“Good morning, my lord,” she finally managed in a quiet voice.
Lachlan took a step closer. “I was hoping I wouldn’t startle you,” he said, then indicated the space beside her on the blanket. “May I?”
Charity nodded and closed the book, her finger marking the page she’d been reading. Inexplicably shy, she looked down for a moment, and then chanced another peek at him while he was getting settled.
The Marquess of Asheburton was different from all the men of her acquaintance. Tall and powerfully built, he exuded an aura of barely leashed strength and subdued fury. Every time she was near him, she felt as though she had to hold her breath, almost as though something spectacular were about to happen. It was the same feeling she got when a storm was about to break. The very air was charged with crackling tension, soaked with energy. It made her ache for . . . She frowned. For what?
Lachlan stretched out his legs and leaned back on his hands. His gaze roved the garden before returning to settle on the girl who sat beside him, her legs curled beneath her
skirts, her wide blue eyes locked on his face. The moment his gaze found hers, which was filled with an odd yearning, he was lost.
Charity held her breath and then let it out slowly on a single word. “Gray,” she whispered, unaware that she’d spoken. His lips curved in a soft smile. Something lurched inside her, and she felt the odd knot of tension that had settled in her midsection unfurl and spread outward, warm, liquid, and comforting. Because, when the Marquess of Asheburton smiled, the world fell away beneath her. His face, normally stern and cold and forbidding, seemingly chiseled from icy granite, thawed and became a visage of sheer male beauty. His eyes melted from a flinty silver to a soft pewter.
The book she’d been holding slipped from her grasp and landed on his hand, causing him to glance down and break the spell. He picked it up and handed the volume back to her. “I’m afraid you’ve lost your place, Miss Ackerly.”
“Oh,” she said, her voice a bit dreamy. Her eyes widened. “Oh!” she repeated, and composed herself. “I shall find it easily enough later.” She took the book. “How clumsy of me. I hope I didn’t hurt your hand.”
The skin at the corners of his eyes crinkled as his smile broadened. “No,” he assured her, a tinge of amusement in his voice. “I’m quite uninjured.”
She tilted her head to the side. “Why do you not have a Scottish accent, my lord?”
“A couple reasons,” he replied. “First, my mother refused to allow it, although my father’s accent was decided and pronounced. Second, I was educated by an Englishman.” He met her eyes. “My accent manifests occasionally. Typically when I am tired or provoked.”
Charity cast about wildly in her mind, searching for a topic that would preserve the unspoken truce that seemed
to have arisen between them. “Do you have plans this evening, my lord?” she blurted, then felt her face grow warm. Now it would seem as though she were prodding him to offer his escort.
Sure enough, Lachlan’s smile faltered. “Why, yes. As a matter of fact I’d hoped to ask if you would care to accompany me to the Upshaws’ ball.”
Charity’s blush intensified, giving her alabaster cheeks a becoming peach glow, and causing the aquamarine color of her eyes to intensify. She closed them and pressed a hand against her hot cheek. “I’m so sorry, my lord,” she said, stifling a groan. “How unutterably rude and leading of me.” She covered her mouth with her other hand in an effort to stem the tide of embarrassing statements pouring forth, and stared downward, no longer able to meet his eyes.
Lachlan thought she was adorable. He sat up straight and reached for the hand that was covering her mouth, pulled it away, and then crooked a finger under her chin and lifted her face to his. “It really
was
my intention to come here and ask you to join me this evening, Miss Ackerly. Will you?” His voice was husky and low. “Please?”
Charity held her breath and leaned toward him, drawn by some force she couldn’t explain. She looked up with vulnerable eyes, her lips slightly parted, soft, open, and inviting. She nodded agreement.
Lachlan smiled and smoothed his thumb along her jaw line. “So sweet,” he murmured, then cupped her chin and, dipping his head, brought her mouth to his. Lightly, softly, he brushed his lips along hers, drawing out the moment, delaying his first taste of her, tormenting himself with the barest of touches.
