Page 53

Chapter

TWENTY-SEVEN

Guy had never wanted to talk about his Courting Jester debacle.

It was all too humiliating, and, as they set off for home, he had been determined to find a way to change the subject as quickly as possible to avoid having to.

But there was something about the way she listened—part sympathy, part irreverence, and part protective fury—that coaxed it all out of him anyway.

To his great surprise, over the course of just one short, leisurely half-hour ride, he told her more than he had ever told another living soul.

How he and Florinda first met. That first waltz.

All the public flirtations and private, heated trysts.

Lottie had been honest with him about the men that she had kissed and didn’t judge him for being so overwhelmed by his youthful passions that he had allowed the frisky appendage in his breeches to lead him astray.

That frank conversation had come about after he had politely tried to tell her that there had been more to his relationship with Florinda than flirting, and that had definitely clouded his judgment.

“There is nothing more determined to cover a cow than a randy bull during his first season,” she had said sagely, and then instantly colored when she realized exactly what had slipped out of her mouth.

“It is quite all right,” he had said, laughing during a conversation he had never dreamed he could ever have with a woman or find funny.

“I am a farmer’s son, remember, so I am not as easily shocked as most gentlemen would be by a farmer’s daughter who always manages to say the right thing in her own inimitable way. I was that randy bull.”

After that, he had been able to tell her everything. All the things about his doomed love affair that he had only ever kept to himself.

And for the first time, that everything also included the death of his father.

A devastating chapter in his life which he had never thought formed part of the debacle but was actually so interwoven with it when he said it aloud, that Guy understood things better himself.

The combination of grief and the new responsibilities inheriting his estate had left him in a vulnerable state before he met Florinda.

That, in turn, had made him an easy target to exploit.

He had needed something to fill the big, gaping hole left by his father, and she had allowed him to think that she was it.

In truth, by dissecting it with the help of Lottie’s fresh eyes, he also realized that Florinda had not explicitly ever made any promises or declarations that might be construed as a promise.

She had flirted with him, shamelessly, purely to make another man jealous.

Did all she could to seduce him, without actually seducing him, to keep Guy on the hook too.

Those things were still true, calculated, and unforgiveable—but as she had used every wile at her disposal to lead him on she had never once suggested that she loved him.

Nor had she ever hinted that they had a future together.

Those things were all him. Because he had felt it—or more likely wanted to feel it to end the all-consuming pain of grief—he had manifested his own desires onto her.

It was sobering to realize that he had had as much of a hand in his own downfall as Florinda had. Sobering but also enlightening.

By the time they reached the stable yard, he didn’t so much feel cleansed of the hideous experience as a little lighter inside. A little less burdened by the past and, perhaps, a little less afraid of talking about it.

“I was about to send out a search party,” said Bill as he came to greet them. “Who won?”

Lottie shrugged. “Neither of us—or both of us—depending on your point of view.”

“By that, she means it was a tie.” Guy was smiling, although why he was smiling when he had just dredged up the entire fetid riverbed of his past was beyond him. “We are both furious about it.”

Bill gave him an odd look. “Yet neither of you look furious. I wonder why that is, eh?”

“Because it was stupendous,” said Lottie, sliding off her saddle before Guy could get to her. “I’d throw the gauntlet down to race you to the church tomorrow, Bill, but I have it on the highest authority that you are no challenge.”

“That’s because I like my bones unbroken, thank you very much. I’m also not mad.” Bill shook his head at the pair of them as if they were, as he led the two Arabians back to the pasture, leaving Lottie and Guy by themselves again.

“I suppose we’d best go change for breakfast.” She said that with all the enthusiasm of someone who was as fed up with his mother’s horrendous house party as he was.

“Then it has been decreed that all the ladies are going to take a jaunt to the village to shop for last-minute frills in preparation for the big ball that will mark the end of your birthday ordeal. An entire morning of Lady Lynette’s incessant sermonizing lies before me.

” She flicked him a withering glance. “I take it you have already made your excuses to get out of it.”

