“I must tell Lucie,” she murmured. “She leads our suffrage chapter back in Oxford,” she added. “I wonder if she knows—”
“I assure you they’re not motivated by politics.”
“What do you mean?”
He finally halted and looked at her. His expressing was grim. “They don’t wear trousers to make ladies clutch their pearls or change laws, but because it allows them to work,” he said. “They aren’t freaks for you to gape at and find exotic.”
She gasped. “Is that how you think I think?”
“And those children,” he said, “they’re not your playthings.”
He resumed walking, the matter settled. For him.
“But of course,” she said, keeping up with quick, angry steps. “You think I’m a snooty brat.”
“Don’t worry,” he said, “you’ve announced yourself as such by showing with a parasol.” He cast the pale blue contraption she was holding over her head a contemptuous glance.
His low regard stabbed her right in the heart, when his cruelty should no longer surprise her.
“My skin cares not where the sun happens to shine,” she said, shaking with distress. “Would you rather have me burn as proof of my good character?”
His face fell, as though he had heard impending tears in her voice. “No,” he said gruffly, “no, I—”
“Well, I think you would. You have no desire to mend a dratted thing between us.”
She hurried ahead, the path swimming before her eyes. She shouldn’t care; she shouldn’t, and comprehending that she did doubled her misery. At the inn, Mhairi was manning the reception desk and greeted her with notable wariness, which Hattie tried to assuage with a wide smile while storming past. Her blood was still rushing in her ears when she reached the dreadful little room. She dropped the parasol and ripped off gloves and hat. Mr. Blackstone better have the decency to go elsewhere—preferably straight back to his empty throne in the land of the dead.
The door flew open, and she was stunned to the spot by the smolder in Lucian’s eyes. He came to her; he didn’t halt until his knees pressed into her skirts. Her hands fluttered up, but he grabbed the thick fabric at her hips and pulled her flush against him, and her thoughts flew apart. His gaze searched her face so intently, as if he wished to see right into her soul.
“Much that I despise,” he said hoarsely, “and all that I desire, meets in you. And it frustrates me beyond reason.”
She felt the erratic thud of his heart beating through her chest in counterpoint to her own, and a different kind of agitation gripped her.
“That’s not my fault,” she whispered.
“It isn’t.”
Her fingers curled into the lapels of his coat. “It isn’t an apology, either.”
His thumb was against her mouth, lightly pressing on her bottom lip. The brazen caress flashed through her body like a shooting flame, and his eyes lit up at her soft mew.
“I don’t know how to do this right,” he murmured. He took off his hat and tossed it aside. “I don’t know what to make of you. I know I’d rather my skin burned than yours.”
He would kiss her now. Had he been angry, she would have resisted. But she sensed a need singing through him, deeper than desire, and it harmonized with a fiercely frustrated cry in her own soul. She raised her chin. His fingers slid into her hair, and their mouths met. A hot touching of tongues, and she headlong drowned in him—smooth lips, sugared tea, thick hair between her fingers. She indulged in mindless groping and heated closeness until she felt his urgency, hard and heavy against her belly, a reminder that kissing was not where he might wish to stop. As if sensing her surging apprehension, he eased his hold on her. Everything gentled and slowed. His hand slid from her hair and smoothed a warm path down her spine, then up again, wooing her to remain in his embrace. He cradled her cheek in his other hand, mindful of the sensitiveness of her skin, and brushed his thumb at the still damp corner of her eye. She leaned against him, trembling, unable to stop feeling him, and a last tension in him melted.
When he deepened the kiss again, it felt like an apology: deliberate and tender, seeking and somewhat humbled, an unfamiliar taste on his lips. It rendered every sensation acute: the carefully coaxing slide of his lips against hers, the intimacy of tongues teasing each other, the caress of his breath across her cheek. It made her swoon. She broke away with a gasp.
Lucian made no move to retrieve her, he was watching her, almost warily. Their breathing was shaky. The place between her legs ached. She shifted uncomfortably, and he tipped back his head on a dark laugh. “Supper is at seven o’clock,” he said. He left without his hat.