Marrying Winterborne (The Ravenels #2) - Lisa Kleypas Page 0,31
feeling. Kissing is the best thing lips do other than smiling.”
Cassandra drew up her knees and hugged them. “I want to be kissed someday,” she exclaimed.
“I don’t,” Pandora said. “I can think of a hundred things better than kissing. Decorating for Christmas, petting the dogs, extra butter on the crumpets, having someone scratch the itch on your back that you can’t quite reach—”
“You haven’t tried kissing,” Cassandra told her. “You might like it. Helen does.”
“Helen likes Brussels sprouts. How can anyone trust her opinion?” Curling up in the corner of the settee, Pandora gave Helen a shrewd glance. “You needn’t worry that we’ll let anything slip to Devon or Kathleen. We’re good at secrets. But all the servants know you went somewhere.”
“Mrs. Abbott promises they will hold their silence.”
Pandora grinned crookedly. “Why is everyone willing to keep Helen’s secrets,” she asked Cassandra, “but not ours?”
“Because Helen’s never naughty.”
“I rather was today,” Helen said before she thought better of it.
Pandora glanced at her with keen interest. “What do you mean?”
Deciding that a distraction was in order, Helen retrieved the ivory box and handed it to them. “Open this.” She sat in a nearby chair, smiling as the twins untied the ribbon and lifted the lid.
Inside, three rows of folded silk stockings had been arranged like bonbons . . . pink, yellow, white, lavender, cream, all of them with stretchy lace welts.
“There are twelve pair,” Helen said, enjoying her sisters’ awestruck expressions. “The three of us will divide them evenly.”
“Oh they’re so beautiful!!” Cassandra reached out with a single finger to touch the tiny embroidered forget-me-nots bordering a lace top. “May we wear them now, Helen?”
“Only take care that no one sees them.”
“I suppose these might be worth a kiss on the mouth,” Pandora conceded. After counting the stockings, she glanced quizzically at Helen. “There are only eleven.”
Unable to think of an evasive answer, Helen was compelled to admit, “I’m already wearing one pair.”
Pandora regarded her speculatively, and grinned. “I think you have been naughty.”
Chapter 7
WHEN RHYS AWAKENED THE next morning, the first thing he saw was a dark object on the white sheets beside him, a little wisp of shadow.
Helen’s black cotton stocking, the one he hadn’t destroyed. He had deliberately left it next to his pillow, to forestall any fears that it might have all been a dream.
His hand reached out to close over it, while his mind swam with images of Helen in his bed, his bath. Before taking her home, he had dressed her before the warm hearth. Choosing a brand new pair of stockings from a box that had been sent from the store, he had knelt before her and slid them up her slender legs, one by one. After pulling the knitted silk to the middle of her thighs, he had fastened the lace welts with elastic satin garters embroidered in tiny pink roses. With Helen’s naked body so close to his face, he hadn’t been able to resist nudging his mouth and nose against the juncture of her thighs, where the fine blond fleece was still damp and scented of flowery bath soap.
Helen had gasped as he had cupped her naked bottom in his hands and let his tongue play among the tender curls. “Please,” she had begged. “No, please, I’ll fall. You mustn’t kneel like that . . . your leg is stiff . . .”
Rhys had been tempted to demonstrate a far more critical stiffness than the one in his leg. However, he had relented and released her. He had continued to dress her, helping her into a pair of drawers sewn of silk so fine that they could have been pulled through the band of a wedding ring, and a matching chemise trimmed with handmade lace as delicate as cobwebs. There had been a new long-line corset as well, but Helen had declined it, explaining that she had to wear the old-fashioned shaped corset and bustle, or her dress wouldn’t fit properly.
Garment by garment, Rhys had reluctantly covered her back up in heavy black mourning layers. But it had filled him with satisfaction to know that she was wearing something from him against her skin.
Stretching and rolling to his back, Rhys toyed absently with the purloined cotton stocking, rubbing the little mended places against the pad of his thumb. He inserted a finger into the top of the stocking, and then another, stretching the soft fabric.
He frowned as he recalled Helen’s insistence about having the wedding in five months. He was tempted