“Urgent estate business, I’m afraid.” He could not help grinning. “It’s hard work being a viscount.”

“I might beg your aunt for some urgent errands to run.” Her lithe body deflated. “Before the reading salon later, although why anyone would want to hear anyone else read is beyond me. Will I at least see you there?”

“Sadly, an unexpected emergency will detain me just before it starts but I might make it back before it ends. Show face and all that, to please my mother.” Then he winced.

“But she has threatened to have me castrated if I do not attend tonight’s dreadful musicale, so I shall definitely see you there.

Lady Lynette is apparently a virtuosa on the violin and the pianoforte, so that should be something to look forward to. ”

“She’s only an expert on two instruments?

That surprises me when I would have thought there would be none that she didn’t excel at.

” Her irritation quickly melted into defeat.

“Miss Maybury has threatened to sing, so that will doubtless be a treat too. The two Miss Harpers are singing after her. A selection of arias from Mozart. A selection . Because one being warbled isn’t torture enough.

” Lottie’s expression was so glum, it was comical.

“It could be worse.” He used the tip of his finger to tilt up her chin. “They could be warbling them to you—it is in my honor, remember, and they do all want to marry me.”

That brought her smile back. “And suddenly the world is a brighter place because I at least get to watch you suffer.”

Guy realized that the finger that had tipped up her chin was still lingering on her jaw and reluctantly let it fall away. An action that, of course, she noticed.

“We keep having these odd moments, don’t we?

” Trust Lottie to face the issue of the increasingly magnetic attraction between them head-on.

“Loaded looks here and lingering touches there.” Her gaze searched his, waiting for him to either confirm or deny it and when he simply sighed she did too.

“I suspect we’ve never finished what we’ve started.

We keep getting interrupted or attempting to deny it or there is cognac involved, so it’s all”—she clenched her fist to her tummy—“festering within and—”

“That is not healthy? I think when it comes to lust it bubbles more than it festers, but it is rather distracting.” Which was putting it mildly.

He wanted her so badly it was visceral, and yet his head still urged caution because this was all happening so fast. He hadn’t known Lottie a month yet and already she had laid siege to his body and his soul.

She looked at him with such need in her lovely eyes. “Do you think if we just got it over with… bite the bullet, as it were, and just let all the lust out we might…”

“Are you suggesting that we…” Guy touched his mouth and she nodded. “Now?” He glanced around the open stable yard, incredulous. His head and his frisky appendage already engaged in all-out war. “Here?”

“Well, not here, obviously. But… perhaps if we get… um… it… over and done with…” Had they really just descended into using the word “it” and hand gestures to communicate like prudes?

When they had just discussed the ways that Florinda had figuratively and literally teased his cock and yet neither of them could mention the word “kiss” to one another!

“… as quickly as possible, it might bring an end to our odd moments, don’t you think? ”

Guy thought it would be easier to throw snowballs in hell but nodded anyway. “It might.”

And more likely it might not. He knew already a kiss wasn’t going to be enough to satisfy his craving.

Nor, he suspected, was burying himself to the hilt inside her.

Guy didn’t want a taste of Lottie, he wanted all of her.

Forever—except how could he plan forever with a woman he hadn’t yet known a whole month?

But, heaven help him, he wanted to kiss her.

So much at this precise moment he was happy to grab any excuse to overrule the increasingly irritating fearful voice in his head that urged for less haste and more caution.

“What do we do if it doesn’t work?” Because he suspected he would be right back where he was days ago—years ago—ready to throw all caution to the wind once more for a woman he barely knew.

“What if it just makes everything worse?”

She shrugged, blushing again, which he found delightful when she was usually such a supposedly unshockable farmer’s daughter. “Cross that bridge when we come to it?”

Not the answer a man who preferred to be in control needed to hear.

“It’s not much of a plan but I suppose it will have to do.” Not quite believing how utterly reckless he was about to be, Guy grabbed her hand. “Follow me.”