Chapter 16

Chapter Sixteen

H annah's eyes fell closed as James's mouth captured hers. Her body listed against his. Indeed, she may well have sighed. She wasn't entirely certain. Her mind had gone to porridge. It was impossible to breathe, let alone think. She could only feel. The granite-hard breadth of his shoulders beneath her fingers. The unyielding strength of his arms encircling her waist. And his lips, warm and sweet, as he kissed her slowly, tenderly.

Her own lips softened under his. Their breath mingled. It was a shocking intimacy. And there was no mistaking the gentleman with whom she was sharing it. It was James Beresford. Not the icily controlled viscount who had intimidated her all those months ago at Beasley Park, but the real James. The man who had been miserable after she'd rejected his proposal. The one who had risked his heart and his pride to come back to her, knowing full well he might be rejected again.

It was surely that which made him hold her a little too tightly, kiss her with a trifle too much heat.

Hannah didn't mind it. Quite the reverse. Her heart thumped rapidly, and her blood surged in her veins. She curved a hand around his neck. " James ," she murmured.

The single whispered word seemed to recall him to his senses.

His mouth stilled on hers. At length, he drew back. His color was high, his chest rising and falling with unusual rapidity. "I have been unforgivably forward," he said gruffly.

"Oh no," she objected, breathless. "You haven't— That is, it wasn't?—"

"Forgive me. I did not bring you here to take advantage of you."

"You haven't taken advantage of me. Indeed, if you hadn't come to my aid, I'd likely have fallen down the steps."

"A generous depiction of what just occurred. I must beg your pardon."

She looked into his eyes. For all his sudden formality, he was still holding her fast in his arms. "Pray, don't spoil it," she said softly.

He stared down at her, his brows notched. "Hannah?—"

"Miss Heywood?" a lady's voice drifted into the tower from the churchyard. "Lord St. Clare? We have come to join your explorations!"

Hannah swiftly withdrew her hands from James's shoulder in the same moment he abruptly released her from his arms. "Good heavens," she said under her breath. "It's Miss Paley."

"They must be here," a male voice replied from below. "There's nothing else of interest for miles."

"She isn't alone," James said to Hannah.

Hannah stepped back onto the step above. She hastily smoothed her dress in case the muslin had been unduly wrinkled during their embrace. When she'd finished, she gave James a terse nod.

He nodded once in reply before answering Miss Paley and her companion. "We're on the stairs!"

In short order, the sound of Miss Paley's skirts brushing against the stone announced her presence on the winding steps. She soon appeared behind James. "You are braver than I, to have ventured up so far," she said. "What if this pitiful structure should tumble down on all our heads?"

Lord Fennick came after her. An almost imperceptible flicker of annoyance crossed James's face at the sight of him. "It's stood for centuries," Lord Fennick said. "It's not going to fall today."

Hannah glanced behind him. "Is it only the two of you, sir?"

"Lord, no," he replied. "We've made a party of it."

"The others are in the churchyard," Miss Paley said as the four of them continued up the tower steps. "Miss Fieldstone has brought a hamper."

The remainder of the picnic passed in a blur of activity. Miss Paley, Lord Fennick, and the others chattered, laughed, and made raucous sport with each other as they explored the ruins, dined in the churchyard, and duly walked back over the hill to rejoin the rest of the party.

Hannah endured it all with what she hoped wasn't too much shyness. She smiled when she was expected to and politely made her replies to questions, all the while privately possessed of a tumult of emotion.

If James was similarly afflicted, she couldn't tell. The moment the others had arrived, his face had reverted to its cooly unreadable mask. He was still civil. Still attentive. He'd brought her a plate of bread, cheese, and nuts, and had sat beside her on the picnic blanket, gallantly peeling her an orange, but there was no more privacy to be had with him. No chance for a quiet moment alone and no opportunity for intimate conversation.

Hannah supposed it was for the best. What could she possibly say to him after they'd shared a kiss like that?

It had been her first. That much must have been evident to him. She was grateful he hadn't remarked on it. It was bad enough that he'd apologized to her—and multiple times too.

A disconcerting end to an otherwise wonderful experience.

She was resolved not to be offended by it. No doubt most gentlemen who had kissed a respectable young lady would have behaved thus. To be sure, many of them would have followed their kiss with a proposal.

The possibility that James's thoughts might be trending in that direction, did nothing to calm Hannah's already frayed nerves.

She was growing closer to him, it was true, but she wasn't prepared to revisit her decision on spending the rest of her life with him. It was too soon. There was too much about their fragile future that was still uncertain.

