Page 35 of A Daring Pursuit

He explored the soft confines, reveled in the velvet stroke of his tongue against hers until she capitulated like warmed butter. There was an inherent need to stop, but the reasons to do so escaped him. Underlying guilt pelted him with a second bullet, but he couldn’t stop.

She broke away, panting for air. “Sir?”

The urge to cover her mouth again hit him like the magnetic forces he’d spent years studying.Not yet.If he could but bottle the sensations. He wanted to howl at the moon.

“I-I don’t think this is what you meant by your ‘help,’” she said. “Was it?”

His hands fell away and flexed in and out of fists at his sides. “No,” he said on a soft sigh. The current situation did not escape him. He was in the unique position of controlling what information Miss Wimbley acquired. He truly was a cad. He strengthened his voice. “No, of course not. I will do my utmost to assist you, Miss Wimbley.” And he would… to the best of his ability. His decision firmed. Perhaps it was time to learn exactly where his younger brother had come from.

The band tightening his chest released, allowing him to breathe without choking. “You’ve nothing to wor—”

“Geneva?” Lady Abra’s voice sounded from the sitting room. Loudly.

Miss Wimbley’s eyes widened in sheer panic.

Noah flinched. He put a finger to his lips and moved quickly to the side of the wardrobe on quiet steps then indicated she slip out.

With a swift nod, she hurried to the door and left with a fleeting glance in his direction before disappearing into the outer chamber. “I’m here, Abra.”

“What are you doing?”

“Writing an, er, observance for Hannah.”

Lady Abra laughed. “Observance? Don’t you mean a composition? Or an essay?”

Noah didn’t hear Miss Wimbley’s response but found the conversation highly enlightening, especially recalling the ink on Miss Wimbley’s fingertips. He stole back across the room, ignoring their conversation and, indeed, found a paper right there on the flat. He lifted the paper and studied the tidy, efficient handwriting with its bold strokes, then read.

Each word entrenched the core of her beliefs and gave him insight to the mystery that was Geneva Wimbley. Her intelligence showed through her words like a goddess’s flaming torch. Passionate words for a cause leaped off the page like a spray of well-aimed needles pricking his skin. Words that tugged at him. Showed clear purpose. Something of which was blatantly missing in his own life.

He. Had. No. Purpose…

Only, he did, as his vow to help her locate the answers she sought fleeted through him.

Chapter Thirteen

“Ihave tochange.”

Geneva scowled and, with a quick glance over her shoulder, followed Abra into her bedchamber. The situation had turned perilous. More than just Abra finding out Mr. Oshea had entered her bedchamber—it wouldn’t matter that Geneva hadn’t invited him. No, it was that blasted kiss filling her head with impossible possibilities. Such proprieties would only lead to ruin. More importantly, she couldn’t bear the thought of losing the respect of her Clandestine Sapphire Society cohorts.

Abra stopped and skewered Geneva with one of her soul-searching, sees-too-much fixations. “What is it, dear? You seem out of sorts. That’s not like you.”

Panic prickled Geneva’s skin. But she could not confide in Abra. From the depths of her corrupted reasonings, she searched desperately for some topic that would not give her away. Abra just knew her too well. The subject should have hit her at once. Gads, she was addlepated. “Why did Lady Westbridge have to come?” A rhetorical question if ever there was one. “I know, I know. It’s an idiotic notion. Of course she would come.”

Abra shot her a quick smirk, confirming the idiocy that required no answer. “I thought to assist Mrs. Knagg. She seems a little overwhelmed with all the guests. I suspect not much in the way of entertainment goes on in Northumberland.”

Geneva laughed, for the absolute notion of Abra assisting with guests when she was a guest couldn’t be borne. “You are not a servant, my dear,” she returned. Still, her friend did have a way of trying to make herself smaller than she was. Something that drove Geneva to madness.

Abra grinned. “I’m only doing it to peeve Stepmother.”

Geneva’s hands flew to her cheeks. “Oh, the horror!” She shrugged. “That’s all right, then. Should I order you about? She detests that.”

“Certainly.” But testament to the friends they were, she wisely added, “Only when she’s about.”

“You are the brilliant one of our little group,” Geneva acknowledged with an admiring nod. They fell into a companionable silence as she went to Abra and assisted her with the ties at her back. “Do you think I’m unmarriageable?” she asked slowly.

Abra spun around. “What on earth put that notion in your head?”

She shrugged. “Just something Miss Hale said last night… It’s nothing.”

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