“I really can’t.” The truth.
“Surely, you’ve had a reason or two to thank Castleton.”
Except she hadn’t. Well, she had certainly said the words, thank you, to her betrothed, but she’d never had cause to be alone with him while doing so. And she was certain that he’d never imagined giving her such a lavish present as the Viscount Tottenham had bestowed upon Olivia. “How, precisely, did you thank him, Olivia?”
“We were at the theater, Pippa,” Olivia said, all superiority. “We couldn’t do very much. It was just a few kisses.”
Kisses.
In the plural.
Pippa jerked at the words, knocking over her inkpot, sending a pool of blackness across the tabletop toward a young potted lemon tree, and Olivia leapt back with a squeal. “Don’t get it on my dress!”
Pippa righted the inkwell and mopped at the liquid with a nearby rag, desperate for more information. “You’ve been”—she glanced at the door of the orangery to assure herself that they were alone—“kissing Tottenham?”
Olivia stepped backward. “Of course I have. I cannot very well marry the man without knowing that we have a kind of . . . compatibility.”
Pippa blinked. “Compatibility?” She looked to her research journal, lying open on the table, filled with notes on roses and dahlias and geese and human anatomy. She’d trade all of it for a few sound pages of notes from Olivia’s experience.
“Yes. Surely you’ve wondered what it would be like—physically—with Castleton . . . once you are married?”
Wonder was a rather bland word for how Pippa felt about the physical nature of her relationship with Castleton. “Of course.”
“Well, there you have it,” Olivia said.
Except Pippa didn’t have it. Not at all. She resisted the urge to blurt just such a thing out, casting about for another way to discuss Olivia’s experience without making it seem as though she were desperate for knowledge. Which, of course, she was. “And you . . . like the kissing?”
Olivia nodded enthusiastically. “Oh, yes. He’s very good at it. I was surprised at first by his enthusiasm—”
In that moment, Pippa loathed the English language and all its euphemisms. “Enthusiasm?”
Olivia laughed. “In only the very best way . . . I’d kissed a few boys before—” She had? “—but I was a bit surprised by his . . .” She trailed off, waving her bejeweled hand in the air as if the gesture held all relevant meaning.
Pippa wanted to strangle her little sister. “By his . . .” she prompted.
Olivia lowered her voice to a whisper. “His expertise.”
“Elaborate.”
“Well, he has a very clever tongue.”
Pippa’s brow furrowed. “Tongue?”
At her shocked reply, Olivia pulled up straight. “Oh. You and Castleton haven’t kissed.”
Pippa frowned. What on earth did a man do with his tongue in such a situation? The tongue was an organ designed for eating and speaking. How did it play into kissing? Though, logically, mouths touching would make for tongues being rather near each other . . . but the idea was unsettling, honestly.
“ . . . I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised, of course,” Olivia went on.
Wait.
Pippa looked to her sister. “What?”
Olivia waved that rubied hand again. “I mean, it is Castleton.”
“There’s nothing wrong with Castleton,” Pippa defended. “He’s a kind, good man.” Even as she said the words, she knew what Olivia meant. What Mr. Cross had meant the day before, when he’d suggested that Castleton was a less-than-superior groom.
Castleton was a perfectly nice man, but he was not the kind who inspired kissing.
Certainly not with tongues.
Whatever that meant.
“Of course he is,” Olivia said, unaware of Pippa’s rioting thoughts. “He’s rich, too. Which helps.”
“I am not marrying him because he’s rich.”
Olivia’s attention snapped to Pippa. “Why are you marrying him?”
The question was not outrageous. “Because I have agreed to.”
“That’s not what I mean, and you know it.”
Pippa did know it, and there were any number of reasons why she was marrying him. All the things she’d told Olivia and Mr. Cross were true. The earl was good and kind and liked dogs. He appreciated Pippa’s intelligence and was willing to allow her full access to his estate and its inner workings. He might not be intelligent or terribly quick or very amusing, but he was better than most.
No, he was not what most women would deem a catch—not a viscount destined for prime minister like Olivia’s fiancé, and not a self-made marquess with a gaming hell and a wicked reputation like Penelope’s Bourne—but neither was he old like Victoria’s husband or absent like Valerie’s.
And he’d asked her.
She hesitated at the thought.
That, as well.