One More Kiss

CHAPTER Twenty-four





“I DO NOT understand what talent of yours this is meant to showcase, Lord Jess.” Beatrice danced around him, more sprite than Venus. Her dress was a tribute to summer, the lightest lawn with an underskirt of pale yellow that made her look like she was as much a part of the garden as the flowering shrubs along the edge of the grass.

“Then you have no imagination, Beatrice.” Jess folded his arms and waited until she stopped fluttering around him. “It demonstrates my ability to provide gaming fun no matter what the situation, age, or means of the participants. I can corrupt anyone.”

She made a face at him as if she disagreed but was afraid to say so.

Today he had to do it. Garrett was right. He had to show her how dangerous flirting with a man could be.

“You are the first to know this.” Jess leaned closer for a conspiratorial whisper. It was all he could do not to nip the tender part of her neck where she had dabbed the sensuous perfume she favored. “We will be racing chickens instead of rabbits.”

“Why the change?” She shivered and he did not think it was because she was chilled.

“I realized that a rabbit race would end much too quickly. Even two or three would only last a few minutes.”

“And the entire point is to be outside enjoying the wonderful sun.”

“No, my dear Miss Brent,” he said, offering his arm as they made their way across the field to where the land dropped off. He’d had the course set up near the ha-ha so that there would be a perfect mix of sun and shade. “The entire point is to wager as much money as possible on as many frivolous things as you can think of. For example, do you see this tree?”

He walked sedately with her until they were behind a giant tree that could have housed a family in its trunk. “I wager a guinea that if we stand here I will be able to sneak a kiss without anyone being the wiser.”

She was leaning against the tree now, watching him with a look he thought she must have practiced in the mirror for the last few days.

God forbid that look came naturally. She would be fighting men off with a stick.

Now was the time to do it. To convince her he was no hero. He was no more than a man who lived to please himself. It was all that was expected of him and he would be a fool to try for more.

He pressed her against the tree, straddling her body with a leg on either side so that they were very intimately connected, his hands on either side of her head, the tree at her back.

She gave a little gasp of surprise but showed no sign of fear. Just that damnable curiosity that was both her most outrageous sin and her greatest virtue.

He laughed and bent to kiss her cheek and the tantalizing spot beneath her ear where her scent ignited all manner of impure thoughts. She turned her head in invitation. It took a herculean effort, but he did not touch her lips. Not yet.

“Before the other night, had you ever been kissed, Beatrice?”

“Of course.” She raised her hands to his chest and managed to make him completely forget what he was going to say next. He stared at her for a long moment, losing himself in her luminous blue eyes, so like her sister’s but with a light in them that was all her own. With an effort he remembered the script he’d prepared.

“Of course? You’ve been kissed by someone other than your father or your mother? Other than me?” He thought of that man who worked for her father, the one with whom she was such good friends, and felt a surge of absurd jealousy that he had not been the first.

“Yes, I have,” she said, so defiantly that he was suddenly certain she was telling a lie.

“By someone other than your brothers, cousin, or sister?”

“Don’t be ridiculous.” She looked over his shoulder.

“Was I the first man to kiss you, Beatrice?” Her eyes flew back to his. “On the mouth?” As he spoke he looked away from her eyes, at her lips. She had pressed them together as though she was trying not to ready them for his touch.

He framed her face with his hands and leaned into her. She watched as he came closer, then her eyes fluttered closed and her mouth curved to welcome his.

Jess did his best to control the contact. This was all about giving her a disgust of him, frightening her into leaving him alone. At first he was completely in charge.

Then he felt the tip of her tongue tease his mouth.

Lust slammed through him. Instantly he forgot his purpose and took what she offered, giving in return. He ran his hands down to where her hands were still pressed to his chest. He pulled them away so that nothing was between them but the clothes they wore. Their bodies were molded together, pressed against the tree.

The first kiss ended but a second drove them on, his hands in her hair, his mind filled with the taste and feel of her, his body ready to take all she had to give.

A moan, his or hers, was a call to sanity many, too many kisses later.

He ended that last kiss rudely, without a thought to her comfort. Taking a step back he left a good twelve inches between them.

“Dear God, Beatrice,” he said, breathing hard, “this is not a contest either one of us can win.”

