Page 19 of Meet A Rogue At Midnight
“Truly? That long?” Will fisted a glove-filled hand on his hip, his eyes clouding as if he counted the years. “Hmmm…I suppose it has. You’ll remember my sister, Miss Emma Hastings. Last you saw her, she was playing with dolls under the watchful eye of her nurse.”
Miss Hastings rolled her eyes and sketched a curtsey.
“Allow me to introduce you to her friend, Lady Rowena Gage.” Hastings pivoted to Livvy. “Of course you remember Miss Olivia Halsey…all grown up now.”
“I remember,” he said, stiffening. He’d forgotten that no one must know about his visits to her tower.
“Mr. Braithwaite. It’s good to see you again, all hale and hearty, sir.” Livvy’s voice was a smoky promise.
“Hale and hearty, indeed. Big Ox. Isn’t that what I called you when we were boys swimming the River Trent?”
Jonas smiled, gritting his teeth. No doubt Will thought Big Ox a fun boyhood name. “I can’t recall.”
Livvy frowned at Mr. Hastings but the jocular man was too busy stuffing his gloves in his coat pocket to notice. Did she find the childhood sobriquet distasteful? Her eyes expanded within her mask as if chiding Jonas,Tell him not to call you that!
His answer was the smallest of shrugs.
“We can reminisce over a pint. Will you join us?” Will spoke above the noise, his head poking over his sister as he searched the room. “I am to play chaperone tonight until my aunt arrives to guide these young women. These ladies need a man’s steadying hand. Two would be better.”
“You’ll not put a damper on our fun, Will.” Emma pouted prettily and fixed her gold mask. “I plan to make mischief and neither you nor Mama nor Aunt Ophelia can stop me.”
Will Hastings grimaced at Jonas. His baleful visage saying,See what I must contend with?before checking the room again. His chin jutted at an empty table in a back corner.
“Ah, there’s a table.”
The five-some threaded past seated revelers rocking back their chairs on two legs. Evergreen boughs decorated with red bows lined heavy-wooded rafters. Tallow candles burned from wall sconces and a rustic, iron lantern lit with a dozen candles hung overhead, yet the public house was dim inside. Jonas set his hand on the small of Livvy’s back and the end of her long braid brushed his hand. She’d wrapped her hair in black silk from her nape to the feathery tip swishing against her breeches.
He bent low and whispered in her ear, “A housebreaker…an excellent choice of costume.”
Her head angled toward his. “I thought you would find humor in it.”
His hand brushed her bottom. “You are a fast one, Livvy Halsey.”
She jumped, her gaze sparkling at him like brown fire in her black lace mask.
“If ever there was a woman in need of a man’s steadying hand,” he teased.
Her slender nostrils flared and she almost collided with the shepherdess serving wench. Jonas grabbed Livvy’s arm and pulled her close. “Careful.”
The side of her body wedged up against him. Another passerby jostled them. Livvy’s face was within kissing distance, but a mild storm clouded her eyes.
“You are a confusing man, Jonas Braithwaite.”
“How?” he asked not liking the sharpness of her tone.
“That first night you kissed me like…”
“Like what?”
He leaned in, the balls of his feet pressing hard on the plank floor, his body on tenterhooks. Her hips fit in the notch between his legs, almost touching his placket. Any other evening, this would be unseemly, but debauchery’s patina colored the Sheep’s Head. People crowded close. None noticed them. Masked women landed in the laps of male patrons who caressed skirt-covered thighs. Jonas would caress Livvy’s thighs, if she’d let him. But not here.
Her brows furrowed in her mask, the bottom of those copper arches visible in the eye holes. “The first night you kissed me as if I were the first and last woman for you.”
“I aim to please.”
“Yet the next day in the tower? It was awful. Embarrassing to say the least. Now you pat my bottom like some lascivious sailor,” she finished, her lips pinching with distaste.
His mouth opened, but no words came. He’d seen lascivious sailors and his touch was a far cry from their handling of a woman’s bottom. But, Livvy had a point. What could he say? That he was taken aback at her kiss last night but, tonight, he hungered for her? That he was baffled by the rush of emotions being with her?