Charity’s heart was pounding as she waited for the kiss to engulf her senses, to carry her away on gossamer wings
of passion until she swooned with delight. Because in every description of a first kiss she’d ever read in the silly romantic tales she preferred,
that
was precisely the way it happened. But first kisses weren’t quite the amazing, wonderful things she’d always imagined—not that she ever would have thought her first kiss would be with Lachlan Kimball in her sister’s London garden in the middle of the day. Lachlan hovered just out of reach, teasingly separate. And when his lips
did
touch hers, it was only to brush lightly across them. He immediately pulled back. In frustration, Charity leaned forward and pressed her lips fully against his.
Lachlan laughed softly, surprised by the unexpected move, and he caught her face between his hands. Amity was usually so sedate, so quiet. He pulled away a fraction of an inch, just enough to look into her eyes. They were as bright as the morning sky, wide with expectation and something else. Was it disappointment, he wondered? He released her face and watched as she settled back, a tiny frown marring her expression.
Silence stretched between them. Charity glanced at Lachlan out of the corner of her eye. He seemed to be waiting for her to speak, so she smiled politely. “Thank you.”
A glimmer of humor touched his silver gaze. “You’re welcome,” he returned with mock gravity, then added, “Is something amiss?”
“Oh, no,” she assured him. “It was really a very”—she paused, searching for just the right word—“
nice
, um, kiss.”
“Nice?” Lachlan cocked his head to the side and captured her eyes with his.
Charity squirmed, wondering why he was placing her in the awkward position of trying to reassure him that he kissed well, especially when the kiss hadn’t been at all what she expected. Uncomfortable with an untruth, she finally
said, “Well, I mean . . . perhaps they do it differently in Scotland.”
Thoroughly entertained and charmed by this young lady who, he was learning, was far more unconventional and open in a private setting than a public one, Lachlan leaned back on his hands again. “Ah, I see.” He raised his brows. “How do they do it here?”
Charity had the grace to blush at the question, since she didn’t have an iota of expertise on the subject, but she charged recklessly ahead. “In books, the girl almost always gets all swoony and breathless.”
“Mm? Is that so? In books, you say.”
The way he was looking at her, eyes half-closed and speculative, was doing odd things to her stomach again. Nervously, she smoothed her skirt over her knees and bit lightly into her lower lip.
Lachlan watched Charity’s even white teeth sink delicately into that tempting, plump bit of flesh and, doing so, decided he could not possibly allow her to think that, in all of Scotland, there wasn’t a single man who could kiss with the passion of a literary Englishman. In fact, he convinced himself, it was his patriotic duty as a Scot to persuade her of the exact opposite. He caught her arm and gave it a little tug so that she fell against him. “Perhaps then, Miss Ackerly,
you
can teach
me
.”
He slid a hand into the sun-warmed curls near her temple, tilted her head back, and took her mouth with his. The kiss was anything but gentle or hesitant. His lips slanted across hers with hot insistence, and Charity felt suddenly as though she’d been tossed into an unknown sea teeming with feelings she’d never encountered. His tongue slipped along the crease between her lips until she whimpered and opened her mouth. She couldn’t think, could only feel and react
and simply be in the moment. Right now. Here. With him. Her hand crept across his midsection to curl around and cling to his waist for support as the world spun away beneath her.
Lachlan hesitated a bare second as she opened to him. A tiny voice inside his head whispered at him to stop, to think, to wait; that something wasn’t quite as it should be. But then she wriggled and fit herself against him, and that voice faded until it was lost.
Charity gasped as his tongue invaded her mouth, but the gasp ended in a low moan filled with aching need. Tentatively she met the next foray with one of her own, and then began imitating his movements with growing confidence. She kissed him back with blossoming ardor, igniting a fire that quickly raged out of control.
Lachlan had never been so aroused by a simple, single kiss. He felt his lust mount, knew he should stop and try to regain his equilibrium, but when Charity began mimicking his movements with her tongue, his rampaging desire consumed him. He felt himself swell and harden with need. As if of its own accord, his hand slid up her rib cage to curve around the soft fullness of one breast. The hard little bud of her nipple, puckered with desire, jutted proudly into his palm, and he knew she was as aroused as he. Her unexpected ardor filled him with a sense of pride, of warmth and caring beyond anything he’d imagined.
