That was mischief on his face. Tess knew it, even though another person likely would have found his face noncommittal. “I expect you’re right,” she said, with just the right air of calm. “A tiring day, one’s wedding.”
“Here—” he said, turning the silver box, “one has a scene approved from ancient times. An allegorical reference.”
Tess blinked at it. From what she could see, it depicted a field of rabbits.
“A fertility talisman,” his voice said, deep and certainly amused. “Rabbits are so very prolific.”
“Poor woman,” Tess said tartly, putting the little top back onto the box. “Rabbits!”
“But you do wish to have children, don’t you, Miss Essex?” He was putting the box back into the cabinet and not looking at her.
“Why did you kiss me in that Roman bath?” she asked impulsively.
His hand froze, and then he withdrew it and closed the cabinet. He countered with his own question: “Are all Scotswomen like yourself, Miss Essex?”
“Naturally,” she said, raising one eyebrow, just in Lady Griselda’s manner.
“I wished to kiss you,” he said. His eyes were a fierce blue. “I simply wished to, Miss Essex. Naturally, I know that a gentlemen never bows to such an impulse, but—”
Tess held her breath, not thinking, not breathing, not moving.
His hands curled around her shoulders. His head bent, and his mouth pressed against hers. It was frustrating. She had always, rather dimly, thought of horses and men in the same way. She knew in a moment when her father was irritated, or exhausted, or fairly choking with choler, before he even spoke. It was all written on his face. But Mr. Felton’s tight grip over his expression was aggravating. Exasperating, even.
But his mouth spoke to her. She could taste something simmering under his kiss. Desire? She knew little of that famed emotion. But his kiss scorched. It talked of—something.
Tess was feeling a little dazed, a little dizzy. Very curious. So she opened her mouth to ask any number of things. Why are you kissing me? Another good question: why are you kissing your friend’s betrothed? A third: why did you let me go? But she was casting about for a less plaintive way to formulate that question…
She opened her mouth to try, but he was there. Kissing Felton was like talking to someone who showed more expression on his face, Tess thought dimly. She could taste everything he was thinking: hunger, desire, a fierceness that made her shake, made her knees feel weak, made her yearning and bold all at once.
“Tess,” he said, his voice dark as midnight. She didn’t answer. He growled it: “Tess.”
She broke away from his mouth and looked up at him. Her mouth was stung to a lush red, her eyes rather dazed—and yet, there was no timid virgin’s fear in her eyes.
“Yes?” she gasped.
And Lucius couldn’t think what he wanted to ask her. Of course, he had to say that they could not kiss. That he was a man of honor, and she a gently born lady, and yet he was nothing more than a loathsome snake to kiss his friend’s betrothed.
But the words all died in his throat, because there was something in her eyes, a sultry question.
“I cannot offer you enough,” he said to her, forcing his body to stay still and not gather her into his arms again. “I once asked a lady to marry me, but I recognized the truth to it before we wed. I haven’t the heart for marriage.”
“The heart? Are you in love, then?”
Her face had wiped clear of those traces of sultry pleasure and turned to polite inquiry, as if she were questioning the reasons behind his attachment to carrots, rather than cabbage.
“I never have felt that emotion. I do not seem to feel as deeply as many men.” There was no kinder way to put it. “Someone like yourself, Tess, you deserve a man who will love you with passion of soul as well as of body.”
The fire in her eyes was banked now. They were slightly narrowed, thinking. He felt an awful longing to give in and marry her. To tell her that he would take her away from Mayne and keep her for himself, and the devil with what she expected, or deserved in the way of emotion.
“Don’t give it a thought,” she told him with an airy wave. “I did not say that I wished to marry you. In fact, as I recall, I already refused your request.” Her voice was light, a trifle amused.
Lucius’s back stiffened. He had actually spoken aloud his deepest fear, that he had only shallow emotions at his command, and she laughed at him?
She did. That luscious red mouth curved upward even as he watched her face.
“Do you always assume that young ladies are so ardent to marry you, sir?”
She had a dimple in her right cheek. Lucius felt a feverish wave of rage. He should kiss that supercilious laughter from her face. “It was, perhaps, a natural error on my part,” he said with a savage edge. “I am not used to young ladies who kiss with such enthusiasm as you do. But England is, of course, a hidebound culture in comparison to our neighbors to the north.”
Tess’s heart was beating so quickly that she could scarcely breathe; it was taking all the control she could command to keep her face as expressionless as his. “I fear that it is true that Scottish ladies are unlikely to beg you to marry them, sir.” She patted his arm. “Luckily, from what you say, there are Englishwomen who will take on the task.” The slight tone of disbelief in her voice was exquisitely pitched to indicate utter unbelievability.
“I see,” Lucius said, bowing. “I have been inexcusably rude. I apologize.”
“I do think that Mayne may be rather less than pleased with your affability toward his affianced wife,” Tess observed. Her heart was slowing, and she was beginning to feel chilly.
He bowed again. “I will offer him my apologies.”
Tess looked at him and felt another surge of rage. How dare he kiss her, and then announce that he wasn’t fit for marriage? And all the time he was doing nothing more than making her unfit for her very appropriate marriage to the earl? How dare he? “Please don’t bother with apologies,” she said airily, drifting away from him. “I consider this nothing more than a—a taradiddle. There’s naught important about it.” When she was beside herself, just a hint of Scottish rhythm slipped in her voice, for all their father had coached that accent away.
And when he spoke, his voice had deepened to a dangerous purr. “Whether I inform my friend that his wife is a light-heeled wench…now there’s a moral question, wouldn’t you say?”
Tess turned in a swirl of her skirts. She had caught sight of herself in a great gold-leafed mirror to the side of the room. Her color was high, her eyes were glittering, and her bosom looked magnificent. “You must please yourself, sir.”
“Please myself?” He was beside her again, staring down at her. “Please myself, Tess?”
“Yes,” she said, suddenly seeing a double meaning there.
She knew, and he knew, what was about to happen.
“I shall please myself, then,” he said.
“Yes,” she whispered.
He pulled her slowly up against his chest and pressed his mouth over hers. For a moment Tess was too startled by the aching heat in her body, her instant response to his touch, to notice more than that. But then she found that this time he tasted of anger and frustration. Of desire too, of course.