle of friction, the barest, most wicked touch of the tongue.

And that had to be all. There were some things a gentleman simply could not do, no matter how magical the moment. And so with great reluctance, he pulled away.

But only so far that he could rest his nose against hers.

He smiled.

He felt happy.

And then she spoke. “Is that all?”

He went absolutely still. “I beg your pardon?”

“I thought there might be more,” she said, not unkindly. In fact, more than anything else, she sounded perplexed.

He tried not to laugh. He knew he shouldn’t. She looked so earnest; it would be beyond insulting to laugh at her. He pressed his lips together, trying to hold down the bubble of sheer amusement that was bouncing around within him.

“It was nice,” she said, and it almost sounded as if she was trying to reassure him.

He had to bite his tongue. It was the only way.

“It’s all right,” she said, giving him the sort of sympathetic smile one gives to a child who is not good at games.

He opened his mouth to say her name, then remembered he didn’t know it.

He held up a hand. A finger, to be more precise. A simple, concise directive.
Halt,
it said clearly.
Don’t say another word.

Her brows lifted in question.

“There’s more,” he said.

She started to say something.

He took his finger and pressed it right up against her mouth. “Oh, there’s more.”

And this time, he
really
kissed her. He took her lips with his, explored, nibbled,
devoured.
He wrapped his arms around her, pressing her against him, hard, until he could feel every one of her luscious curves against his body.

And she was luscious. No, she was
lush.
She had a woman’s body, rounded and warm, with soft curves that begged to be stroked and squeezed. She was the kind of woman a man
could lose himself in, happily surrendering all sense and reason.

She was the kind of woman a man did not leave in the middle of the night. She would be warm and soft, a languid pillow and blanket, all rolled into one.

She was a siren. A gorgeous exotic temptress who was somehow utterly innocent. She had no idea what she was doing. Hell, she probably had no idea what
he
was doing, either. And yet all it took was an untutored smile, a tiny sigh, and he was lost.

He wanted her. He wanted to
know
her. Every inch of her. His blood burned, his body sang, and if he hadn’t suddenly heard a raucous shout from the direction of the house, heaven only knew what he would have done.

She stiffened as well, her head snapping a bit to the right, pointing her ear toward the commotion.

It was just enough for Sebastian to regain his senses, or at least a small piece of them. He pushed her away, more roughly than he’d intended, and planted his hands on his hips, breathing hard.

“That
was
more,” she said, sounding dazed.

He looked over at her. Her hair wasn’t quite undone, but it was certainly fashioned more loosely than it had been before. And her lips—he’d thought they were full and plump before, but now she looked positively bee stung.

Anyone who had ever been kissed would know that
she
had just been kissed. Thoroughly.

“You’ll want to tidy up your hair,” he said, and
he was quite certain it was the least appropriate post-kiss comment he had ever made. But he couldn’t seem to summon his usual flair. Style and grace apparently required presence of mind.

Who would have imagined it?

“Oh,” she said, her hand immediately patting her hair, trying rather unsuccessfully to smooth it down. “I’m sorry.”

Not that she had anything to apologize for, but Sebastian was too busy trying to locate his own brain to say so.

“That shouldn’t have happened,” he finally said. Because it was the truth. And he knew better. He did not dally with innocents, and certainly not in (almost) full view of a filled-to-the-brim ballroom.

He did not lose control. It simply wasn’t his way.

He was furious with himself. Furious. It was an unfamiliar, and wholly unpleasant emotion. He did pity, and plenty of self-mockery, and he could have written a book on mild annoyance. But fury?

It just wasn’t something he cared to partake of. Not toward others, and certainly not toward himself.

If she hadn’t asked him … If she hadn’t looked up with those huge, bottomless eyes and whispered, “Kiss me,” he would never have done it. It was a piss-poor excuse and he knew it, but there was some consolation in the knowledge that he had not initiated the encounter.

Some, but not much. For all his sins, he wasn’t that much of a liar.

“I’m sorry I asked,” she said stiffly.

He felt like a heel. “I didn’t have to comply,” he responded, but not nearly as graciously as he ought.

“Clearly I’m irresistible,” she muttered.

He shot her a sharp look. Because she was. She had the body of a goddess and the smile of a siren. Even now, it was taking every ounce of his will not to throw himself at her. Knock her to the ground. Kiss her again … and again …

He shuddered. This was
not
good.

“You should go,” she said.

He managed to sweep his arm forward in a gentlemanly motion. “After you.”

Her eyes widened. “I’m not going back there first.”

“Do you really think I’m going to go in there and leave you alone on the heath?”

