JMcNaught - Something Wonderful (13 page)

His fingers splayed sensuously across her cheek, and he smiled—a slow, lazy smile that made her heart leap into her throat. "I'm thinking about kissing you."

Alexandra's fevered imagination promptly ran away with itself as she recalled the novels she'd read. When kissed by the man they secretly loved, the heroines invariably swooned, or abandoned their virtue, or blurted out professions of undying love. Terrified that she would make just such a cake of herself, Alexandra gave her head an emphatic shake. "No, really," she croaked. "I—I don't think you should. Not just now. It's very nice of you to offer, but not just now. Perhaps another time when I—"

Ignoring her protests, and struggling to hide his amusement, Jordan put his fingertips beneath her chin and tilted her face up for his kiss.

He closed his eyes. Alexandra's opened wide. He lowered his head. She braced herself to be overcome with ardor. He touched his lips lightly to hers. And then it was over.

Jordan opened his eyes and looked at her to assess her reaction. It was
not
the naively rapturous one he expected to see. Alexandra's eyes were wide with bewilderment and—yes—
disappointment
!

Relieved that she hadn't made a fool of herself like the heroines of the novels, Alexandra wrinkled her small nose. "Is
that
all there is to kissing?" she asked the nobleman whose fiery kisses purportedly made maidens despise their virginity and married women forget their vows.

For a moment, Jordan didn't move; he studied her with heavy-lidded, speculative grey eyes. Suddenly Alexandra saw something exciting and alarming kindle in those silvery eyes. "No," he murmured, "there's more," and his hands encircled her arms, drawing her so close that her breasts almost touched his chest.

His conscience, which Jordan had assumed was long dead, chose that unlikely moment to suddenly assert itself after years of silence.
You are seducing a child, Hawthorne
! it warned in acid disgust. Jordan hesitated, more from surprise at the unexpected presence of that long-forgotten inner voice than from guilt at his actions.
You are deliberately seducing a gullible child into doing your bidding because you don't want to bother taking the time to reason with her.

"What are you thinking now?" Alexandra asked warily.

Several evasions occurred to him, but recalling that she'd scorned polite platitudes, he decided to be truthful. "I'm thinking that I'm committing the unforgivable act of seducing a child."

Alexandra, who was relieved rather than disappointed that his kiss had not affected her, felt laughter bubble up inside of her. "Seducing me?" she repeated with a merry chuckle and shook her head, sending her curly hair into fetching disarray. "Oh, no, you may put your mind at ease on that score. I think I must be made of sterner stuff than most females who swoon from a kiss and abandon their virtue. I," she finished candidly, "was not at all affected by our kiss. Not," she added charitably, "that I thought it was gruesome, for it wasn't, I assure you. It was… quite nice."

"Thank you," Jordan said, straight-faced. "You're very kind." Tucking her hand firmly into the crook of his arm, he turned and led her a few steps into the arbor.

"Where are we going?" she inquired conversationally.

"Out of sight of the house," he replied dryly, stopping beneath the branches of an apple tree covered with blossoms. "Chaste pecks are permissible between an engaged couple in the rose garden; however, more passionate kissing must be done with more discretion, in the arbor."

Alexandra, who was misled by the matter-of-fact tone of this lecture, failed to instantly absorb the import of his words. "It's amazing!" she said, laughing up at him. "There are rules for absolutely everything amongst the nobility. Are there books with all this written down?" But before he could answer, she gasped, "K-kiss me passionately? Why?"

Jordan glanced toward the entrance of the arbor to make certain they were private, then he turned the full seductive force of his silver gaze and lazy smile on the girl standing before him. "It's my vanity," he teased in a low voice. "It chafes at the idea that you nearly dozed off in the middle of my last kiss. Now, let's see if I can wake you up."

For the second time in minutes, Jordan's heretofore silent conscience was outraged. It roared at him:
You bastard, what do you think you're doing
?

But this time, Jason didn't hesitate for even a moment.

