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“How much do you know about kissing?” Caroline murmured after a moment.

Arabella felt a pulse of alarm. “I thought I was doing well with it.”

She laughed. “I mean a different sort of kiss. I want to give you everything you want, even if you don’t know what that is yet.”

She blinked, unsure of her meaning, until Caroline moved her hand down her body to rest against her pelvis.

“I mean a kisshere.”

Arabella had heard a bawdy limerick or two before and didn’t have any more depth of knowledge than a rhyming couplet could provide, but she did have a vivid imagination. “I might not know much,” she confessed, “but I am willing to learn.”

Caroline grinned at her. “Good.”

Caroline kissed her throat and left delicate kisses between her breasts and down her ribcage and over her belly, until she reached the curls between her legs. Arabella shivered with anticipation, and then promptly lost all capability of thought once Caroline’s mouth covered her quim.

She had no words for what was happening except that it was the most intimate kiss she had ever experienced. Caroline’s lips were hotter than a brand and her tongue stoked fires of unimaginable heat between her thighs. It was slow and sweeping, grand and majestic, fierce and tender and loving all at once, and before she knew it she was hurtling toward the highest of peaks. Caroline moved against her one last time and Arabella saw starbursts behind her eyes. She shuddered and gasped, the movement shaking the nearby bookcase that held her sketchbooks. One of them fell with a thud beside them.

She lay breathless on the quilt, trying to put her mind back together.

“That was beautiful,” she breathed.

Caroline kissed her forehead. “You made many lovely sounds that told me as much. I have never had a lover as expressive as you.”

Arabella cuddled up to her. “I do hope that isn’t an encumbrance.”

“Far from it. It’s endearing.”

It had felt like Caroline was brushing her with life, filling her up with color and passion and spreading it across her body and her mind.

And her heart.

Oh, her foolish heart.

Caroline laughed and sat up. “We are disrupting the earth as well as the heavens. Apologies, Bell—I didn’t mean to throw your work into disarray.”

She picked up the sketchbook that had fallen from the shelf and extended it to Arabella. Then she paused, blinking down at the page.

“What’s the matter?” Arabella asked, drowsy from pleasure.

“I had no idea that you drew anything but landscapes.”

Arabella shot upright and grabbed the book. “I don’t.”

“You clearly do. There was a truly wonderful pencil portrait in there. Could I see more?”

Arabella frowned. This was private. She had never shared her portrait work with anyone. “I don’t think—no, I don’t want to.”

“Oh.” Caroline was clearly surprised. “Well, as you wish. I’m sure they are wonderful, though.”

Arabella fiddled with the edge of the book, a little stung. “That isn’t the reason I wouldn’t want to show them.” She paused. “You know I have been drawing all of my life.”

“Of course. How could I forget all those times we sat together on the bluffs while you filled book after book?”

“Mother and Father never valued it. I wasn’t a boy, so they couldn’t hire me a tutor for oil painting and make anything grand of my skills. All I could do was draw pretty pictures, and paint with watercolor. The same as any gentlewoman might.”

She didn’t like to speak of it. She had yearned so much for her parents’ praise, and they had been so dismissive of her talent that it had been hard for her to admit that she even had any. It had taken a long time to build the courage to sell her seascapes.

“I remember,” Caroline said softly, her hand on her knee. “You used to cry about it. You used to tell me you wish you had been born a boy.”