At the end of the picnic, James handed her up into the Carletons' barouche himself. "Will you be attending the dance at Lord and Lady Teesdales' Friday evening?" he asked her.

"I will," she said. "Might I see you there?"

James's gaze held hers, unwavering. "You may depend on it."

* * *

James was halfway to his waiting curricle when Fennick's voice sounded behind him.

"Didn't expect to see you back in Bath so soon after you left it," he drawled. "But then, your family estate is near here, is it not?"

James was in no mood for Fennick's needling. Not after he had just spent several hours privately fuming at having his limited time with Hannah interrupted by Miss Paley, Fennick, and the others. A party, they'd called it. Torture more like. All that affected laughter and inane conversation as they'd wandered the ruins and irreverently dined among the headstones.

The worst of it was that James suspected he should be grateful for the interruption. In the aftermath of kissing Hannah, his normally functional brain had been running on more instinct than sense. A gentlemanly instinct, to be sure. Given the chance, he'd like have proposed to Hannah again. And when she'd rejected him—as she was sure to have done—he would have been honor bound to leave Bath, just as he'd promised her father he would.

It was a damnable situation. And not at all like him, either. He didn't go about kissing young ladies indiscreetly. And he didn't lose control. Not like that. Not ever.

He continued to his curricle where Bill awaited him, holding the horses' heads.

"Beasley Park, wasn't it?" Fennick pressed, following after him. "Your mother's ancestral home as I remember."

"Do you have something you desire to say to me, Fennick?" James inquired as he came to a halt beside his team of matched grays.

Fennick stopped next to him. His mustache was drooping, his pale face slightly sunburned from lounging on the lawn without his hat. He'd spent many moments during luncheon observing James and Hannah with a malicious gleam in his eye. "Merely indulging my curiosity."

"Indulge it elsewhere," James said.

Fennick chuckled at James's tone of command. "You haven't changed a whit since school, have you? Every inch of you the same—too arrogant by half. The only oddity is why a man of your ambition has lowered himself to spending the season in Bath."

"You presume I owe you an explanation?" James turned to address Bill. "How are they?"

"Ready to go, my lord," Bill said. "I watered them and walked them not half an hour ago."

"Good lad," James said.

Fennick remained standing beside the curricle as James took the reins from his tiger. "Miss Heywood is a queer little creature," he said.

James outwardly stilled, even as a frightening surge of rage ignited in his veins. It took the whole of his faculties to master it. Once he did, he handed the driving reins back to his tiger, and slowly turned to face Lord Fennick.

The blackguard's lip curled with satisfaction at having successfully hit his mark. "Not anything special, I thought," he continued unrepentantly. "But your interest encourages me to give her a second look."

"Is this what you've been reduced to since Oxford?" James asked in a voice of perilous calm. "Threatening respectable young ladies?"

"I'm a man of property, with a title to my name, and an unsullied bloodline to match—unlike some other gentlemen I could mention. The suggestion of paying my addresses to Miss Heywood can hardly be construed as a threat." Fennick smirked. "She colors up prettily, doesn't she? One might almost be willing to overlook her peculiarities."

"Stay away from her," James said.

"And there are several. Miss Heywood appears to?—"

"Don't even speak her name."

Fennick broke off. "Why not? She's just the diversion I need to amuse me this season. More amusing still, now I've discovered she's your little pet. I predict I'll be speaking her name frequently."

"You won't," James assured him.

"Or what?"

"Or your unsullied bloodline will end with you."

Fennick's satisfied smile froze on his face. His eyes narrowed. "Now that sounds like a threat."

Bill's gaze darted between the two men as he listened with rapt attention. He would doubtless be providing a detailed report of the entire exchange in the servants' quarters this evening.

"It's not an idle one," James said.

Fennick uttered a snort of disbelief. "You're bluffing."

James took a menacing step toward him. He had ignored countless remarks from Fennick and his kind over the years. Snide comments about James's grandfather having been a highwayman, about the legitimacy of James's father's birth, and about James's own questionable claim to the earldom. Never once had James succumbed to the impulse for violence, despite the urge for it being baked into his bones.

But this was different.

This was Hannah.

She wasn't like Ivo, Jack, or even Kate, who could brush off vile gossip and mean-spirited whispers as effortlessly as if they were swatting away a troublesome gnat. Hannah was gentle. Sensitive. Exceedingly precious to him.

James wouldn't permit anyone to threaten her, even if it meant dispatching the threatener himself.

He loomed over Fennick. "Try me," he said softly, "and find out."