Emerald Garden (14 page)

With a heavy sigh, Quentin lowered himself beside her, gripping his knees as he spoke. “After I left you two days past, it occurred to me that whoever murdered our parents might have been a business associate of Father’s—one who, for reasons of his own, held a grudge. So I went to see Hendrick in order to scrutinize all Father’s business documents.”

“And did you?”

“Yes. I examined each and every paper in Father’s file. Nothing even remotely suspicious caught my eye. Evidently, my theory was incorrect.”

“Not necessarily, Quentin.” Brandi sat up straighter, wrapping her shawl more tightly about her shoulders. “Perhaps your theory was correct, but your choice of victims wasn’t. Perhaps it was
my
father who had the business enemy.”

“The thought occurred to me.” Quentin nodded, studying Brandi’s tired, earnest face, marveling at the maturity he could both see and hear, but had never before discerned. Like her beauty, had it always been there, eluding only his clouded vision?

“Did you ask Mr. Hendrick to show you Father’s papers?” Brandi was asking.

Quentin shook his head. “I have no legal right to search Ardsley’s file, Sunbeam. But I did ask Ellard to do so for me and to advise Desmond, as overseer of your family businesses, of anything suspicious he might unearth.”

“Father kept many of his documents at home.” Brandi bolted to her feet. “I’ll ride to Townsbourne at once and go through every paper …”

“Brandi.” Quentin jumped up just as quickly, his hand automatically halting her departure. “I don’t want you involved.”

She stared at him as if he were insane. “You don’t want me involved? Quentin, listen to yourself. My father was murdered, together with two people I loved as parents. I’m as involved as you are, maybe more so. You have the army, whereas I …” She drew a long, shaky breath. “Please don’t do this to me. You, of all people, have never patronized me in the past. Please, Quentin, not you.”

Quentin felt as if he’d been punched. “Sunbeam, I’d never patronize you. I only want to keep you safe. We’re dealing with someone capable of snuffing out human lives without a second thought. Do you understand how dangerous that is?”

“Of course I do.” Her gaze softened and she lay her palm against Quentin’s jaw. “Thank you for trying to protect me. But there are some things from which one cannot be protected. This is one.”

Soberly, Quentin brushed a cinnamon curl from her face. “You’re right,” he conceded quietly. “But I’m right as well. I can’t spare you the anguish of this investigation, nor can you plunge headfirst into danger. Therefore, I propose a compromise.”

A glint of humor warmed Brandi’s eyes to a shimmering golden brown. “Ever the diplomat, my lord. Very well, what manner of compromise do you suggest?”

“Give Hendrick a day or two to examine Ardsley’s files and contact Desmond. If his findings reveal nothing, then you and I shall ride to Townsbourne and thoroughly inspect each and every one of your father’s papers—together. Is that acceptable?”

She nodded. “Yes. I’ll agree to that.”

“Good.” Quentin wished he weren’t so damned aware of her smooth palm against his skin. She’d touched him this way dozens of times in the past, but he’d never felt this surge of sensation, not only in his heart, but in his loins.

“Quentin?”

“Hmm?” His thumb traced the delicate bridge of her nose, and he cautioned himself to back away, promised himself that he would—in a minute.

“Would you kiss me again?”

His teetering resolve abruptly righted itself. “What?”

Nervously, she wet her lips with the tip of her tongue. “I’ve thought about this a great deal since our …since we … since our encounter at the stream,” she concluded hastily. “And I understand the explanations you gave me—that we were reaching out to each other for comfort, that you can ultimately belong only to England. But, try though I will, I cannot accept your reasoning, nor can I dismiss our kiss as if it never transpired. It finally occurred to me that my inability to put our embrace in the proper perspective might stem from my total lack of experience from which to judge.”

Inexplicable anger surged inside Quentin, escalating like an ominous, impending storm. “What exactly are you suggesting?” he demanded.

“I’m trying to explain that I’ve never been in another man’s arms,” Brandi continued in earnest. “That, unlike you, I haven’t ever experienced kissing or being kissed and, thus, have no means of comparison.”

“And just how do you intend to acquire this means of comparison?”

“From you.”

Beneath Brandi’s palm, Quentin’s jaw muscles flexed. “From me,” he repeated woodenly.

