Tempted by a Lady's Smile (Lords of Honor #4)(7)

“I didn’t mention fishing.”

She ceased blinking and cocked her head.

“Fishing,” he said drolly. “I mentioned nothing about Westfield fishing.”

The young miss in her ruffled yellow skirts opened and closed her mouth several times. “Neither did I. I merely said he would not be fishing and he wouldn’t. Not at this hour. Even with the ultraviolet spectrum,” she added once more.

Goodness, for his disgust with all the ladies who’d line themselves here and all but bare their teeth for a chance at the title of duchess, there was something to admire in this one’s temerity and fearlessness. It made an otherwise plain young woman…someone rather, interesting.

The lady brushed that loose, what might or might not have been, curl behind her ear. “Regardless, it is hardly proper for me to stand here discussing Lord Westfield’s whereabouts with you. Or any matter, for that matter.” She wrinkled her nose at that redundancy.

Despite very nearly being thrown from his mount and the annoyance at this lady who, given the chance, would trap his friend, his lips twitched.

She flared her eyes. “Are you laughing at me?”

God, the lady didn’t require a single word from him to fill an entire conversation. He opened his mouth—

“Because I assure you, the duke would not approve of your highhandedness with a young la—” Her words ended on a startled squeak as he closed the slight distance between them and, in one fluid movement, wrapped his arms about her.

*

All the saints in heaven, in all her penchant for finding trouble and recklessness, never in her plans to speak alone with Lord Westfield had the duke’s steward or any other stranger fit into her imaginings of how this moment was to proceed.

Gemma swallowed hard and a thrill of awareness shot through her from the point of the man’s touch. She should revile him. So why did warmth continue to spiral through her? It was an irrational response to this man who was nothing more than a stranger—a towering, dark-haired, broad-shouldered stranger with features too rugged to ever be considered truly beautiful. Giving her head a clearing shake, Gemma sought to put her jumbled senses to rights as the perils of being here alone, in his arms, no less, registered. She shoved against him. “Release me this instant or I shall inform the duke of your highhandedness.” It was a lie. A bald-faced, obvious lie. She knew it and the wryly-grinning man before her knew it. She could no sooner admit to wandering the estates, unchaperoned, and being held in this man’s arms than she could hitch up her skirts and run wild through the duke’s home singing the verse of a bawdy tavern song taught her by her brother. To confess any of this would mean ruin. And yet, despite the anxiety pitting her belly, her body burned with the heat emanating from his muscular frame.

The steward drew her forward, raising her on her feet, so close their lips nearly brushed. “I do not care to be threatened, particularly by one such as you.”

Her heart hammered wildly and she feared it would beat a rhythm right out of her chest. “One such as me?” She prided herself on the steady deliverance of those words.

“A tart-mouthed, prideful, arrogant, young lady.”

His audacious charge rang a gasp from her. Oh, that was quite enough. Convincing herself that warmth had been as imagined as the hint of a smile she’d seen moments ago, Gemma shoved at his chest to no avail. She could no sooner move his broad-muscled frame than she could move the border of the Duke of Somerset’s property. “I am not arrogant.” A young lady who couldn’t bring a single gentleman up to scratch for so much as a waltz didn’t have much pride left to go around where men were concerned and that included the lofty nobles and the callous brutes like this one.

“Are you not?” he whispered. His gaze went to her mouth.

And for the slightest moment, she imagined he would kiss her and perhaps it was curiosity because she was now two and twenty and still never been kissed; not by a gentleman or even a too-bold village boy in her younger years. But a part of her longed to know the taste of him.

He filled his hands with her buttocks, sculpting his hands about them. She gasped. Push him away, Gemma Reed. You are very much in love with Robert and this is the ultimate betrayal. And yet there was nothing else for it. Gemma was an absolute wanton for she wanted his kiss, anyway.

A slow, triumphant smile curved his lips upward effectively quashing that desire borne of curiosity. She opened her mouth to blister his ears with curses when he kissed her. Gemma stiffened. She’d dreamed her first kiss would be a gentle, chaste and properly placed one by a proper gentleman. This explosion of raw vitality and passion was nothing that she could have imagined, nor anything she could have read of in any of the scandalous novels she’d devoured through the years. He continued worshiping her mouth, slanting his lips over hers again and again as though branding her as his. She moaned and he slipped his tongue inside, tasting her. And she, in turn, reveled in the taste of him. He was brandy and mint…and the faintest hint of cheroots, intoxicating and purely masculine.

He drew back and a little moan of protest bubbled in her throat. “Mayhap not arrogant, then,” he whispered, brushing a kiss to where her pulse pounded hard in her neck. “Not if you’d accept the kiss of a stranger.”

His damnable calm doused all the delicious butterflies dancing in her belly. In a move shown her by Emery when she’d been a young girl, Gemma jerked her knee up but the gentleman swiftly closed his long fingers about her knee. He caressed her through the fabric of her skirts setting off a delicious fluttering low in her belly. Words, Gemma. Indignant, furious words. Say something. Anything. “D-don’t touch me. Or I shall tell the duke.” She cringed. That was the very boldest retort she had after his bold, if magical, embrace? I am a wanton. Surely there was nothing else to explain this tumult of emotion.