“A fine consolation, indeed,” she said, turning her face back to the window and looking up, “when it is impossible to get up there to see.”
“A hot air balloon?” he suggested.
“Ugh!” She shuddered. “There would be rain on the way up to the clouds, and then the mist and dampness of the clouds themselves.”
“And the glory of the sunshine when we burst through to the other side,” he said.
“We? Would we go together, then?”
“Oh, I think so,” he said. “I was a military officer, of course, but I do not believe I could bellow I told you so quite loudly enough for you to hear me from down here.”
“It would be horribly cold despite the sunshine,” she said. “Have you never seen snow on mountaintops when it is warm on the plain?”
“You are determined to be pessimistic,” he told her. “We would take fur robes with us and huddle together inside them.”
“Together?”
She turned her head again. Her face was very close to his.
“One of the best sources of heat,” he explained, “is body heat. I daresay it would be very chilly indeed up there.”
“But we would be warm and snug together inside our furs.”
“Yes. We would enjoy double our individual body heat.”
He could almost feel her breath on his face. And her body heat. And here he was flirting again, but far more blatantly this time. Though he had not meant to. He had meant to cheer her up, to coax a smile or a laugh out of her.
“Where would we go?” she asked.
“Far, far away.” His eyes dipped to her lips when she moistened them with her tongue.
“Ah.” Her voice was a breathless whisper. “The very best place to go.”
“Yes.”
“Together.”
“Yes.”
Her eyes roamed over his face. They were large and dark and long-lashed and fathomless.
“It is longer than six years since I was kissed properly,” she said.
“Properly.” He swallowed. “And for me too—the same length of time. Perhaps we were both kissing for the last time on the same day at the same hour, more than six years ago, but we were kissing other people, not each other.”
“Your colonel’s niece?”
“Your husband?”
They both smiled.
“It is far too long a time,” she said.
“Yes.”
“Perhaps,” she said, “we ought to do something about it.”
He tried to think of all the reasons they should not—or at least all the reasons he should not.
“I am sorry.” Her cheeks flushed and she turned her head rather jerkily to gaze through the window again.
He tipped his head slightly to one side and kissed her. And one thing was immediately certain. His sexual appetite had not been killed or even suffered damage. Her lips were soft and warm and moist. They were parted and slightly trembling. She turned fully toward him, and her hands came to rest on his shoulders.
He opened her mouth with his own and slid his tongue inside. She sucked it inward and pressed it to the roof of her mouth with her own tongue. He felt a pleasure so exquisite that he almost forgot about his cursed canes.
And then her face was a few inches away and her hands were on either side of his face, her fingers pushing into his hair. Her eyes were luminous and steady on his, her lips full and rosy and still moist and still inviting.
“I am sorry,” he said. “I am handicapped. I cannot hold you.”
“Perhaps that is a good thing at this precise moment.” She smiled suddenly and looked young and very pretty. “Or perhaps it is just that we are both starved and any kiss would feel good.”
“A lowering thought.”
She dropped her hands to her sides, still smiling. But reality was intruding.
“I really ought not to have stayed when I discovered that Lady Matilda had gone,” he said. “You will be horrified when you relive this afternoon after I have left.”
“You presume to know my thoughts, do you?” she asked him. “My future thoughts? This was a horrid day before you came, Sir Benedict. I do not at all regret that Matilda has gone, but I do resent the fact that she left me feeling as if I were somehow in the wrong. And then it rained and I knew we could not ride. And the rain was dreary and I felt restless and lonely and utterly self-pitying. Self-pitying people are not pleasant company, even to themselves. And then, when I was at my lowest ebb, you came. And you somehow coaxed me into talking to you as though you were a trusted confidant. And then you flirted with me. For a few moments you bore me off with you to the sunshine above the clouds in a hot air balloon, wrapped together in warm furs and bound for a place far, far away. And then you kissed me. I am no longer at a low ebb. You can have no idea what I will feel after you have left. But I do assure you it will not be horror.”
Good Lord! He thought she might find later today that she had deceived herself. He felt distinctly uncomfortable himself. This was not the way a gentleman behaved. “Your sherry will not be getting cold,” she said, moving past him, “but my tea certainly will. Shall I put some biscuits on a plate for you?”
“Just one,” he said as he followed her more slowly across the room. “Thank you.”
She fetched him his biscuit and sherry while her dog settled at his feet again.
“How old were you when you married?” he asked.