Catch a Falling Heiress: An American Heiress in London (23 page)

“Disbelief,” he answered. “This sort of knowledge defies rational explanation. All I can think is Conrath’s a saint, all the men of New York have seriously deficient eyesight, and I’ve been a quite dissolute chap for the past two-thirds of my life.”

“Why?” She turned her head to frown at him. “How many girls have you kissed, anyway?”

“More than two.”

“How many?”

“Oh, I don’t know. Fewer than a hundred.” He paused, teasing her by pretending to consider. “I think.”

“Heavens,” she whispered, sounding quite shocked. “And I’d bet you weren’t engaged to any of them.”

He knew, of course, that most young ladies were innocent as lambs, but until now, he’d never thought much about just
how
innocent that was. Linnet excepted, he hadn’t kissed an innocent young lady since he was seventeen. But now, looking at her, he realized just how far outside her experience that kiss in the pagoda had been. He wanted to tell her all the other kisses he’d had were nothing like hers, and though it was true, he feared that coming off his lips, a declaration like that would sound nauseatingly self-serving. Charles, he was sure, would have found a way to say it with aplomb. He, alas, was not so glib.

Still, as he looked into Linnet’s shocked face, he couldn’t resist contemplating various ways to remedy this deficiency in her life experience. But given that her mother would be hovering nearby every time he was with her, any lessons of that sort weren’t likely to happen unless she agreed to marry him, a prospect that was by no means a certainty. But there might be a way to whet her appetite and improve his odds.

“Linnet, when you see sense at last and agree to marry me, I can promise you that, unlike Conrath, I’ll be kissing you at every possible opportunity. In the first week, I’ll kiss you so many times, you’ll lose count.”

Her shock vanished, and she bristled. “First of all, I’ve no intention of agreeing to marry you. I’ve already turned you down twice. Second, even if I were to take leave of my sanity and accept you, you would not be kissing me at every opportunity. There are times and places for . . . for . . .” Her cheeks grew pinker. “For such things.”

“Which places for which things?” He glanced past her, and found Helen had moved even farther away, her back still to them. He returned his attention to Linnet. “If we were engaged—no need to protest,” he assured her as she opened her mouth. “We’re speaking in hypothetical terms, so just play along for a moment. If we were engaged, where and when would I be able to kiss you?”

She stirred a little in agitation, and he felt his own body responding, desire rising inside him. Her lips parted, but she didn’t answer, and he pushed his advantage while he had it. “Right now, for instance, if we were engaged, could I kiss you?”

“Here?” she squeaked, and cast a panicked glance around. “You couldn’t. People would see us!”

“Then it would have to be a very chaste kiss.” He dropped the baskets he was carrying to the ground, glanced past her to make doubly sure her mother wasn’t watching, and reached up one hand to graze her cheekbone with his fingertip. “Right there, perhaps,” he murmured.

She stiffened and turned her face away to cast a frantic glance over her shoulder. The move allowed him to slide his hand down to her slender neck, and when she looked at him again, he was able to cup her cheek and touch his thumb to the tip of her nose. “Or there.”

He heard her breathing quicken. She shook her head a little, and the delicate wisps of hair beneath her hat brim tickled his fingers where they caressed her nape.

“Or . . .” He paused, pressing his thumb against her lower lip. It felt like velvet, and arousal thrummed through his body. “Right there. I’d have to be quick about that one, though. Even if we were engaged, long, deep mouth kissing has to be done behind the shelter of the rose arbor.”

Her lip trembled, darkening to a deeper pink, a sign that his strategy was working. “You shouldn’t say things like this to me,” she whispered against his thumb, squeezing her eyes shut.

But she didn’t draw back, she didn’t move away. She quivered in his hold, and lust rolled in his body like thunder.

He knew he had to stop, for the effort of holding back, of not kissing her right now, was becoming intolerable. He drew back, letting his hand fall, and when she opened her eyes, he gave her an artless look. “What, this isn’t the sort of conversation you had with Carrington when he took you for a ride this morning?”

