“I chose this bedroom so that my sister Della wouldn’t have it.” Susannah reclined on a chaise, a branch of candles at her elbow, no other illumination in the room, a book in her lap.
The picture she made was full of contradictions, dark and light, demure and seductive, alert and idle. Her hair was in a single golden braid, her nightclothes delicate white silk, white-worked hems, and frothy lace. Her expression when she set her book aside and rose boded ruin for Will’s good intentions.
“Why shouldn’t Lady Della have this room?” Will asked, even as he knew he was taking the first bait cast at his figurative feet in what could become a difficult game of fetch the stick.
“Della is reckless,” Susannah said. “Not on purpose—I’m about to be reckless on purpose—but because she simply doesn’t know any better. Della can’t see the dangers lurking behind the potted palms, for all she herself has a talent for dissembling. Hold still.”
Everything in Will—including the protestations he ought to be sputtering—remained silent and unmoving while Lady Susannah took his evening coat and then unknotted his cravat.
“Susannah, what are you doing?”
“Seducing you, or preparing to seduce you,” she said, fingers busy at his throat. “My experience is limited, but suggests fewer clothes portend greater success. This is a lovely pin.”
Fewer clothes portended greater pleasure—also greater foolishness. “A gift from my late father that even my brothers haven’t the nerve to steal. You are not seducing me.”
“Not yet,” she said, draping the cravat over Will’s shoulder. “First we must have the discussion you were unwilling to have in the Henningtons’ garden. I commend you for your prudence, because one never knows who’s lurking behind a lilac bush. The clasp is loose on this sleeve button.”
“Sycamore took my good pair, Ash my second best. These are Ash’s, because Sycamore’s have probably gone to the pawn shop.”
Susannah’s fingers brushing over Will’s throat and wrists were like a fresh breeze to a well-rested hound. They tempted Will to slip the leash, to bound off in search of forbidden adventures, no matter the consequences his disobedience might earn.
No matter anything.
“You would not discuss the missing dogs, the rewards, or Effington’s ill luck at the tables,” Susannah said. “But as it happens, I wanted to discuss something with you.”
If she started—
She started on his falls.
“Stop,” Will said, stilling Susannah’s hands with his own. “In the first place, a man can’t think, much less carry on a lucid conversation, when a lovely woman is undoing his falls.”
Susannah kissed him on the mouth. “In the second place?”
Merciful devils, the feel of her, soft, unbound, silky and sweet, pressed right against Will. No stays, or petticoats, barely any clothing…
“In the second place…I forget what’s in the second place.” Will kissed Susannah back, seized the initiative from her, and spent a few moments reacquainting himself with the glory of Susannah Haddonfield in an amorous mood. She was a smoldering conflagration of bad ideas and lovely sensations.
Her hands, disarranging the hair he’d troubled to comb to rights before scaling her maple tree; her breasts, pressed against his chest with shameless generosity; her sighs and the way she smiled against Will’s mouth when his hands cupped her derriere.
Delight surged as he drew Susannah closer. “We fit. I love how we fit,” he muttered. “Like coming home, like every happy Christmas, and—”
He dropped his hands and stepped back, because whether she’d intended to or not, Susannah was seducing him.
Sit, he commanded himself.
But where? his last functioning particle of common sense wondered. Not the bed, not the chaise. Will took the cold, hard stones of the raised hearth.
Stay.
Susannah came down beside him, her bare toes peeking out from her hems. “I do enjoy kissing you, Willow. You can’t know what a relief that is. I thought something was wrong with me, that I could not be warmed by the kisses of a man on the verge of offering for me.”
Like cold water thrown on a barking dog, her observation cooled Will’s desire.
“I am not on the verge of offering for you,” he said, a reminder to them both. A Riot Act read to the mob rule clamoring behind his half-buttoned falls. “I wish my circumstances were different, but at the present time, my expectations do not allow me to offer for anybody.”
Susannah shifted, so the toes of one foot were covered by a lacy hem, while the toes of the other remained delectably in view.
“But if you were to offer for anybody, that anybody would be me,” Susannah said. “I’m not a schoolgirl, Willow. I’m not a virgin, I’m not anybody who needs to hear your warnings and remonstrations. Have you made any progress locating the missing dogs?”