The Way to a Gentleman's Heart - Theresa Romain Page 0,7
If you just wanted to share a memory, why didn’t you send a letter?”
Seeming to think over his answer, he flipped his hat end over end. Fidget, fidget. “Because,” he decided, “I haven’t seen you for eight years, but for all the years before that, I saw you every day.”
The kitchen clock chimed the hour, reminding her of time rushing past. “After eight years without seeing me, it seems as if you could go on in the same way.”
“I probably could have, but I didn’t want to.” His gray eyes were merry. Why did he always look as if things were going his way? “Now that I’m here, maybe I’ll begin to pine for you. Be a devoted suitor and shower you with gifts. Would you be interested?”
The fiend. Did he know that was all she’d once wanted?
Did she know what she wanted from him now?
With one fingertip, she touched the delicate comb—then, in a rush, she folded over the heavy brown paper and set the parcel down on the worktable. “Don’t buy me any more presents.”
“Why not?”
“Because it’s not right.”
He set his hat on the table beside the parcel, then stripped off his gloves. “You don’t like them?”
“I don’t know if I like them or not. It’s too confusing.”
His smile was crooked, not exactly happy. “I don’t mind confusing you, Marianne. That’s a step up from angering you, and isn’t that where we started?”
“I don’t know,” she blurted. “You’re confusing me.”
He poked through the paper and touched the discarded honeycomb with a gentle forefinger. Then he folded the brown paper over it, packing it away. Done, Marianne thought. He’d listen, and he’d stop now.
Instead, he said, “Then I’ll keep right on.” Stepping closer, he cradled her face in his hands—and he kissed her.
Oh! She hadn’t been kissed for so long. At first, the sensation startled her. Her mouth was meant for tasting recipes, for hectoring grocers, for explaining her work to assistants. It had been so long since she’d used it for anything else, for pure pleasure unconnected with work, that she was clumsy. The touch of his lips was too intimate; it was impossible to resist. She moved forward, crushing into Jack, and pressed her mouth against his. As if eager for her, his lips parted, taking her deeper.
She remembered this feeling now, this taste. The sweetness of a loved one face-to-face. The velvet touch of a tongue and the heat of lips. His strong fingers holding her face as if he couldn’t bear for her to escape him again—
But she had. Had to. Did. Must.
She was at work, and anyone could happen in and see them, and—and she was a cook now, and she had meat and vegetables to buy.
Her thoughts in a tumble, she drew back, catching her heel on the hem of her work dress and staggering. Hands outstretched, palms facing him, she recovered her balance and asked again, “Why?”
Blinking as if dazed, he asked, “Why not?”
She set her hat straight. Drove a pin through the brim into her thick coil of hair. “That’s the difference between us. I can’t afford to ask why not.”
He rubbed a hand over his chin, his mouth. “It’s just a kiss, Marianne.”
“Is it?” She swallowed.
Those gray eyes weren’t merry now. “No. It wasn’t just a kiss. But I thought if I said that, you might stop stumbling around and looking so worried and hurt.”
“I’m not hurt,” she said.
“And worried?”
She spoke slowly, as if reading out an unfamiliar recipe. “The only thing I’m worried about is missing all the choice grocery goods.”
“Really? That’s what’s bothering you?” He lifted a brow.
“What else?” she said loftily, tying the strings of her bonnet, fighting the urge to lift her hand to her lips to see whether they felt as different without as they did within.
“If you say so, Mrs. Redfern.” He popped his fashionable hat back atop his head, then pulled on the kid gloves entirely unsuited to a kitchenmaid’s errands. “Lead on, and I’ll serve you as you like.”
HE’D INTENDED IT IN a teasing way, but he soon learned that Marianne took his offer of assistance all too literally. She’d given him an enormous basket to carry, and after visiting a dry-goods grocer, it groaned and clinked with jars and tins. The march from there to the greengrocer’s seemed miles long as the basket dug into his arm and butted him in the leg.
Hitching it onto a different part of his forearm, he set his teeth. He’d have bruises all up and