She planted her hands on her hips. “You
kissed
me without knowing my name.”

“You did the same,” he sniped back.

Her mouth opened into an indignant gasp, and Sebastian felt an alarming satisfaction at having bested her. Which was further unsettling. He adored a good verbal interplay, but it was a dance, for God’s sake, not a bloody
competition.

For an endless moment they stared each other down, and Sebastian wasn’t sure whether he was waiting for her to blurt out her name or demand that he reveal his.

He rather suspected she was wondering the same thing.

But she said nothing, just glowered at him.

“Contrary to my recent behavior,” he finally
said, because one of them had to act in a mature fashion, and he rather suspected it ought to be he, “I am a gentleman. And as such, I cannot in good conscience abandon you to the wilderness.”

Her brows rose, and she glanced this way and that. “You call this the wilderness?”

He started to wonder just what it was about this girl that had made him so crazy. Because by God, she could be annoying when she set her mind to it.

“I beg your pardon,” he said, with enough urbane sophistication to make him feel a bit more like himself. “Clearly I misspoke.” He smiled at her, blandly.

“What if that couple is still …” Her words trailed off as she waved her hand at the side lawn.

Sebastian let out an aggravated breath. If he were alone—which was what he should have been—he’d have toddled back onto the lawn with a cheerful, “Coming through! Anyone who is not with a person to whom they have a legal obligation, kindly make yourself scarce!”

It would have been delicious. And precisely what society expected of him.

But impossible with an unmarried lady in tow.

“They are almost certainly gone,” he said, even as he approached the opening in the hedge and peered out. Turning back, he added, “And if not, they don’t want to be seen any more than you do. Put your head down and barrel through.”

“You seem to have a great deal of experience with such things,” she stated.

“A great deal.” Well, he did.

“I see.” Her jaw went stiff, and he suspected that if he were closer he could hear her teeth grinding together. “How fortunate I must be,” she said. “I’m being taught by a master.”

“Lucky you.”

“Are you always this horrid with women?”

“Almost never,” he said without thinking.

Her lips parted, and he felt like kicking himself. She hid it well—clearly, she was a young woman of quick emotional reflexes—but before her surprise turned to indignation, he saw a flash of unadulterated hurt.

“What I meant,” he began, not quite fighting the urge to groan, “is that when I … No. When
you
…”

She looked at him expectantly. He had no idea what to say. And he realized, as he stood there like an idiot, that there were at least ten reasons why this was a wholly unacceptable scenario.

One:
He had no idea what to say. This might seem repetitive, except that
Two:
He always knew what to say, and
Three:
especially with women.

Which led rather conveniently to
Four:
A happy by-product of his glibness was
Five:
he’d never insulted a woman in his life, not unless she truly deserved it, which
Six:
this woman didn’t. Which meant that
Seven:
He needed to apologize and
Eight:
He had no idea how to do so.

A facility with apologies would depend upon a propensity to behave in a manner requiring them. Which he did not. It was one of the few things in his life of which he was inordinately proud.

But this brought him back to
Nine:
He had no idea what to say, and
Ten:
Something about this girl had turned him absolutely stupid.

Stupid.

How did the rest of humanity endure it, this awkward silence in the face of a woman? Sebastian found it intolerable.

“You asked me to kiss you,” he said. It wasn’t the first thing that came to mind, but it was the second.

From her gasp—which he suspected was large enough to change the tides—he had a feeling he should have waited for the seventh, at least.

“Are you accusing me of—” She cut herself off, her lips clamping together in an angry, frustrated line. “Well, whatever it is … that … you’re accusing me …” And then, just when he thought she’d given up, she finished with, “of.”

“I’m not accusing you of anything,” he said. “I’m merely pointing out that you wanted a kiss, and I obliged and …”

And what? What
was
he pointing out? And where had his mind gone? He couldn’t think a complete sentence, much less speak one.

“I could have taken advantage of you,” he said stiffly. Good God, he sounded like a stick.

“Are you saying you didn’t?”

Could she
possibly
be that innocent? He leaned down, his eyes boring into hers. “You have no idea how many ways I
didn’t
take advantage of you,” he told her. “How many ways I could have done. How many—”

“What?” she snapped. “What?”

He held his tongue, or perhaps more accurately, bit the damned thing off. There was no way he was going to tell her how many ways he’d
wanted
to take advantage of her.

Her. Miss No Name.

It was better that way, certainly.

“Oh for the love of God,” he heard himself say. “What the devil is your name?”

“I can see that you’re most eager to know it,” she snipped.