and what do you care. I have often thought the man did me a favour, warning you off. You have been enamoured ever since.”
“I have not.” Mary’s hands balled to fists. The man was infuriating. Why on earth did she find him so interesting? Because on one evening, nearly a year ago, he had danced with her, and talked and flirted, and smiled and laughed as no other man had.
He grinned. “Careful, or I shall think you protest too much. Besides I know because I have seen you watching me. Whenever I turn, there is Miss Mary Marlow staring across the room.”
He leant forward, his face inches from hers. “Your looks call to me, Mary. You whisper to me, come, come, Framlington, closer.” His husky pitch made her skin tingle with awareness and possibilities course through her blood.
He straightened, his gloved fingers gently bracing her chin. “Well here I am, Mary. Come to you. What will you do with me?”
Run away.
She backed away a step, lifting her chin from his grip. “Nothing.” She forced the denial from her lips, when internally she longed to know how his kiss would feel. “Let me pass. I should not be speaking with you.”
“But you are.” He stepped forward.
When she’d danced with him last season his glittering light brown eyes had melted her bones. He’d held her gently, while making her laugh, like he was a jester, and as they’d parted he’d asked her to remember him.
She’d fallen in love during that dance. Irrevocably in love. She had not forgotten.
But afterward her eldest brother, John, the Duke of Pembroke, had advised that Lord Framlington – her beauty – was a beast. A fortune hunter, chasing dowries.
Worse, he was a rake, a philanderer, a seducer, not to be trusted in the least.
It is folly talking to him.
“Then let me rectify that.” She tried to pass him. But he caught her upper arm, stopping her and turning with her. She stood facing him in the narrow gap between the tall yew hedges.
“Stop running and stop pretending you do not like me. I am not blind. Besides, run, and my predatory instincts say, chase.” On the last word he leaned forward, pulling her closer and then his lips pressed down on hers and his other hand came to her nape urging her to stay, to allow, to give, as his lips brushed across hers.
Mary’s instinct screamed, run. But his lips urged so beautifully her body cried, take, longing to devour, to the point that she was no longer sure who was the predator, him or her. This was her first kiss.
Gripping his shoulders, she clung to him, opening her mouth at his urging, and when his tongue invaded her lips a rush of desire slid through her stomach reaching to the central point of femininity between her legs.
This was what she’d imagined and longed for – this enchantment and desire.
He moved her back a step, against the yew hedge, as his kiss increased in intensity, the movement of his lips and the caress of his tongue growing in determination, intriguing and intoxicating.
His grip left her arm and closed over her breast, squeezing it through the thin muslin of her gown.
A sharp, sweet pain travelled from her nipple, catching her breath. It was delicious, but still it was pain and it was enough to rip her focus from his kiss to rational thought.
What am I doing? What am I letting him do?
Breaking the kiss suddenly, she caught him off guard and it gave her the chance to escape.
Slipping from his grip, she fled, not daring to look back for fear he’d follow.
“Miss Marlow!” he called after her, a note of humour in his voice. “I know you feel the same for me as I feel for you! Stop running and come back to me!”
She did not even look back.
“Well then, if not now, whenever you wish, simply give me a sign and I shall find a way we can meet! Or look for my signal!”
Her fingers gripped her dress, holding it from the ground, as she ran along the path, her breathing heavy and her lips burning, while her breast ached from the pressure of his hand.
When she reached the end of the path, she slowed to a walk letting her dress fall and stepped out on to the open lawn where a crowd of elite society had gathered for the garden party.
Her fingers pressed against her breastbone.
“Mary, there you are.” She turned as her brother’s voice cut the air. “We were coming to find you. Katherine was concerned.”
Mary looked to the lady who held her brother’s arm. Her sister-in-law was kindness incarnate, but Kate was Mary’s chaperone today. A blush burned beneath Mary’s skin. She had let him kiss her. A man her father and brother had explicitly warned against.
“I walked down to the Jerseys’ grotto. I wished to see it and I did not like to bother you, you were talking.”
John’s and Kate’s eyebrows rose. They did not need to say, Mary you should not have gone alone, she knew it was an error now.
But his kiss had been beautiful. She had not known that a combination of lips and tongues could cause her body to ache… and ache in unspeakable places.
Lord Framlington appeared from behind the hedge. Mary looked back, the heat in her skin increasing.
The rogue smiled at her, then walked on across the lawn, implying, without a word, that something had happened between them. Heat swept over her.
“What were you doing?” John whispered, in a harsh condemning tone. Mary met his pale blue gaze; it was chilling, like ice.
What indeed? “I did not plan it,” she whispered back, tipping up her chin to stand against her domineering brother. “I bumped into him.” Literally. “I did not intend to.”
One of John’s eyebrows quirked. “Well I assure you, he did. Do not to speak to him, Mary, and certainly, never in private. If you are compromised, you will be tied to him. That is what he wishes. If you do not want to be forced into marriage with a grasping rake, then have more care; no wandering pathways alone. You’re lucky he did not ravish you and wait on someone to happen along and see the two of you together. His situation is even more desperate than last year. The man cannot curb his spending, his debt is spiralling. There is not a prudent bone in his body. He’s fortune-hunting, hard.”
Mary’s gaze fell to John’s diamond cravat pin. She did not argue. Lord Framlington had proved John right – and her wrong. Very wrong.
Every word John spoke was true, she knew that, but something within her burned for Lord Framlington. He’d lit a flame in her a year ago, and it refused to be snuffed and if her heart had longed for Lord Framlington for a year, now it screamed… He had kissed her and fulfilled every expectation fostered in her dreams.
She shut her eyes to escape a giddy sensation. Simply thinking about his kiss caused her to ache for him.
She opened her eyes, denying her inner clamour. “I know, John, it was a mistake. I will not do it again.”
“Do not fret, Mary, no one saw.” Kate linked her arm with Mary’s. “Did Lord Framlington do or say something to frighten you? Has he upset you?”
“No.” Mary looked at Kate. There was no need for her family to know he’d kissed her. She did not wish John, her father, or her uncles, calling Lord Framlington out. It was only a kiss after all, no harm, not really. Except, if she’d stayed, she did not think it would have ended there. John was right: Lord Framlington was trouble. He had intended ravishment.
Why did her silly heart have to make her stomach flutter at the thought?
“He did not touch you?” John’s fingers rested on her shoulder, his voice filled with concern, but there was an edge