He already knew
exactly
what he was doing. "Now then," he said, smiling reassuringly into her enormous blue-green eyes as he matched his actions to his words, "a kiss is a thing to be shared. I'll put my hands on your arms, thus, and draw you close."

Puzzled by so much fuss over a kiss, Alexandra glanced down at the strong, long fingers gently imprisoning her upper arms, then at the front of his fine white shirt, before she finally raised her embarrassed gaze to his. "Where do my hands go?"

Jordan squelched his shout of laughter, as well as the suggestive reply that automatically sprang to his lips. "Where would you like to put them?" he asked instead.

"In my pockets?" Alexandra suggested hopefully.

Jordan, who suddenly felt more in the mood for a hearty laugh than a seduction, was nevertheless determined to continue. "The point I was trying to make," he explained mildly, "is that it's perfectly all right for you to touch me."

I don't want to
, she thought frantically.

You will
, he silently promised with an inner smile, correctly interpreting her mutinous expression. Tipping her chin up, he gazed into those wide, luminous eyes of hers, and tenderness began to unfold within him—a sensation that had been as foreign to him as the voice of his conscience until he met this unspoiled, unpredictable, artless child-woman. He felt, for the moment, as if he was gazing into the eyes of an angel, and he touched her smooth cheek with unconscious reverence. "Have you any idea," he murmured softly, "how enchanting you are—and how rare?"

The words he spoke, combined with the touch of his fingertips against her cheek, and the deep, compelling timbre of his voice, had the seductive impact Alexandra had dreaded his kiss would have. She felt as if she were beginning to melt and float inside. She couldn't pull her gaze from his hypnotic grey eyes; she didn't want to try. Without realizing what she was doing, she raised her shaking fingertips to his hard jaw, touching his cheek as he was touching hers. "I think," she whispered achingly, "that you are beautiful."

"Alexandra—" The softly spoken word contained a poignant tenderness she hadn't heard in his voice before, and it made her want to tell him everything in her heart. Unaware of the stimulating effect of her caressing fingers and candid turquoise eyes, she continued in the same aching voice, "I think you are as beautiful as Michelangelo's David—"

"Don't—" he whispered achingly, and his lips took hers in a kiss that was nothing at all like the first one. His mouth slanted over hers with fierce tenderness, while his hand curved around her nape, his fingers stroking her sensitive skin, and as his other arm encircled her waist, moving her tightly to him. Lost in a sea of pure sensation as his lips tasted and courted hers, Alexandra slid her hands up his hard chest and wrapped her arms around his neck, clinging to him for support, innocently and unconsciously molding her body to his length. The moment she did, the seducer became the seduced: Desire exploded in Jordan's body, and the girl in his arms became an enticing woman. Automatically, he deepened the kiss, his mouth moving with hungry, persuasive insistence on hers, while Alexandra clung tighter to him, sliding her fingers into the crisp hair above his collar, her entire body racked with jolt after jolt of wild pleasure. He kissed her long and lingeringly, then he touched his tongue to her trembling lips, coaxing them to part, insisting, and when they did, his tongue slid between them, filling her mouth. His hand shifted from her back to her midriff, sliding upward toward her breasts.

Whether from fear or desire, Alexandra moaned softly, and the sound somehow penetrated his aroused senses, dousing his desire and dragging him reluctantly back to reality.

Jordan dropped his hands to her narrow waist and raised his head, staring down into her intoxicating young face, unable to believe the passion she had unexpectedly evoked in him.

Dizzy with love and desire, Alexandra felt the heavy thudding of his heart beneath her hand. Gazing up at the firm sensual mouth which had gently, and then fiercely, explored hers, she raised her eyes to his smoldering grey ones.

And she knew.

Something Wonderful had happened. This magnificent, handsome, complicated, sophisticated man was her promised gift from fate. He was hers to love.

Bravely ignoring the painful memories of her equally complicated, handsome, sophisticated father's treatment, Alexandra accepted fate's gift with all the humble gratitude in her bursting heart. Unaware that sanity had returned to Jordan and the expression in his eyes had changed from desire to irritation, Alexandra raised her shining eyes to his. Quietly, without emphasis or shame, she softly said, "I love you."

