He was by far the most masculine man she had ever encountered—or kissed. But then, she had only ever been kissed by William before today, and kisses from William had been more in the nature of affectionate pecks on the cheek or forehead.
Oh, dear, she felt like a novice swimmer suddenly plunged into the very deepest part of a turbulent river.
She touched the fingertips of one hand to her lips. They were trembling—both the fingers and her lips.
4
Vincent was still in the music room when Flavian opened the door quietly and stole inside. He was at the pianoforte, playing something with plodding care. The dog cocked his ears and had a good look without lifting his head and decided the intruder was no threat. The viscountess’s cat—Squiggles? Squabble? Squat?—had commandeered one side of the sofa. Flavian lowered himself to the other side, but the cat was not content with simple symmetry. It padded across the cushions, paused to give him an assessing look, made its decision, and took up residence on his lap, a big, curled-up blob of feline warmth. There was nothing to do with one’s hands but stroke him between his ears.
Flavian had had pets galore as a boy, none as a man.
The plodding stopped, and Vincent cocked his head to one side.
“Who came in?” he asked.
“Me,” Flavian told him vaguely and ungrammatically.
“Flave? Stepping voluntarily into the music room? While I am in it, practicing a Bach fugue at considerably less than half speed so that I can get the notes and the rhythm exact?”
“Squeak? Squawk? S-Squid? What the deuce is the name of this cat?” Flavian asked.
“Tab.”
“Ah, yes, I knew it was something like that. Tab. He is going to be l-leaving cat hair all over my breeches and coat. And he is quite unapologetic about it.”
Vincent turned on the stool and looked almost directly at him in that disconcerting way he had of seeming very unblind.
“Blue-deviled, Flave?” he asked.
“Oh, not at all,” Flavian assured him, waving a hand airily toward the pianoforte, though Vincent would not see it. “Play on. I thought I might c-creep in here without disturbing you.”
Fat chance. Vincent, who for a few months after his near-encounter with a cannonball on the field of battle had been as deaf as he was blind, could now hear a pin drop at a hundred yards—on thick carpet.
“This has something to do with last night?” Vincent asked.
Flavian set his head back and gazed at the ceiling before closing his eyes.
“Play me a lullaby,” he said.
And Vincent did and brought him near to tears. Flavian liked to tease Vince about his playing, especially on the violin, but really he was quite good and getting better all the time. There were a few minor accuracy and tempo issues, but the feeling was there. Vince was learning to get inside the music, to play it from the inside out.
Whatever the devil that meant.
And what in the name of thunder was enchanting about an unfashionably clad, not particularly young, not obviously beautiful woman, who was idiotic enough to stretch out on the grass of a meadow so that she could see the world as daffodils saw it, and then did not have the sense, when interrupted, to hop to her feet and run like the wind for home?
She really was quite ordinary. She was tallish and slender with hair of a nondescript brown and unimaginative style. Her face was pleasing but hardly the sort to turn heads on a crowded thoroughfare—or in a half-crowded ballroom. He would surely not have noticed her at that autumn ball if Lady Darleigh had not asked him to dance with her so that she would not be a wallflower. And what had that request said about Mrs. Keeping? He would not have noticed her on the village street the day before yesterday if it had not been nearly deserted. He would not have noticed her this morning if she had not been . . . lying among the daffodils.
Looking all willowy and relaxed and . . . inviting.
Devil take it, she was not ordinary.
He ought not to have kissed her. He did not make a habit of kissing respectable females. There were too many dangers involved. And this particular respectable female happened to be the friend of his hostess here at Middlebury Park.
He ought not to have kissed her, especially in his present mood, but he had.
And actually, in retrospect, he knew she had one feature that was definitely out of the ordinary, and that was her mouth. He could have lost himself on it and about it and in it for the rest of the morning and beyond if a bird had not squawked quite unmelodically from a cedar branch and broken his concentration—and if she had not pressed her hands against his shoulders at the same moment.
Dash it all, he should not have kissed her. He would not have noticed her mouth if he had not touched it with his own. And now he craved . . .
Ignore it.
She ought not to have been there at all, trespassing on private property. Though she had told him, had she not, that she had permission, and she was the viscountess’s friend. He had been speechless with rage when he first spotted her. He had walked all that way because he needed to be alone, and there was a damned woman there before him, taking a nap in the middle of the morning and looking damnably picturesque as she did so. He had almost turned on his heel and stalked away before she saw him.
It was, of course, what he ought to have done.
But he had paused first in order to assure himself that she was not dead, even though it was perfectly obvious that she was not. And then he had just stood there, thinking, like a nincompoop, of fairy tales. Of Sleeping Beauty, to be precise.
Anyone who believed his head had mended while he was at Penderris needed his own head examined.