Page 16 of Hazard a Guest (Ladies’ Revenge Club #3)

E mber Donnelly had never been kissed like that before.

She had found herself back in her room eventually, though she couldn’t account for much of what had happened after that kiss.

They had talked some more, certainly. He had walked her back here. He hadn’t touched her again, for some reason.

The whole thing, the whole man , was completely confounding.

What did a kiss like that mean, anyhow? It hadn’t been hungry in the way kissing usually was, or dutiful either. She’d had both. She thought she’d understood what kissing was and what purpose it served.

So what had that been?

Did Joe Cresson not want things the way men usually wanted things? Was all that blushing something she’d misread?

She grunted, flopping onto her back and staring up at the whorls of plaster on the ceiling. It would take too long to write to Dot or Millie and get their thoughts. She didn’t want something like that out in the world, anyway.

And what an odd feeling, she thought, to be the one with kissing to talk about after all this time.

She, who’d buried a husband and run the gamut of a contract where she served as mistress to an earl, was paralyzed in her sheets like a schoolgirl over a kiss that hadn’t involved any touching or any tongue.

Touching she could manage. Tongue she understood. Desire wasn’t new to her, but whatever had just happened certainly was.

Somewhere deep inside her, she had a creeping suspicion that despite having participated in a decent amount of kissing and having had a few lovers besides, this thing today, this chaste little brush with Joe bloody Cresson, had been the first real kiss she’d ever experienced.

It was ridiculous, wasn’t it?

Wasn’t it?

And if she didn’t find someone to talk about it with in the next handful of seconds, she was at high risk of devolving back to twenty and gushing over it to little Hannah, and that wouldn’t do. It would only encourage the little chit to keep emulating her.

She sighed and kicked her feet out, slapping at the blankets on either side of her.

Hazard , she reminded herself. How are you going to teach him hazard? We have to fool everyone.

She conjured mental images of dice hitting felt, of numbers and marks and odds … of wrists and forearms and fingers and … oh, damn it all to hell!

Why hadn’t he used any tongue? Why hadn’t he grabbed her or rounded the table to press her into something?

Didn’t he want to?!

She squeezed her eyes shut, ostensibly to banish the mutinous thoughts, but of course, also to invite them into relief behind her eyelids.

She could still taste him, just faintly, on her lips, still feel that soft, sweet brush of his lips. She flexed her hand, remembering the line of his jaw, the smoothness of his skin, the scent of almonds in his pomade.

She could feel the fire at her back and the uneven wood of the table under their entwined hands.

The ghost of that moment was like to haunt her for the rest of her life.

The door opened, swinging so rapidly on its hinges that it released a little high note of alarm. It made her eyes pop open.

She sat up, expecting Hannah or perhaps Merryn, and instead found the disheveled face of Freddy Hightower, looking around the room like he’d never been indoors before.

“Freddy?” she mumbled, rubbing at her eyes with the heel of her wrist. “The devil are you doing?”

“Where the hell is everyone?!” Freddy demanded in a hushed panic, slipping inside and clicking the door shut behind him. “I’ve been all around the house today and no one is about! There’s still food, but that’s it! Did someone die?!”

She began to laugh, a bone-deep relief at this distraction seeping into her skin like warmth after cold water.

“No one has died yet,” she assured him, scooting over and allowing him to cross the room and collapse on the edge of her bed.

“Something rotten was in the food last night. Half the house is bedridden with it.”

“Oh!” he said, obviously relieved as he sank into the mattress. “Is that all?”

“That’s all,” she assured him. “And I’m just fine. Thank you for asking.”

He smirked at her but did have the grace to look a little chastened. “You’re always fine,” he said with a flippant little shrug, performative to the last.

“You can’t just barge in here, you know,” she said, drawing her knees up under her chin. “What if Hannah had been here instead of me?”

“She’s in the breakfast room,” he said immediately. “That’s how I knew to come look for you.”

“With her father? I thought you said no one was about.”

“No one is about that I can demand answers from,” he corrected with a sigh. “Her father was there, yes, and Mr. Beck. She was eating at him, and he looked deeply uncomfortable. Her father was oblivious. It was awful.”

“That sounds awful, yes,” she agreed with a little frown. “I told her to stay away from Beck.”

“Did you?” Freddy laughed, looking surprised. “Because that always drives a young girl off a mark, doesn’t it?”

She flashed her teeth at him in alarm. “Oh, feck,” she managed. “You’re right.”

“I am?” He looked unsettled, then, after a breath, delighted. “I am!”

“You are,” she agreed, and laughed again. “I’ll have to change tack.”

He nodded, giving the room one more visual scan, like he was making an accounting of any comforts in Ember’s space that he might want for his own, and then sighed. “Sorry to barge in,” he told her with half a smile. “Thanks for humoring me.”

“Wait,” she said suddenly, lurching up and grabbing his shoulder before he could depart. “Joe kissed me.”

He froze, turning back to her with wide eyes. “He never did.”

“I promise you it happened,” she insisted, releasing him and sinking back down. “I’m very confused.”

He watched her, wrinkling his brow. “Why are you confused?”

“You’re not?” she shot back, perhaps unkindly.

“Only that he did it and not you,” Freddy said with a shrug. “You didn’t like it? Or something odd happened?”

She blinked at him, wondering if the silence that settled in the aftermath of his question might be a dear and come crush him into pebbles. “Forget it.” She sighed, throwing her hands up and looking away.

He sighed heavily, a little grin of affection finding its way onto his face as he reached out and turned her chin back to facing him. “Ember,” he said in a voice that was all too steady for the likes of Freddy, “you like him, don’t you? You actually really, genuinely like him.”

“Everyone likes him,” she snapped back, knowing how defensive she sounded.

“You’re not everyone,” he replied, dropping his hands into his lap and really taking a moment to regard her. “You’re frightened.”

“Get out,” she said without any real heat, setting her jaw. “Get out of here.”

“No.”

They watched each other for a second, the context of many years of friendship simmering between them, bubbling away that little blip in the middle of that and this, where they had fallen out.

She knew he actually cared, and it was truly a little bit terrible.

“Yes, all right, fine,” she said with a frown. “I like him very much. Too much.”

“Then what’s the problem?”

She stared at him. Was the answer to that not completely bloody obvious? Had Freddy lost his whole memory in addition to his sense? “He’s not for me,” she reminded him. “You said it yourself.”

There was a beat of quiet, of held gazes where Ember could hear nothing but the sound of her own heart in her ears.

“I did say that,” Freddy said softly, looking sick about it. “I’m a stupid bastard. It’s not true.”

“It is true,” she moaned, dropping her head into her hands. “We both know it’s true.”

“No!” He slapped her wrists, hard enough to sting, a thread of light panic in his voice. “No, stop that! Since when do you listen to the likes of me? Be sensible!”

“Ow!” she hissed, and slapped him back.

He laughed, he really laughed, holding his own arm where she’d struck him and letting his face fully crinkle into the absurdity of it.

He leaned back and watched her, panting and furious, and it seemed to only make him happier.

“Good God, Donnelly,” he said fondly. “I think you’re in love.”