Page 42 of My Darling Mr. Darling

She kissed like she was late for an appointment somewhere, with a strange desperation—as if kissing was something to be done furtively and swiftly, lest they be discovered. But she wasn’t a servant any longer, and there was no risk of her losing her position if they were caught. Besides, they weremarried.

“Vi,” he murmured at the corner of her mouth, fending off another voracious attack. “There’s no rush.” It wasn’t strictly true, given the fact that surely the carriage would be ready at any moment, but he doubted Violet had ever been courted in any meaningful way, and she deserved to be. She deserved better than a quick and tawdry tumble, better than groping hands in a clandestine tryst.

She huffed when he pulled away, an inelegant snort of aggravation, but she held her tongue as he pressed a kiss first to her temple, then high upon her cheek, then just at the corner of her lips.

Her eyelashes fluttered against the bridge of his nose. “What are you doing?” she asked. “I thought—”

“We’re getting to that.” He had the feeling that she had been kissed only as an obligatory precursor to a quick coupling, and that seemed somehow tragic. “Did your footman kiss you often?”

She swallowed hard. “No,” she said. “And not—not like this.” Her voice was rife with confusion, and he felt her lips compress into a firm line.

As he’d thought. Tragic. “What a shame,” he said, and as his lips brushed hers, the hard seam of them melted once more into petal-softness. “This isn’t leading anywhere, Vi. It’s a kiss for its own sake and nothing else. The point isn’t to soldier through it; it’s to enjoy it.”

In her throat she made a soft, noncommittal sound. “I don’t think I’m very good at it.”

He chuckled. “Like anything else, it only requires practice.” This time, her lips bloomed beneath his, and she let him guide her through the motions—soft, slow, coaxing and teasing, until she caught the rhythm of it on her own. He felt her relax and sway toward him, heard the soft sigh of her breath as she released the last of her tension. Her urgency abated, she let her eyes flutter closed and tilted her head just a bit—just enough to admit the slow thrust of his tongue.

And it was there that he lost control, and the kiss took on a life of its own. Or, rather, Violet took control and decided she’d had enough of sweet and gentle. He made some sound—a low, rumbling groan—as she stroked his tongue with hers. All thoughts of time and place disappeared in the novelty of kissing a woman who knew what she wanted and pursued it. His palm drifted from the small of her back to the curve of her bottom, and he inwardly cursed the portrait clutched in her arms that prevented him from pulling her nearer.

They had progressed so far beyond just a simple kiss, and it was neither the time nor the place, and she’d had too much wine, and if she did not return to her townhouse soon, he wouldn’t have put it past her bear of a butler to come in search of her—but still he told himself that a few more seconds couldn’t hurt. Just a few glorious seconds where she did not eye him with suspicion, where they were not adversaries. Where the past could not intrude, and the future did not exist, and the present was only for them.

And Violet was making such lovely sounds of pleasure, almost as if she had surprised herself with her enjoyment. Justonekiss could never be enough. He was going to have to—

“Sir, the carriage is—oh, my.” Wentworth’s words ended on a mortified chuckle, and the soles of his shoes squeaked on the tile as he abruptly faced away.

Violet sprang away from him, and John caught one of her bony elbows straight to his solar plexus, which wrenched the breath straight from his lungs. Reflexively, his hands curled—the right one straight into her hair, which made a tiny pained whimper erupt from Violet’s throat as the strands pulled.

A less than satisfactory conclusion to an exemplary kiss, he thought. Doubled over, he forced his hands to release her—which was more difficult than it ought to have been, considering that he was also struggling to regain his breath.

“I’m so sorry,” Violet said in distress. “Force of habit. I certainly didn’tintend—”

“It’s quite all right,” he wheezed, hauling himself upright once again, though his chest still ached as if she’d caved it in. “No permanent damage done.” Hehoped. And she’d been right to wallop him; he was certainly not the first man whose advances she had had to fend off, and she could have no idea as to how close he’d been to ordering the carriage away again, telling Violet he’d return her in the morning, and taking her upstairs.

Which, in hindsight, he could see would have been a mistake. Even had she agreed, nothing good could come of rushing a relationship she wasn’t ready for. A kiss was all she had agreed to, and even that was no guarantee that she wouldn’t wake in the morning determined to hate him all over again.

With one hand Violet smoothed at her disordered hair, which his hands had dislodged from its pins, sending stray curls sliding down her neck. She accomplished little more than to muss them into a frizz, and they solidly resisted her efforts to tuck them back into place. “I’d better go,” she mumbled, cheeks a blazing pink. She did not strike him as a woman who succumbed to embarrassment easily, but apparently having been caught in a torrid embrace by a man she’d known all her life had done the trick.

“Yes, I think perhaps you’d better,” he said. “I’m certain that tomorrow Davis will have opinions about how late I have kept you.”

Violet snorted. “Davis has opinions about a great many things,” she said.

“Yes, but helikesyou. I wouldn’t put it past him to slip arsenic into my tea.”

“Oh, Davis isn’t nearly so subtle. I think he prefers to use his fists,” Violet said, and she sounded so serious, so worried, that John chuckled.

Wentworth cleared his throat from the doorway, and Violet started a little, her arms hugging the portrait and the cloth doll to her chest. “Right,” she said briskly. “I’m going.” And she took precisely three steps toward the door before she hesitated and turned to look over her shoulder, saying hesitantly, “Thank you, John. It truly was a lovely evening.”

“It was my pleasure.” Ithadbeen, he realized. She fit within this house in a way he never had, but somehow she had managed to pull him into it with her, and if he had not yet found his place, he felt closer to it than he ever had. “Anytime, Vi. You’re welcome anytime.”

And the small smile she gave in response was pure and genuine.

Chapter Sixteen

Violet had prepared herself for the likelihood that Davis would be waiting at the door like a faithful guard dog, ready to badger her with questions, or else none-too-subtle threats levied against John. What she hadnotprepared for was an ambush.

“Violet!” Serena cried, sliding on the slick marble floor as she whirled toward the door, her fretful pacing interrupted by Violet’s sudden appearance. Behind her, leaning against the bannister of the stairs, her husband heaved a gusty sigh, arms folded his arms over his chest.

“What’s the matter?” Violet inquired, glancing between them—Serena looking flustered, and the marquess forbidding and remote. “Is something wrong?”