“Heavens, no.” She gave a wild little laugh, pressing her fingers to her flushed cheek, right where he’d caressed her a moment ago. “I can’t imagine ever having a conversation like this with Carrington.”

Encouraged by that information, he went on, “Tufton, then?”

The way she wrinkled up her nose and pursed her lips told him that he didn’t have anything to worry about from that quarter, but then she spoke again and shredded any cocky notions Jack might have had that he’d moved into first place.

“Hansborough, though,” she murmured, drumming her fingertips against her cheek, a speculative note in her voice that caught him up sharp. “He might be a different story.”

Jack set his jaw. “Why?”

“Well, he’s so good-looking.”

“Good-looking?” Jack couldn’t believe what he was hearing. “The man wears pomade in his hair.”

“He’s quite charming,” she went on, ignoring Jack’s criticism of his rival. “Witty, too. He’s kissed a few girls in his life, I daresay.” She lowered her hand and gave a shrug. “Any girl would be willing to have a conversation about kissing with Hansborough.”

He felt his guts twist with dread, and his arousal gave way to something else, something dark and dangerous he’d never had cause to feel in his life before. “You can’t have a conversation with Hansborough about kissing.”

“I
can’t
?” she echoed, emphasizing the word, reminding him of just how well she responded to autocratic commands. “Oh, really? Why not?”

“Because it would be impossible,” he countered, aware that he sounded as belligerent as Androcles’ lion. “He’d have to lift his gaze from your bosom long enough to pay attention to what you were saying, a feat far beyond him, I fear.”

“Jack, are you—” She paused as a smile started to curve her mouth, but then she bit her lip to catch it back. “Jack, are you jealous of Hansborough?”

God, yes.

The idea that she could even contemplate kissing Hansborough or any other man but him made Jack feel absolutely violent. He wanted to smash his head into the garden wall or rip Hansborough’s throat out. Never in his life had he felt like this, not about any other woman he’d ever known, and he realized why the kiss in Newport had about knocked him off his feet and why he’d been so dead set to win her ever since. From the moment his lips had touched hers, he belonged to her, body and soul. He knew that as surely as he knew his name.

He wanted her to know it, too. He wanted to haul her into his arms right here, right now, right in front of her mother, and show her why he was the only man in the world who ought to have the right to kiss her.

But past experience had already taught him doing such a thing wasn’t going to win her over, so he could only stand there, staring into her eyes, motionless and mute, cursing himself for teasing her with her jealousy yesterday, and for pushing her to tell him about Conrath, and most of all, for ever starting this silly game in the first place.

He felt exposed, vulnerable, and in desperation, he bent to pick up the baskets he’d dropped earlier. But as he straightened, he knew he had to give her some sort of reply, preferably something offhand and clever that would put him back on safer ground. “Linnet, you know I can’t tell you that,” he said, working to keep his voice light and teasing when what he felt was dark and feral. “It’s not your day to ask questions.”

He managed a flirtatious smile before he turned away and started back to the house. Charles, he thought with chagrin, would have been quite proud of him for that.

H
E WAS JEALOUS
of Hansborough.

Linnet watched him go, too astonished to move. He’d said last night that today it would be his turn to be jealous, but she had deemed those light words an attempt to tease her and nothing more. In turning the tables today, she hadn’t expected him to react with such force, and for a moment those usually impenetrable eyes of his had revealed something far more turbulent than teasing ought to evoke. Like their picnic, when she realized her failure to arrive had wounded him, she felt as if a curtain had just been drawn back, showing her the truth.

Or what she thought to be the truth, she amended at once. She’d been sure more than once that a man cared about her, only to discover how easily she’d been deceived. And right now, her wits felt thick as tar, all her senses were in tumult, and there was no way to be sure about anything.

She lifted her hand to her face, brushing her own thumb over her lower lip where he’d caressed her moments before, just as stunned by that as she was by the discovery of his jealousy. After his intimate questions, provocative suggestions, and light caresses, her insides were still quivering.

He hadn’t touched her since that night in Newport, but even the fact that he would be so bold as to touch her a second time right under her mother’s nose wasn’t what left her standing here as if rooted to the spot.