“Yes.” She withdrew her hand to the less threatening curve of his shoulder, unconsciously gripping his lapel. “You’ve taught me all my most joyful pursuits: shooting, fishing, riding. Won’t you teach me this as well?”

“You’re asking me …” Quentin’s mouth was so dry he could scarcely speak.

“To teach me to kiss,” she finished with a small, hopeful smile. “Yes, that’s precisely what I’m asking you. Without experiencing both a kiss of friendship and one of passion, how will I differentiate the two? And who can I trust to show me, if not you? Ponder it, Quentin. I know
I
have—during every sleepless hour not consumed with our parents’ murders. I’m closer to you than I am to any other man on earth. Yet I read far more into our kiss than you intended. If
your
embrace confused me, imagine how befuddled I’ll become when I’m kissed by others?”

He captured her chin. “Exactly how many men do you intend to kiss?”

“I don’t know.” Her brow furrowed. “How many women have you kissed?”

Quentin’s jaw dropped, humor and amazement tempering one another. “I—” He cleared his throat. “Sunbeam, that’s not at all the same thing.”

“Why not?”

A long pause.

Then: “Brandi, didn’t my mother ever talk to you about the differences between men and women—about what happens when men and women are … together?”

A slight flush stained her cheeks. “If you’re asking if I know how babies are conceived, the answer is yes. But what has that to do with kissing?”

“Nothing. Everything.” Quentin shifted, staring down into Brandi’s beautiful, questioning face. Firmly, he reminded himself that she’d always come to him with her questions, that he’d always supplied the answers. It wasn’t her fault that this time was different, that, rather than tender admiration at her candor and fond amusement at her naiveté, all he could feel was fury at the idea of another man touching her, and a raw, primitive need to crush her in his arms and teach her far more than kissing—far more than she had doubtless ever imagined.

With that thought in mind, Quentin fought back his new, unsettling hunger, struggling to think what the Quentin of four years past would have offered his Sunbeam in the way of an answer. “Brandi, kissing is not something I can teach you,” he tried at last.

“Why not?”

“Because …” His gaze fell to her lips, which were parted sweetly in question, and his explanation died in his throat.

“Because?” she prompted. When he didn’t reply, her hold on his coat loosened, her palm lightly caressing his collar—again, a gesture she’d made countless times in the past, only this time it burned through Quentin like fire. “Why not?” she repeated, searching his face.

Quentin had no idea what he would have said four summers ago. Nor, in truth, did he give a damn. One kiss, his conscience cried out. A chaste one. For her own good—to show her what she should allow, to prepare her for the legion of men who would undoubtedly be clamoring for her favors.

He wanted to choke each nameless suitor.

“Will you teach me?” Brandi murmured, shyly inching closer. “I promise not to behave as childishly as I did last time.”

“You weren’t childish.” His fingers threaded through her hair. “You were beautiful.”

“Then will you …”

“Put your arms around me.”

Eagerly, Brandi complied, wrapping her arms tightly about his neck. “Like this?”

“Just like that.” Quentin brushed his lips across her cheekbones—first one, then the other. “Now, what I’m about to demonstrate is the only kind of kiss you should permit a man.
Any
man. Do you understand?”

She nodded.

“Press your lips together.”

“But …”

“Do as I say.”

Brandi squeezed her lips tightly shut.

“Good.” Quentin lowered his mouth to skim hers in a whisper of a caress: soft, swift, utterly proper.

He raised his head.

Brandi’s lashes flew open and she blinked, surprise and disappointment clouding her gaze. “That wasn’t a kiss.”

“It most certainly was.”

“It bore no resemblance to the one we shared at the stream.”

“Nor should it. Never allow a man to embrace you so—so—intimately.”

“But why not? It was wonderful.” She smiled—a dreamy, faraway smile. “I can still remember that weak, trembling feeling in my legs, that swirling sensation in the pit of my stomach. Oh, Quentin, it was as if all the flowers in Emerald Garden were converging around me, intoxicating me with their perfume until my head was swimming with their scent. Or as if I were galloping astride Poseidon over an endless field, and we were racing so fast that I couldn’t breathe, couldn’t think yet I’d never felt so vitally, totally alive.” She sighed. “It was magic.”

A rough sound emerged from Quentin’s chest. “Sunbeam.” He pulled her against him. “What am I going to do with you?”

