Page 25 of To Love and to Loathe
He didn’t dare ask the question of Diana, of course; he knew precisely what her answer would be. Instead, he took a different tack. “Lady Templeton, are you implying that you have complaints about our interlude last night?”
“Well,” she said slowly, affecting the bored tone that he knew she used to disguise the rapid thoughts racing around inside that beautiful head. “I suppose it was not entirely dissatisfying.”
He grinned; coming from Diana, directed at him, that was high praise. “Of course,” he agreed. “But if you mean to suggest that it was not entirely satisfying, either, then it seems that I’ve some work to do.”
As he spoke, he was leading them into the shadow of the woodland that spread out down one side of the hill, back toward the house. Even a few feet in, they were completely hidden from view; none of the rest of their party could see them, and they were far enough away that they could not be overheard, either. However, the feeling of isolation was false—anyone could stumble across them without much effort, which meant that he had to work fast.
Diana was looking around, confused. “Willingham, I don’t wish to go on a nature hike. What do you think you’re—” She broke off abruptly as Jeremy pressed her back to a tree and lowered his mouth to hers.
It felt like a homecoming, the feeling of tracing her lips with his tongue, of her mouth opening beneath his and her sighs mingling with his own breaths. He broke the kiss after a moment to place a series of small kisses along the underside of her jaw, slowly moving lower until he reached the high collar of her riding habit.
“Who designed this blasted dress?” he muttered as he pulled it back slightly so that he could place a lingering kiss at the base of her throat where her pulse pounded at what he was certain he was not imagining was a pace much quicker than its usual rate.
Diana gave a breathless laugh. “Someone more concerned with the practicalities of horseback riding than with opportunities for dalliance?” she suggested. Her fingers tangled in his hair, which was already a bit windswept from the ride; God only knew what it would look like later, but Christ that felt good.
“Foolish,” he said, his hands sliding up to feel the heavy weight of her breasts beneath the many layers of fabric and corsetry that kept them tantalizingly wrapped up. “Dalliance should always be a consideration.”
At some point, her legs had tangled with his, her skirts wrapped all around. They were pressed together from chest to toe, and the feeling of her soft body molded to his own was doing highly inconvenient things to the state of his breeches. The intelligent thing to do would be to break this off before things got out of hand.
Yes. That would be intelligent. Reasonable.
Instead, Jeremy sealed his mouth over hers once more, loving the small, urgent noises she was making in the back of her throat. One of his hands crept downward to get a firm grip on her hip, keeping her pressed as close to him as was physically possible, given the encumbrance of skirts and jacket and all the other damnable fabric that kept her bare skin from touching his own. That hand grew more adventurous, drifting farther down over a tantalizing curve that the fit of ladies’ gowns these days did far too much to hide—
“My eyes!”
It was as though they’d been struck by lightning. Diana jerkedbackward from him so quickly that her head smacked the tree, causing her to howl in pain. Jeremy, meanwhile, had sprung back as though he were a puppet on a string, shaking his head to clear it, then leaning forward to grip her by the shoulder.
“Are you all right?” he asked urgently.
She nodded, her eyes watering a bit. “I may have a knot at the back of my head, but I’ll be fine.”
“But willIbe fine?” demanded the voice behind them that had so startled. The voice that, unfortunately, Jeremy recognized all too well.
He turned, very reluctantly.
Standing a few feet away, one of his hands clapped firmly over his eyes, was Penvale.
Twelve
Brothers,Diana fumed. What possiblefunction could they serve? Eating more than their fair share of dessert every evening in the nursery? Chasing their sister up a tree and then refusing to help her down for two whole hours? Getting so blindingly drunk at a sister’s seventeenth birthday fete that they were found the next morning in the hayloft?
These were all occasions upon which Diana had had cause to ponder the purpose of elder brothers, and now she had a new one to add to her ever-growing list: interrupting a sister in the middle of a kiss so good that she felt as though she were about to go up in flames?
Useless.
Unfortunately, this was precisely the sort of situation in which one’s brother thought himself to be at his most useful. He was entirely mistaken in this regard, of course, but men were mistaken much of the time—so often that they seemed entirely unable to recognize the state. She spared a thought to wonder if medicine would ever progress far enough to allow for the study of the human brain. She had grave doubts that the male brain would compare positively to its female counterpart.
Unfortunately, however, none of that helped in her presentsituation: her back pressed against a tree, her head throbbing painfully, the taste of Willingham’s kiss still upon her tongue, and a visibly traumatized—and, were she to hazard a guess, furious—brother standing before her, covering his eyes, practically vibrating with indignation.
She sighed. Moments like this were when men tended to be their most unreasonable. She would have to act quickly to avert disaster.
“Penvale,” she said coolly, using her hands to push herself away from the tree and move around Willingham toward her brother. “You may open your eyes. There is nothing to see that would offend your delicate sensibilities.”
Penvale dropped his hand, looking mildly sheepish. The sheepishness vanished, however, when his eyes landed on Willingham, and his gaze took on a decidedly more outraged glint.
“Do stop looking at me like that, Penvale, you’re not the dueling type. You’d probably shoot your own foot off by mistake.” It was true—her brother was a notoriously awful shot. Willingham, she recalled, was actually a very good shot; it was fortunate that he was not terribly hotheaded, or all of those duels he had fought could very well have ended in a body bleeding out on the grass and Willingham fleeing to the Continent to live out the rest of his life in exile. It was a surprisingly sobering thought.
“I think a man is entitled to look however he wishes when he finds his only sister being mauled by his supposed friend.”