Jordan had been expecting something like that the moment she raised her eyes to his. "Thank you," he said, trying to pass her statement off as a casual compliment rather than an avowal he did not want to hear. Mentally he shook his head at how incredibly, disarmingly romantic she was. And how naive. What she felt, he knew, was desire. Nothing more. There was no such thing as love—there were only varying degrees of desire, which romantic women and foolish men called "love."

He knew he ought to end her infatuation with him right now by telling her bluntly that his own feelings did not match hers and, moreover, that he did not want her to feel as she did about him. That was what he
wanted
to do. However, his conscience, which was suddenly making a damned nuisance of itself after a silence of decades, would not let him wound her. Even he, callous and cynical and impatient with this nonsense as he now felt, was not callous enough, or cynical enough to deliberately hurt a child who was looking at him with the adoration of a puppy.

So much did she remind him of a puppy that he reacted automatically and, reaching out, he rumpled her thick, silky hair. With smiling gravity, he said, "You will spoil me with so much flattery," then he glanced toward the house, impatient to return to his work. "I have to finish going over my grandmother's accounts this afternoon and tonight," he said abruptly. "I'll see you in the morning."

Alexandra nodded and watched him walk out of the arbor. In the morning, she would be his wife. He had not reacted at all as she'd hoped he would, when she told him she loved him, but it didn't matter. Not then. Then she had enough love bursting into bloom in her heart to sustain her.

"Alex?" Mary Ellen rushed into the arbor, her face alive with eager curiosity. "I watched from the windows. You were in here ever so long. Did he kiss you?"

Alexandra sank down on a white, ornamental iron bench beneath a plum tree and chuckled at her friend's avid expression. "Yes."

Mary Ellen eagerly sat down beside her. "And did you tell him you love him?"

"Yes."

"What did he do?" she demanded gleefully. "What did he say?"

Alexandra shot her a rueful smile. "He said, 'thank you.' "

Firelight danced gaily in the hearth, banishing the chill of a spring night and casting shadows that cavorted and bobbed on the walls like sprites at an autumn festival. Propped against a pile of pillows in her huge bed, Alexandra watched the entertainment, her expression pensive. Tomorrow was her wedding day.

Drawing her knees up, she wrapped her arms around her legs, staring into the fire. Despite her thrilling discovery that she had fallen in love with her husband-to-be, she was not foolish enough to think she understood him, nor was she naive enough to believe she knew how to make him happy.

She was certain of only two things: She wanted to make him happy and somehow, some way, she would discover the means to do it. The awesome weight of that responsibility was heavy on her mind, and she wished devoutly she had a better notion of what being the wife of a nobleman entailed.

Her knowledge of marriage was limited and not very helpful. Her own father had been like a charming, elegant, eagerly awaited stranger who, when he deigned to visit them, was greeted with eager adoration by his wife and daughter.

Propping her chin on her knees, Alexandra remembered with a pang of pain how she and her mother had fussed over him for as long as he remained, hanging on to his words and following him around, as eager to please him as if he were a god and they his willing worshipers. Humiliation shot through her when she imagined how dull and provincial and gullible she and her mother must have seemed to him. How he must have laughed at their eager adoration!

With brave determination, Alexandra shifted her thoughts to her own marriage. She was quite certain the duke wouldn't like being treated by his wife with the extreme deference her own mother had shown her father. His grace seemed to enjoy it when she spoke her mind, even if she said something outrageous. Sometimes, she could make him laugh out loud. But how to go on for the next forty years with him?

The only other marriages she had witnessed firsthand were peasant marriages, and in those marriages the wife cooked and cleaned and sewed for her husband. The idea of doing those things for the duke filled her with quiet longing, even while she knew the notion was sheer foolish sentimentality. This house was crawling with servants who anticipated the occupants' needs in advance and took steps to make certain their every wish was carried out almost before they thought of it