Page 50

Her free hand, searching for the wall, found the front of his coat instead. Fine wool under her palm, solid muscle beneath. He went absolutely still. Under her fingers his chest rose on a quick, caught breath, as if she’d surprised him as completely as he’d overwhelmed her.

His gaze dipped once—to her mouth. Then back to her eyes.

The air between them thinned to almost nothing.

If someone were to draw back this curtain now, she thought wildly, they would make us marry.

The thought did not horrify her as much as it ought to have.

So this was what it felt like to be compromised. She swallowed. Her gaze wanted to drop, to flee back to the reassuring sight of her sturdy boots—the same boots Grandfather had once mocked when he called her “too much salt in the Hartleigh soup,” the day Mama had given her the nickname Pepper. She gives bite. For years the name had felt like a rebellion; on Chester’s lips it sounded like praise. His hand left her cheek and his index finger came to rest lightly under her chin. He tilted her face up. It felt like more than a name from his mouth and in this moment.

Without meaning to, she almost smiled. Just the smallest shift of her lips, helpless and soft and entirely for him.

And in the next instant, his mouth found hers.

His lips pressed against hers in the darkness—warm, sure, careful—while the whole house went on talking and laughing and making merry, unaware that behind one heavy curtain in one unremarkable corridor, two lives had just tipped irrevocably toward each other.

Chapter 18

He had meant only to lift her chin.

Just enough so she could not stare down at those boots as if they condemned her. Just enough to draw her gaze away from his mother's ludicrous insults still echoing in both their heads.

His fingertip brushed the soft line of her jaw; her face tipped up, and in that sliver of lamplight he saw far too much.

Tears she had forgotten to wipe away. The stubborn set to her mouth, holding herself together by sheer will. The sharp, startled flare in her eyes when she realized how close he was.

Her lips parted on a shaky breath.

He felt it—warm, uneven—fan across his own.

Something in him broke ranks.

There were no committees here, no ledgers, no mother, no Board. Just the most beautiful woman he’d ever met pressed close to him in a stolen corner, smelling of sugar and rosewater and Brighton salt air, who had spent the evening defending kitchens and pretending she wasn’t worth more than half a life.

You’re worth two lives to me.

She still held his gaze. No flinching and no retreat.

Yes, they were hiding but if she’d wanted to, she could have turned her head… she did not.

So he closed the last inch between them and kissed her.

Her mouth was softer than he’d allowed himself to imagine and far, far more dangerous. For a heartbeat she went still—surprise, perhaps, or shock—his mind already scrambling toward apology—

Then she answered him.

Not with the smooth assurance of women who had practiced kisses the way other people practiced waltzes. She moved like someone learning something she had wanted for longer than she’d ever admit: hesitant for a breath, then braver, testing the fit of his mouth with shy, earnest care.

Heat shot through him with speed.

A low growl escaped him.

He’d kissed before and knew the difference between courtesy and hunger. This was none of the former and entirely the latter. His careful life—the titles, the circulars, the duty—dropped away with a soft, useless thud. Every sense he owned seemed to narrow to the way her lips moved against his and the tiny, involuntary sound she made when he angled his head and found a better way for them to fit.

Her hand caught at his chest, fingers splayed over his waistcoat as if she meant to steady herself on something that was not doing a very good job of being steady. He felt the tremor in her through two layers of fabric. For a second, her grip was all balance and instinct—and then, astonishingly, it changed.

Her fingers slid up and found his cravat.