“He was a gentleman f-farmer, was he?” he asked. “And you were wildly in love with him, I suppose? An older, experienced man?”
“I was fond of him, Lord Ponsonby,” she said, “and he of me.”
“He sounds like a d-dull dog,” he said.
She was torn between indignation and amusement.
“You know nothing about him,” she said. “He was a worthy man.”
“If I were m-married to you,” he said, “and you described me as w-worthy, I would shoot myself and thus put myself out of my m-misery.”
“What utter nonsense!” But she laughed again.
“There was no p-passion, was there?” he asked, sounding bored again.
“You are being offensive.”
“That means there was no p-passion,” he said. “A p-pity. You look as if you were made for it.”
“Oh.”
“And most d-definitely enchanting,” he said, and he shifted his position, leaned over her, and kissed her.
She was shocked into immobility, even after he had raised his head a few inches to look down at her face. From close up, his green eyes glinted into hers, and his mouth looked slightly cruel as well as mocking. And she felt such a stabbing of lust in her breasts and between her thighs and up into her womb that she was quite incapable of either remonstrating with him or pushing him away.
She wanted him to do it again.
“You ought to have stayed safely locked away inside your v-village this morning, Mrs. K-Keeping,” he said. “I came here alone b-because I was feeling somewhat s-savage.”
“Savage?” She swallowed and raised her hand to set her fingertips lightly against his cheek. It was warm and smooth. He must have shaved shortly before coming out. And yet she knew that this time he was speaking the truth. She could almost feel leashed danger pulsing outward from the person hidden away inside him.
She had touched him. She looked at her hand rather as if it belonged to someone else, and withdrew it.
“I spent three years learning to c-control it,” he told her. “My savagery, that is. But it still l-lurks and waits to p-pounce upon some unwary victim. It would have been better if you had not been here.”
She was curiously, and perhaps foolishly, unafraid. She could feel his breath warm against her face.
“What brought it so nearly out of lurkdom this morning?” she asked him.
But he merely smiled at her and lowered his head to brush his lips over hers again, and then to taste them with his tongue before reaching inside to the soft flesh behind them and so right on into her mouth.
She lay very still, as though moving might break the spell.
If this was a kiss, it was unlike anything she had ever experienced with William. Totally unlike. It was carnal and sinful and lustful and, for the moment at least, quite beyond her power to resist. She could smell the daffodils. And him. And temptation.
And danger.
The hand that had been against his cheek went to the back of his head, her fingers threading their way into his thick, warm hair, while the other hand went to his waist, beneath his riding coat. Even through the remaining layers of his clothing she could feel the hard maleness of his muscles and the heat of the blood pulsing through him.
He was all raw masculinity—something quite outside her experience.
He was dangerous. Terribly dangerous.
But her mind simply refused to answer the call to defend her, and she became all physical sensation—shock and wonder and pleasure and pure lust. And a feeling of fright that enticed her more than it repelled.
His tongue explored her mouth. The tip of it touched the roof and drew a line along the ridge of bone there and sent such a rush of pure desire shivering through her that she reacted at last. She set both hands against his shoulders and pressed him away.
Far more reluctantly than she ought.
He did not fight her or show any other sign of savagery. He lifted his head, smiled slowly, and then sat up before pushing himself to his feet. When she sat up too, he reached out a hand to help her up. It was still gloved.
“One ought to be a perfect g-gentleman even when one encounters enchantment in the grass,” he said. “But at the same t-time, one feels the need to p-pay homage to it with a kiss. Life is full of such thorny c-contradictions and conflicts, alas. G-Good day to you, Mrs. Keeping. I have probably frightened away your artistic m-muse for today, have I? Perhaps you will find it here again tomorrow. Or perhaps I will f-find you here before it does. Will I?”
She gazed steadily into his keen, mocking green eyes, over which his eyelids remained half-lowered. What was he saying? Or asking? Was he making an assignation with her?
What type of woman did he think she was? And was he justified, considering the fact that she had not screeched with outrage or smacked his face as soon as it came within one foot of her?
She could still taste him. She could still feel him on her lips. Her mind was still almost numb. That secret, feminine place inside her still throbbed. And she knew that his kiss had been one of the most memorably glorious experiences of her life.
How much more pathetic could she be?
“The daffodils will not live forever,” he said.
“No,” she agreed.
But she would never paint them if she could not be alone with them, her mind placid and composed. Would she come back? And what would be her motive if she did? To paint? To see him again?
He did not wait for any further answer. He stooped to pick up his hat, inclined his head to her before putting it on, and strode away in the direction of the route around the lake.