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Physical memories clawing at her soul, the room spun and Mary longed for home. The burden of pretence was too tiring.
“Mary, is something wrong?” Her gaze lifted to meet her father’s.
“I have the headache.” If sulking made her pathetic she did not care. “May we go home?”
“Already, we have not even eaten supper?”
“I know, Papa, but my head hurts.” Her fingers pressed to her temple. It throbbed with the pain of bottled up tears. She wished to cry over her insanity.
His brow furrowed and his fingers stroked her upper arm gently. “We will get you home.”
“I must use the retiring room first though, Papa.”
“Very well, you go up. I shall have the carriage called for, and tell your mother. We shall await you in the hall.”
Mary turned away, her head pounding. She felt a little sick as she climbed the stairs. The retiring room was quiet. Her mother’s maid was not there; she must have already been told they were leaving.
As Mary left the room, her fingers shook and she walked along the silent hall, with her thoughts screaming.
“Miss Marlow.” Her arm was gripped, firmly and she was pulled aside, into an alcove, and then pressed back against the wall as Lord Framlington’s mouth came down on hers.
She lifted her arms about his neck instinctively kissing him back with a longing that raged through her and took away the pain in her head, but then common-sense prevailed and she let him go, gripped his shoulders and pushed him away, whispering. “What do you think you are doing?”
“You have been playing a good game of ignoring me, but we both know you cannot. As I cannot ignore you.” His breath brushed over her lips his voice low and quiet. She would have turned and walked away but he gripped her wrist and held her still.
“Miss Marlow. Mary. Darling. Do not deny this. I know what you feel, because I feel it too.”
“I feel nothing.”
“And that is why you kissed me a moment ago, and at that garden party. You feel. You want. But I cannot come to you in a place like this, so if you want what I can give you, you will have to come to me…”
“What you give—”
“Kisses, darling. Happiness. A life filled with moments like this. You know I am looking for a wife, I know your brother has told you—”
“Most men do not look for a wife in the shadows of a hallway, or a narrow garden path—”
“I am not seeking any wife, I am seeking you, and if you wish to explore that, you will have to come to me, Mary.”
“No.” She pulled her wrist free, and turned away, her heart pounding as she began to run.
She heard his deep voice echo down the hall. “You may run but I know you do not wish to… You will come back when you have had chance to reflect and understand what you will miss… I will give you time, Mary, and then we’ll see.”
* * *
Drew watched her hurry away. She was scared but interested despite her better judgement. She had kissed him back. Her denial was pretence. He’d felt her attraction in her body, her breasts had pressed to his chest, as her slender arms had clung about his neck.
He sighed.
The power of emotion in him had caught him off-guard. At the garden party she had answered his kiss hesitantly, but tonight, it was as if she had longed to kiss him again. In the first instant when the shock had silenced her fears, she had thrust herself at him, and thrown herself into the kiss.
He smiled.
She had kissed him with innocence on both occasions.
His hand gripped the back of his neck for a moment, then fell. What if he had been the first man to kiss her? God that thought pierced through his chest, like a spear surging through him.
The first to press his tongue into her mouth.
Lord. The idea floored him with a sudden punch. But then he smiled, as the novelty of it bloomed, uncurling in him like a shoot from a seed, it rose up. Hope.
He walked along the hall; she had already reached the stairs and disappeared.
She was becoming more and more essential to his future. No other woman would do. She was his choice, and he was not going to be deterred.
She simply needed time.
Hell she had kissed him back with hunger tonight, albeit a little clumsily, but who cared. Who cared when he had been the first man to claim her lips – like a pioneer, and he intended to claim much more.
There was only one way he knew how to woo women, and that was with his body, he could teach the woman things she could never have imagined.
Innocent. He could not even remember how that had felt. But he knew how to make her feel good. He would give her the gift of sensual discovery and then she would never be able to refuse him. He would have her then.
But if she was running from kisses, she was not ready for that yet.
He needed another approach for the present and he had one; if the girl wanted to play hard to get, let her. If she wished to fain disinterest, then so could he.
He laughed.
He would give his little fish more line. Let her have some time to contemplate her choices. He doubted any of her young beaux made her heart race, or her bones melt. He doubted she had thrown her arms about their necks, and he had a very strong feeling she had never kissed any of them.
He would reel her in in a week or two when she’d had chance to realize his kisses were better than a hundred dances with the children she had danced with here.
What he had said to her was true, he felt the same… He knew she desired him, as much as he desired her.
* * *
Mary sat in her family’s coach bowling towards her brother’s town mansion.
The coach swayed on the uneven cobble. Its motion made Mary feel sick.
“It is unlike you to suffer with headaches, Mary, is something wrong?” her mother whispered.
Mary shook her head, then stopped as pain hammered in her skull.
“You look pale,” her father stated. “Has something happened?”
“I just need to sleep,” she whispered. She’d done very little of that in recent nights, and she feared she would not sleep tonight. The strength of Lord Framlington’s kiss still trembled through her nerves. “I will be well tomorrow.”
Leaning forward her mother pressed Mary’s knee. “We will be home soon. Would you like me to sit with you a while when you retire?”
