She was silent, and then, as if she could not help herself, she asked, “Of what?”
He smiled. He liked her voice. It was comforting and round, like a good brandy. Or a summer’s day.
“Of goodness,” he said, and he touched her chin, tilting her face toward his. Her breath caught—he could hear the rasp of air rushing over her lips—but she did not struggle. He waited, just a moment, because if she fought him he knew he would have to let her go. But she didn’t. Her eyes held his, as mesmerized by the moment as he was.
And so he kissed her. Tentatively at first, almost afraid she’d disappear in his arms. But it wasn’t enough. Passion swirled to life within him and he pulled her closer, reveling in the soft press of her body against his.
She was petite, small in that way that made a man want to slay dragons. But she felt like a woman, warm and lush in all the right places. His hand ached to close around her breast, or to cup the perfect curve of her bottom. But even he would not be so bold, not with an unknown lady in his mother’s house.
Still, he was not ready to let her go. She smelled like England, of soft rain and sun-kissed meadows. And she felt like the best kind of heaven. He wanted to wrap himself around, bury himself within her, and stay there for all of his days. He hadn’t had a drop to drink in three years, but he was intoxicated now, bubbling with a lightness he’d never thought to feel again.
It was madness. It had to be.
“What is your name?” he whispered. He wanted to know. He wanted to know her.
But she did not reply. She might have done; given more time he was sure he could have teased it out of her. But they both heard someone coming down the back stairs, just down the hall from the spot where they were still locked in their embrace.
She shook her head, her eyes wide with caution. “I can’t be seen like this,” she whispered urgently.
He let her go, but not because she’d asked him to. Rather, he saw who was coming down the stairs—and what they were doing—and he forgot all about his dark-haired vixen.
A furious cry rose from his throat, and he took off down the hall like a madman.
Chapter Two
Fifteen minutes later, Anne was in the same spot she’d found herself in fifteen minutes earlier, when she’d dashed down the hall and hurled herself through the first unlocked door she’d come across. Her luck being what it was （dreadful） she had ended up in some sort of dark and windowless storage room. A brief, blind exploration revealed a cello, three clarinets, and possibly a trombone.
There was something fitting in this. She had come to the room where the Smythe-Smith musical instruments came to die. And she was stuck here, at least until the insanity in the hallway was over. She had no idea what was going on out there, except that there was a great deal of shrieking involved, rather a lot of grunting, and quite a few noises that sounded sickeningly like fist on flesh.
She could find no place to sit save the floor, so she plopped down on the cold, uncarpeted wood, leaned up against a bare patch of wall near the door, and prepared to wait out the brawl. Whatever was going on, Anne wanted no part of it, but more importantly, she wanted to be nowhere near it when they were discovered. Which they surely would be, given the racket they were making.
Men. They were idiots, the lot of them.
Although there seemed to be a woman out there as well—she’d be the one doing the shrieking. Anne thought she heard the name Daniel, and then possibly Marcus, who she realized had to be the Earl of Chatteris, whom she’d met earlier in the evening. He was quite besotted with Lady Honoria . . .
Come to think of it, that did sound a bit like Lady Honoria shrieking.
Anne shook her head. This was not her business. No one would fault her for staying out of the way. No one.
Someone slammed into the wall right behind her, jolting her a good two inches across the floor. She groaned and let her face fall into her hands. She was never going to get out of here. They’d find her dried-up and lifeless body years later, flung over a tuba, two flutes making the sign of the cross.
She shook her head. She had to stop reading Harriet’s melodramas before bedtime. Her young charge fancied herself a writer, and her stories were growing more gruesome by the day.
Finally the pounding in the corridor stopped, and the men slid down to the floor （she felt this; right through the wall）。 One of them was directly behind her; they would have been back to back had it not been for the wall between them. She could hear them breathing hard, then talking as men did, in sentences short and terse. She didn’t mean to eavesdrop, but she could hardly help it, stuck as she was.