“A contest?” His choice of words seemed to bring her into the moment more effectively than a bucket of cold water. “What does one win? More kisses?”

He could tell by her tone that she knew that was not the right answer.

“Damn it. A broken heart, or worse.”

She stepped to the edge of the giant tree trunk and looked back toward the house.

“No one in sight.” She stepped back, took his arm. She must have felt the same slap of awareness that went straight to his manhood because she dropped hold of him almost immediately. Stepping out from behind the tree, Beatrice walked toward the path to the ha-ha and waited for him.

“You suggested a wager before, um, we were distracted, my lord. What did you have in mind?”

Since that suggestion had been made before his world was tilted on its axis, it took him longer than it should have to recall what she was talking about. He joined her and pretended he had recovered his equanimity as easily as she had, and finally he found his voice. “Yes, I was going to suggest that your sister would arrive alone but that Destry would be close behind. But now I think that is too obvious and that we might as well keep our guineas for some more meaningful wager.”

She glanced at him, eyes full of suspicion, as if wondering if there was a double meaning to his words, which there was not. So she was not as recovered as she pretended. He must remember that she was something of an actress. He tried for the blandest of expressions and waited for her to speak.

She cleared her throat and answered him.

“Yes, just as pointless as my inclination to accept the wager, but only if you agree to wager that Lord Destry will promptly say something he means as a compliment that Cecilia will interpret as an insult.”

He laughed aloud at the equally easy win and suddenly they were friends. Her demeanor changed a little and she was once again more girl than woman and eager for the next entertainment. What did it say about the rake in him that he was sorry it did not involve kisses?

“You know, my lord, chickens are not bred to race.” She danced around to the front of him and walked backward. “I mean, they are more likely to peck the ground for food than they are to run across a finish line.”

“Exactly. That will give us plenty of time to wager and enjoy one another’s company.”

She stopped and gave him a questioning glance.

“Beatrice,” he said with a tired sigh, “if I meant a double entendre you would not doubt it.”

Her expression relaxed into a smile, but instead of enjoying his company she abandoned him to inspect the racecourse. He watched her as he talked with the keeper and listened to the man’s concerns about what this activity would do to the hens’ laying potential.

Jess had assured the keeper he had the countess’s permission to use the hens, and promised to replace any that were so traumatized by the experience that their laying days were over.

The run was about forty feet long, fenced with a wall of fabric down its length on both sides. Beatrice studied it as if it were one of her favorite works of art. Jess wondered what she was really thinking about.

She walked back toward him. Her insouciance was gone, her footsteps ladylike. Cautious, that’s how he would describe her. It was amusing, but not as appealing as her curiosity.

“I wager a guinea that your sister will exclaim over the chickens but refuse to actually hold one.”

“I wager a guinea that Lord Destry will reach in and take one out to show her how innocent they are.”

It was just as well that neither accepted the other’s wager, as a moment later the newly arrived Cecilia walked over to the wooden cage and marveled at the contestants. As predicted, Des came hurrying along, almost running to stand beside her. She put her hands behind her back when he lifted a hen out for her to hold.

“A guinea that the chicken will nip Des when he tries to put it back.”

“Much too certain, my lord.”

“I am going to help whichever one of them needs help the most.” Jess gave a bow from the neck and left her laughing.

The chicken did nip Destry. Cecilia handed him a handkerchief to cover his wound, and then she walked toward Lord Jess, leaving Destry with his mouth gaping open.

Cecilia’s manner reminded Jess of his mother’s when she was disgusted with his behavior. Eventually he’d learned there was no point in trying to explain or apologize. His mother, the duchess, would decide when he was in her good graces again.

Destry was not yet in Miss Brent’s good graces. Clearly, while Cecilia’s temper might have dissipated it had not cooled completely.

“He will not stop apologizing,” she hissed to Jess, more distressed than annoyed with Destry.

They looked on as Destry sought out Beatrice, who took him by the arm and moved him beyond the racecourse nearer to the edge of the ha-ha.

Cecilia began to improvise both parts of her sister’s conversation.

“Stop apologizing to her, you imbecile.” She spoke in a breathy voice amazingly like her sister’s.

“But I am sorry.” Her manly imitation of Lord Destry was less perfect but all the more amusing for it.

“The more often you say it the less credible it is, you idiot.”