“No, thank you, Mama.” Their kindness was cloying when Mary knew she was living a lie. She was not who they thought she was, she was not good, she was bad, or rather, she wanted to be bad. Everything Lord Framlington had said was true, she wanted to meet him, and kiss him again. He tempted her.
Now she felt as though he had poured himself into her blood, her body throbbed from the memory of their sudden encounter in the dark, and she could still feel his gentle grip on her wrist.
When they reached home, Mr Finch, her brother’s butler, opened the door. John and Kate were at a private dinner. Her younger brothers and sisters were all in bed. Her mother came upstairs with Mary, helped her undress and then tucked her in to bed, even though Mary had not wished her to.
“May I fetch you anything? Something for the headache?”
“No, Mama, thank you, I just need to sleep.”
Her mother smothered the candle then pressed a kiss to Mary’s forehead.
“I am not a child, Mama,” Mary whispered into the dark, although she longed to be held and for the turmoil inside her to ease.
Her mother sighed. “I know you are now nineteen. But you are still my daughter and you always will be, no matter your age.”
Her mother’s fingers touched Mary’s hair. “Goodnight, sweetheart.”
Mary rolled to her other side, feeling guiltier than ever, and wept.
She’d done nothing wrong, not really, not yet, it had only been kisses that she had allowed, but she had a dreadful feeling she would. She could not quell this longing for a man she should not want.
* * *
For the third night after she had kissed Lord Framlington for a second time, Mary looked for him with no success. Her heart ached. She longed to see him. She missed the rogue, with his little knowing nods in her direction, and his charming smiles.
He had asked her to meet him but then disappeared and made that an impossibility. While his kisses continued haunting her…
She wished for wickedness. She wished for kisses and embraces.
“Miss Marlow. Damn it, you stood on my foot.” Mr Makepeace was a wealthy landowner, but he was double her age and as dull as working on embroidery. He was boring, and he was rude. She may have missed a step, because she had been daydreaming, about Lord Framlington, but it was ungentlemanly to curse at her for it.
“Forgive me.” The heat of a blush touched her cheeks as people along the line of dancers looked over at them. Oh, she longed for a dance she had shared with a man a year ago, she had barely heard the notes of it; her thoughts had been too absorbed by the colour of his eyes.
They were hazel; a light shade of cluttered brown, but when the light caught his eyes it turned the colour to honey, a soft amber or gold. It had literally gilded his eyes.
The men she danced with were young and weak in nature, and silly compared to him, or too old for her, like Mr Makepeace, and dull, or in between but so busy seeking to portray a fashionable ennui that they had no personality at all.
The dance came to its conclusion, thank the Lord.
Breathing hard Mr Makepeace walked her back to her parents. She smiled at her mother. Then turned to Mr Makepeace. “Thank you.” He nodded in return then walked away.
Good riddance…
She looked about the room for Lord Framlington, he still was not here. She was becoming angry with him now. Why? Where was he?
She huffed out an unladylike breath. “Mama, I wish to go to the retiring room.”
“I will come with you.”
“That is not necessary, the hall is busy; I will not be alone.”
“Very well.”
Mary turned away and then pressed a path through the crush of people out into the hall and then across to the withdrawing room. She had foolishly hoped to discover Lord Framlington hiding somewhere. He had not been hiding anywhere.
The rogue had known how she would feel, how she felt… You feel. You want, but you know I cannot come to you in a place like this, so if you want what I can give you, you will have to come to me… But how could she come to him if he was nowhere to be found!
She hated him.
He was playing with her.
She loved him too, though. No one she spoke to or danced with compared to him, they were all a mile beneath him.
He was beautiful, witty, charming… and poor… A fortune-hunter, and a rake.
Her heart thumped as she hurried back to the ballroom still looking for him. He was not there. She did not return to her mother, she sought her friends. Someone to talk to. Though she had not spoken to them of Lord Framlington, they would think her mad. Everyone would think her mad. She could not even explain to herself why she liked him so much. But she did.
Her heart pounded harder even at the thought of him.
“Mary!”
“Emily,” Miss Smithfield was one of Mary’s more recent, less confident, friends. She had looked lost one evening, sitting out a dance against the wall, and so Mary had befriended her.
“Mary. You poor soul, I saw you had to dance with Mr Makepeace.” Lady Bethany Pope kissed the air beside Mary’s cheek.
Mary made a face. Bethany and Emily laughed.
“Hasn’t he asked you to dance every night this week?”
“Good heavens, yes, but hopefully never again, I stood on his foot.”
“Deliberately…”
“Perhaps.” They all laughed but Mary heard the hollowness in hers. Her life no longer interested her. She was bored. She missed the sense of danger hovering across the ballroom when Lord Framlington watched her. He made her feel different from everyone else, special. Every other man she danced with, danced with a dozen other women, she was no exception to any of them, and yet she had never seen Lord Framlington dance with anyone since he’d danced with her. Nor did he stare at anyone but her…
Although he had talked to that blonde woman the other day…
She sighed.
Had she lost him, by not conceding? Had he given up on her?
“Miss Marlow.” Mr Gerard Heathcote bowed before her. “May I have the honour of this dance?”
She wished to scream. No! She had danced with him ten dozen times, he was nice, polite… Boring.
Oh, her father had never spanked her, but he would wish he had done if he knew how wrong-headed she had become.