It was a rhetorical question—one he didn’t expect her to answer.

Brandi answered it anyway.

“What are you going to do with me?” she repeated softly, rising on tiptoe. “I can think of a wondrous solution.” Her lips brushed his, first tentatively, then, feeling his inadvertent shudder, more boldly, her tongue tracing the warm curve of his mouth. “But then, it would involve kissing me in a way you’ve just cautioned me never to permit.”

Restraint snapped.

With a harsh groan of capitulation, Quentin’s mouth came down on Brandi’s—not gentle and chaste, but hard, urgent, desperate. Displaying none of his silently vowed restraint, Quentin gave in to the need clawing inside him, this kiss every bit the wild, consuming, blazing inferno his entire being had clamored for from the start.

Brandi made a wordless sound of wonder, parting her lips with trembling excitement, drawing Quentin closer in a silent plea to continue.

“Brandi.” He understood her unspoken invitation, and he penetrated her with his tongue, burying himself in her beauty. Twining his hands in her hair, he angled her head to better receive the blatant possession of his kiss, denying the madness even as it consumed him. “This can’t happen,” he rasped, making no move to release her.

“Don’t stop,” she beseeched, clutching him tightly, wanting never, never to be set free.

“Christ, Sunbeam, you’re killing me.” His lips left hers, blazing a trail of kisses down the slender column of her throat, then back up to the sweetness of her mouth.

“Just tell me you’ve thought about this,” Brandi whispered breathlessly, shivering in response to each heated contact. “About what happened between us. At the stream.”

“Yes, I’ve thought about it,” he managed, raising his head to gaze into the molten brown velvet of her eyes. “Too bloody much.”

“Oh, Quentin, so have I.” Brandi’s fingers sifted through the silky hair at his nape, her voice unsteady. “Did you feel … that is, when we kissed, while we kissed …”

“Yes, yes, and yes.” Quentin captured her mouth again, tenderness and hunger combined, as if to confirm that the dizzying excitement wasn’t a temporary illusion.

It wasn’t.

His arms locked around her like steel bands, dragging her closer still, pressing her soft, pliant body flush against his rigid one. Then he kissed her—again and again—until their initial embrace had dimmed beneath the scorching inferno of the here and now.

Brandi’s legs buckled, and it was only the strength of Quentin’s arms that kept her from collapsing to the gazebo floor. Alive, her every sense awakened, she returned his kisses with all the innocent ardor in her soul, melding her tongue with his, wondering if he could possibly be feeling even a fraction of the scalding physical sensations she was. “Please tell me …”

“Yes.” He drank in her fervent appeal, giving her the answer she sought in the most poignant way possible. He deepened the kiss, possessing every tingling surface of her mouth, taking her tongue, her breath, and making them his. His arms shook as they loosened their grip—just enough for his hands to move. Restlessly, they shifted up and down her back, pausing at each hook of her gown, then forcibly abandoning it, battling the primal urge to bare more of her satiny skin to his touch, his view, his taste. Desire poured through him in widening torrents, and his entire soul throbbed with a feverish urgency that, despite the women who lined his past, was totally foreign to him.

It was that soul-shattering urgency which stopped him.

“Brandi—no.” He literally tore his mouth from hers, an act as painful as a physical wound. He stared down at her, totally off-balance, seeing his own hunger and confusion mirrored in her eyes. “Sunbeam …” He had no idea what to say.

Brandi did.

“Why did you stop?” she whispered.

“Because I can’t allow this to happen.”

“Did you want it to?”

“That doesn’t matter.”

“Did you?”

“Even if I …”

“Did you?”

“Yes, damn it, I did!”
He threw back his head, dragging air into his lungs, seeking help from the ubiquitous heavens that hovered silently about the semidarkened gazebo.

“If you wanted this to happen, then why did you pull away?” Brandi’s breath grazed the column of his throat. “Did I do something wrong?”

“No, you did nothing wrong.” Quentin lowered his chin to meet her gaze. “In fact, if you were any more right, I’d have—” His mouth snapped shut.

Brandi gave him a beatific smile. “Thank you, Quentin. That is truly all I needed to hear.”

Gritting his teeth, Quentin forced out the words that needed to be said. “Sunbeam, I’m a captain in the army. My skills are needed and my loyalty is with my country. I could be recalled at any time.”