A distant door slammed, jerking him abruptly back to reality. He remembered with a groan that they were seated on a blanket in the garden of his good friend’s home, in full view of anyone who chanced a look out of the many windows on the back of the town house, and he struggled to bring himself and the girl curled against him under control. Reluctantly he relinquished his claim on her lips,
kissed her gently on the forehead and tucked her curly head beneath his chin. There would be no need for him to look any further for a wife.
“Amity,” he said softly.
Charity stiffened in sudden shock. With a strangled cry, she pushed herself back and away from the man into whose arms she’d just melted. Without another word, she got to her feet and walked back to the house.
Lachlan watched her go, bemused. Obviously she’d been as surprised as he by the impact of their shared passion. He’d caught a brief glimpse of pain in her cerulean eyes before she narrowed them at him, and now she’d disappeared inside. He bent, gathered up the blanket she’d left behind, and began folding it, deciding he’d have to slow things down tonight when he arrived to escort her to the Upshaws’ ball.
Charity had managed by sheer force of will to hold herself together until she made it inside the town house. Once there, she began trembling violently. She’d behaved like a besotted little fool! Her embarrassment acute, she chanced a look out the window and saw Lachlan calmly folding the blanket and then bending to pick up her book. Realizing it would be only moments before he came back into the house, she pushed away from the window and ran down the hall, looking for Amity, so she could relay what had happened.
She almost crashed into her sister, who was standing near the foot of the stairs talking quietly with Dr. Meadows. In her agitated state she didn’t notice how closely the two stood, or how her sister colored gorgeously at being so unexpectedly interrupted.
“Amity, I can’t explain here, but I need to talk to you. Quickly!” She tossed Dr. Meadows an apologetic look. “In the sitting room.” She tugged on her twin’s arm.
“Good heavens, Charity! What’s got you so—?” She peered closely at her sister’s face, saw tears brimming there, ready to fall, and turned back to Matthew.
“Go on,” he prompted before she could say anything. “I’ll just let myself out.”
Amity gave him a grateful smile and then allowed herself to be pulled into the sitting room. Charity closed the doors and, her voice trembling with agitation, she began to explain why it would be necessary for her sister to attend a ball that evening with the Marquess of Asheburton.
Nine
Charity
gave the bodice of her gown a critical look in the mirror. The amethyst frock set off her creamy complexion beautifully and did amazing things to both her eyes and her hair, but Charity could see nothing but flaws in the garment. The square neckline was demure, offering only the barest hint of the shadowy valley between her breasts. But was it still too much? She pressed her hand flat against the curving mounds, as if she could somehow make them disappear.
Amity, wearing the same dress in pale lilac, sighed. “Charity, the marquess has been waiting downstairs for nearly half an hour. He’s bound to be getting impatient.”
Her sister’s face brightened with hope. “Maybe he’ll become so annoyed he’ll simply go away.”
Amity laughed. “Your hair is perfect, your gown is perfect. You look beautiful.” Her tone turned teasing. “If I didn’t know better, I’d be inclined to think you were trying to look your very best for him.”
“Quite the opposite,” returned Charity tightly, in a voice laced with stress. “If I thought I could get away with it I’d go in a burlap sack.” She gave her reflection a last rueful glance and then reluctantly followed her sister out.
They found Lachlan in the sitting room talking comfortably with Gareth. Both men instantly stood when the girls entered. Amity curtsied properly and smiled, but Charity stood, rooted in place, until her twin unobtrusively nudged
her in the side. With a start, Charity bobbed a quick, halfhearted curtsy as well.
Lachlan smiled. “Good evening, ladies.” He stepped forward and lifted Amity’s hand for a kiss, immediately recognizing her by her less colorful attire and sweet demeanor. “You look lovely, Miss Ackerly,” he said, his voice warm. “I shall be the envy of every man at the ball when I show up with such a beautiful young woman on my arm.”
Amity blushed and withdrew her hand, then glanced uncertainly at Charity, who had yet to say a word. She suppressed a frown. Her fiery twin’s moods and behavior had always been unpredictable, but she couldn’t recall ever seeing her act quite this oddly.
When she realized her sister intended to remain silent, Amity spoke. “Thank you, my lord. I do hope you don’t mind, but I’ve asked Charity to accompany us.”