The fluttering agitation evoked by his words, the anticipation as he’d lifted his hand, and the pleasure that had fissured through her at his touch, and yes, the tension and excitement of knowing her mother was a mere twenty yards away—all that was a combination that left her breathless and giddy.

It was very similar to what she’d felt when Conrath had held her hand under the table.

The realization was like a dousing of cold water.

He’d done it on purpose. Right after she’d told him about Conrath holding her hand, he must have started plotting how he could do the same thing. And he’d succeeded, too, touching her face and her neck and her mouth until she was awash in sensation, and doing it all right under her mother’s nose. That conniving, sneaky—

“Don’t you want to walk back with Lord Featherstone?”

Her mother’s voice interrupted her, and Linnet came out of her outraged contemplations with a start to find her parent standing beside her.

“No, I don’t,” she answered as she bent to reach for the two baskets of roses he’d left on the ground. “Trust me, Mother, being anywhere near that man right now is the last thing I want to do.”

She ignored her mother’s disappointed sigh as she walked away.

I
F THAT AFTERNOON
in the garden had given him any hope he was making progress in his courtship, the evening dashed it to smithereens. Linnet spent her entire evening glued to Hansborough’s side like a limpet, and Jack had to watch the fellow lower his gaze to where it damn well didn’t belong all through dinner and dessert. One thing he didn’t have to do, however, was sit through the port while Hansborough smirked at him across the table.

“Pardon me, gentlemen,” he said, rising, port glass in hand. “I’m going out for a breath of air. It’s quite warm in here this evening.”

He excused himself from the dining room, slipped out the nearest side door, and went outside. He walked along the house, taking deep breaths of the cool evening air, striving to clear his head and regain his control before he joined the ladies. Piano music floated to him as he came around the corner of the house, but as he started up the steps of the terrace, Linnet’s voice floated to him over the soft melody of the sonata being played, and he kept walking, straight past the French doors and down the steps at the opposite end of the terrace. But he stopped at the bottom and closed his eyes, listening for her voice again.

He had to get hold of himself before the other men finished their port, for the idea of Hansborough having Linnet’s attentions all evening while he stood out here and did nothing about it was unthinkable.

God, he thought, once it hit a chap, jealousy was an odious thing. He didn’t know why it was deemed the green-eyed monster, for to him, it was no serpent or dragon. It was a black, smothering wave.

It hadn’t been all that difficult for him to ask Linnet about a man from her past, for he felt no jealousy over a memory. In fact, he’d dived into that pond expecting Conrath’s seduction to be far more wicked than it had proved in reality. Hansborough, however, was here and now, and that was a whole different thing.

The viscount had the power to say and do the same things he was doing; there was nothing to stop him. And if Jack was any judge of character, the fellow knew his way about when it came to women. The idea that Linnet would contemplate even a discussion of kissing, much less engage in the act of it, with any man but him was unbearable, and yet, if it happened, he knew he could do little to stop it.

He downed his port in one draught, set the crystal goblet on the stone pedestal beside him, and took a few more steps along the side of the house, moving out of the light that spilled from the windows along the terrace and into the shadows beyond the steps.

This was only the second evening. He stopped walking again and raked his hands through his hair, wondering in desperation how he was going to endure four more nights of this without going insane or giving in to the same wild impulse he’d had in Newport to claim her for himself.

He could not allow either of those things to happen. He had to tamp down this dark, smothering jealousy before it could have power over his actions. He closed his eyes, but when he did, an equally dark and powerful emotion stirred inside him, and here, alone in the darkened garden, he couldn’t resist allowing it to take hold of him. He closed his eyes.

The image that came into his mind was of her as he’d first seen her in the ballroom at Newport, a golden beauty with lovely eyes who’d riveted the gazes of half the men in the room the moment she stepped through the door. He imagined her now as he’d imagined her then, seeing past the upswept hair, glittering jewels, and Worth gown. He imagined now what he’d imagined then, all that tawny hair down around her shoulders. In his imagination, he stripped away pink silk to expose exquisite breasts, shapely hips, and long, slim legs. Arousal stirred in him.