“Do you think so?”

“I know it’s true, you simpleton.”

“All right, if you think she will forgive me.”

“I never said that, you silly man.”

Jess wondered how many more innocent insults Cecilia could think up. He turned his back on Beatrice. It was the only way he could give her sister his full attention.

“Forgive him, Cecilia, and put us all out of our misery.” He waited until she looked away from Destry and directly at him. “You know he is in love with you.”

She shook her head, one sharp shake. “Nonsense. He is not in love with me. He is infatuated with my looks and has no respect for me as a person. That is not love.”

She had her back to Destry now, too.

“Look at him,” Jess said. “He is the last man in the world to judge by appearances. He has spent his whole life convincing people he is fully a man despite his lack of height.”

“He’s the heir to a dukedom,” Cecilia reminded him, obviously not at all inclined to sympathy. “The marquis does not have to convince anyone of anything.”

“He had to convince his family first and foremost.” Forgive me, Des, but desperate measures are called for. “He told me once”—he considered adding “when he was very drunk” but decided it wiser to skip that—“that when it was clear he was, despite his size, a healthy boy, his grandfather would take him riding almost every day the old duke was at Bendall Manor, their main estate. Those outings are how Des learned to ride like a madman, as his grandfather would challenge him to all sorts of races and jumps.”

“That’s easy enough to picture,” Cecilia said. “He loves a headlong gallop as much as anything else.”

“Indeed he does.” How often had she watched him? “One day his grandfather challenged him to take a jump that was quite impossible. Des almost tried it, just to prove he was a man, but then he realized that if he did not make it he would surely break his neck.”

Cecilia put her hand on her own neck, engrossed in the story.

“Destry said as much to his grandfather, who merely shrugged. In that moment, he told me, Destry realized that his death was exactly what his grandfather wanted.”

“His grandfather did not want him to inherit.” Her eyes were wide with shock.

“No.” In for a penny, in for a pound, Jess thought. “The old duke told him that he would rather have the title pass to his cousin than have Destry inherit.”

“Because he is so short?” Cecilia’s expression was incredulous. “For no other reason?”

“That’s right. I suspect he worried that Destry would taint the bloodline somehow. That all future Bendasbrooks would be short.”

She glanced over at Destry and Beatrice, who were still deep in conversation.

“So you see, Miss Brent, you must believe that Destry would never judge anyone solely by their appearance.”

“But he treated me as if I was stupid, implying I could neither count nor add.” She was all sympathy now, but still confused by his behavior.

“I ask you, Miss Brent, how anyone could think you stupid when we have seen you discuss and name plants the rest of us think of as simply green and leafy.”

Destry and Beatrice came to them. They made a foursome just as the rest of the house party arrived, except for Mrs. Wilson.

Miss Wilson held tight to Lord Crenshaw’s arm as they made their way across the lawn and Jess looked at Beatrice. Both she and Cecilia were regarding the newly matched couple with undisguised concern.

“I’d be happy to loan you a few guineas, Crenshaw, if your pockets are to let after last night’s loss.”

Destry rocked back and forth from heels to toes, his teasing good-natured, but Jess had no idea how Crenshaw would react to this most public reminder of his loss.

“I managed to find a few coins, my lord marquis,” Crenshaw replied, more formally than necessary.

“What does he mean, my lord?” Katherine Wilson asked.

In fact, Jess realized, she had not witnessed the throw of the last card. So perhaps Destry’s teasing had a point.

“Nothing!” Crenshaw’s answer was a command to silence. One that made Miss Wilson blush. Jess could tell that she wanted to move away from him but Crenshaw visibly tightened his hold on her arm. Beatrice stepped forward but before she could interfere, he did.

“Miss Wilson.” Jess drew her attention and Crenshaw’s suspicion, which was all the better. “As you may recall we are to be ladies against gentlemen. So unless you wish the ladies to question your loyalty, may I suggest you join them and move to your side of the field and leave Crenshaw to us?”

He loved the ambiguity in his words and wished Crenshaw was enough of a coward to fear him. But the baron did not shrink from confrontation, especially if it involved his fists.

With a cautious smile at Crenshaw, Katherine Wilson joined the Brent sisters and Nora Kendrick, moving to one side of the fabric wall. Jess might have been wrong but he thought she looked relieved.