softened against her lips, as though he’d remembered he still held it there covering her mouth. He lifted it away and she swung her head around to fully look at him.
“I think they’ve gone,” she whispered with a tremulous smile.
“So they have,” he returned, smiling back at her.
His features were but vague shadow—the line of his jaw and nose, his deep-set eyes. The flash of white teeth as his lips moved.
“Should we linger a moment to be certain?” she suggested. “In case it is a trap, and they are waiting for us emerge?”
“A sound notion,” he replied, those shadow lips moving, sending puffs of air toward her mouth.
It was overwhelming.
Her body felt aflame, her senses overwrought. Another moment alone with him like this, and she might combust. And yet she had made the recommendation that they remain. Clearly Prim had lost her head. But at least she hadn’t lost her gown.
His hand lifted back toward her and she gave a small gasp, pulling back.
“May I?” he asked.
He paused, holding his hand midair, and she felt foolish.
She wasn’t certain what he wanted, but she gave a nod of assent.
After a moment, his hand continued, landing in her hair, working through tangled strands. Her elegant arrangement was not so elegant anymore. Most of her hair had tumbled free, the pins scattered and lost.
“Here,” he murmured as he tugged something loose. When he withdrew his hand, she saw that he held a spiny leaf between his fingers. “You had a bit of bramble in your hair.”
“Thank you,” she said softly. She tore her gaze from him to face the path again, but it did no good. She could feel his stare on the side of her face leaving a wake of heat where it roamed, as palpable as touch.
How long must they wait?
Expelling a deep breath, she faced him again. She locked eyes with a gaze of dark glowing embers.
“How did you find me?” she asked. “After I left you, how did you . . .”
“You mean after you ran like the dogs of hell were after you?”
She winced and gave a light laugh. “Yes. After that.”
“A Higher Power must have led me to you.”
She smiled in the darkness. “That’s a bit of whimsy. I didn’t know you had such a fanciful streak in you, my lord.”
“I’ve a great many depths . . . and I thought you weren’t going to call me that anymore.” The air from his words, the movement of his mouth, whispered against her lips.
“No one can hear us here,” she replied, and it was best, safer, to resort to formality. Especially here in this most-intimate situation.
“I can hear you. And I like the sound of my name on your lips.”
“Oh.” She breathed the word more than spoke it.
Tension hummed in the air and she wondered if he felt it too. Or was it just Prim?
She was all awkwardness, huddled on the ground with him. Even in the reduced light, he seemed steady and confident in a way only a man in full control of his world could be.
“You must not say things like that.”
“Why not?”
She mulled that over. Indeed. Why not?
Because his words, his voice, twisted her up inside.
Because words like that made her feel overly warm. They made her like him more than she should. They made her forget the world she belonged to and the world that awaited her.
Rather than answer him with any of those things though, she cleared her throat. “Do you think we should—”
His head dipped and he kissed her, pressing his mouth over hers.
Never had Prim imagined a kiss taking place outside the bounds of a betrothal. That had been one of the many tenets she’d memorized from the rigid Lady Druthers’s book. Intimacy between a man and woman prior to the posting of the marriage banns was simply not done. Forbidden. The public announcement of a couple’s forthcoming nuptials had to be made before a kiss was ever exchanged.
In truth, Mrs. Druthers warned against such intimacy before the exchange of marriage vows. Aster had told Prim that she had caught Violet and Redding in a heated embrace, sharing a kiss. Prim found that surprising, as Violet, who courted Mama’s favor in all situations, often parroted the tenets from Lady Druthers’s book, and succeeded in making Prim and Aster look absolutely inept.
In any event, Prim had not thought she would want to kiss someone after only a day, but she wanted this with every pore, every quivering fiber of her person. His