“The vase. Can you take it from me?”
He reached cautiously with one hand. The chair rolled backward.
“Put on the brake,” she said.
“I’m not sure it has a brake,” he said.
“Don’t be an idiot,” she said. “Of course it does.”
It was hard not to be an idiot when one had a shapely woman more or less in one’s lap and one did not happen to be remotely saintlike.
“It’s on your right,” she said. “On the curving bit the arm’s attached to. The smaller rod. You had to lift it to allow the chair to move.”
“Ah, yes. Forgot.” He pushed down the rod and locked the wheels.
She carefully set down the vase. This wasn’t as easy as one would think. She had to shift her body from an awkward position to one not much less awkward. Though it would be wiser to look elsewhere—upward for instance—he wasn’t wise. His gaze became riveted on her bottom, insufficiently hidden under a too-thin petticoat. Moving in an unbearably lascivious manner, it was mere inches from the hand holding the rod.
He gripped the rod more tightly.
She began to climb off him, cautiously turning to face away.
Too cautiously, because every small move set off powerful sensations in his breeding parts, which cared nothing for friends, let alone propriety. All they cared about was the curving feminine body moving against his arms and chest and in his lap. His heart rate shot up and other sensations shot through him. His hand, gripping the rod so tightly, jerked it upward.
The chair began rolling, swiftly, toward the windows.
“Ripley, stop playing!”
“Stop wriggling.”
“I’m trying to get off without hurting your foot. Or falling on my head. Stop the chair before we go through the window!”
He pulled on the handles and the chair spun rightward.
She was scrambling to get off him, and the chair kept moving because of her movement. “Stop it, Ripley.”
“I can’t get hold of the rod,” he said. “Your skirt’s in the way.” Also her fine bottom, now resting against his stomach, was in the way of something. Clear thinking, absolutely.
She wriggled some more, and got herself awkwardly arranged with her bottom in his lap and her legs hanging over his knees. “Stop it so I can get off, will you?” she said.
He stopped the chair. He didn’t want to.
He told himself to behave, but that went against years of doing the opposite. He looked down the long, obstacle-ridden library and something in his mind shifted.
As she cautiously began to get off his lap, he turned the handles.
The chair started moving again. She reached for the rod to stop the wheels, but his thigh was in her way. She grabbed his right hand, trying to turn the handle, but he held on, immovable.
She bit her lip. Her face was flushed and her breath was coming faster and her spectacles had tipped to one side.
He pulled the handles and the chair rolled forward.
She grabbed his arm. “Ripley!”
“After a false start, they’re off, in good style!” he said. “Ripley in front, jockey Lady O holding on for dear life. But Chair and Other Chair follow close behind. Table inches up round the clump, but Ripley remains in the lead. The steed’s speed is phenomenal!”
He went on as though shouting race proceedings to an eager crowd behind a peephole, while he turned both handles, and the chair rolled swiftly toward the southern end of the library.
“Ripley!”
He narrowly missed a footstool and rolled on. “Will Ripley crash into the chest King James I gave somebody who’s been dead some hundreds of years? But no, clever Ripley misses by an inch, and now heads down the course to King Charles II’s writing desk—”
“Left, you lunatic!” she cried. “Left!”
He made a sharp left, then more sharp turns, this way and that, going backward and in circles and zigzags, narrating all the while. He felt her back shaking against him, then it broke from her: a peal of laughter.
The world changed and brightened, and his heart lifted. He laughed, too.
“Here’s a tricky turn,” he said. “Will Ripley make it, or lose his footing—his wheeling—and pitch his rider onto the turf?”
“Left!” she ordered, laughing. “Sharp left. Now right. Faster, Ripley. Red Footstool is gaining on us. Watch out! Vase trying to break onto course. Don’t be thrown off stride. That’s the way! Faster, Ripley!” She pretended to whip his knees, and he laughed so hard he nearly toppled them both out of the chair.
On and on it went, up one side of the library, and down another, narrowly missing a king’s ransom in ancient furnishings. They never saw the door open or the face peering in. They didn’t see the door close, quickly and quietly, as the mechanical chair rolled that way.
On and on the mad race went, until Ripley and his rider were both laughing too hard to do more. Then at last he let the chair roll to a stop among a tangled heap of rugs, not far from the books to which he’d meant to lead her.
“And here, at the finish line, the winner’s trophy: a great heap of moldy old books,” he said.
She looked over at the books piled on a large table, then up at him. Her face was flushed and her hair was coming undone.
“The brake,” she said breathlessly. “Lock the wheels. As a jockey, I should be mortified to fall off my mount at the race’s end.”
He fumbled with the rod, unable to concentrate.
She grabbed his hand. “Really, it’s not that complicated,” she said.
He held her hand, his fingers closing around hers, then twining with hers. He drew her closer.
His breath came hard. His chest rose and fell. Hers, too. Her eyes were blue now, and bright as stars. Traces of laughter lingered in them, though her smile was fading. The sound of her laughter, that beautiful sound, echoed in his head.
“You win,” he said. He bent his head and kissed her.
Chapter 12
The instant he’d taken her hand, Olympia knew what was coming. She could have escaped so easily. She didn’t even try.
When he kissed her, she held tightly to his hand, pressed between them, against his chest. She could feel their hearts beating, so fast. Then he drew his hand away to cup her face while he kissed her, and she brought her arms up around his neck.
No thinking involved. Instinct. Need. That was enough. She answered the kiss the way he’d taught her and the way her heart urged her to do. He wrapped his arms about her, and her pounding heart felt so light, like a bird’s, fluttering madly as it soared.