Chapter 5

Quinton braced himself against a pillar and took several deep breaths. One more glass of champagne might fell him like a tree in a forest. He’d lose his balance, then bam! Hit the floor, toes, knees, chest, and nose all at the same. But trees didn’t lose balance, did they? Someone cut them down.

And he knew who held the ax.

Lottie.

Infuriating chit. She knew what the bubbly stuff would do to her. And she knew not to go into dark gardens with men. Yet she’d done both things. And entirely distracting him from his purpose. Should he be meeting eligible young ladies? Yes. Was he wandering after Lottie instead? Unfortunately, yes. And drinking every glass of champagne she picked up to save her from herself.

“Mother,” he groaned, “who else is on your list?”

She pointed through the crowd. “Do you see the lovely young lady with blonde hair?”

He nodded. Though he didn’t really see the woman that his mother spoke of. There were many young ladies with blonde hair. And all the same shade of lovely. And then the room began to spin, and he couldn’t tell one white gowned lady from another.

“Are you ill, Quinton?”

“No. One drink too many.” He should not have brought the flask. He’d thought it only a means of breaking the usual monotony of such events. Instead, he’d been using it to keep his anger in check. When he felt the urge to punch a wall, he took a sip.

“You should not have.”

“I’m aware.”

The flask would not run him into the ground so quickly had he not also tossed down all that champagne. The wicked combination had more than muddled his mind. It might have entirely melted. Could be running out of his ears. He reached up to check, found his ears dry, but found the room spinning more than before as well. He clutched at a nearby column, and through the spinning candlelight of the ballroom, he found a focal point. Gold curls and a pink bow of a mouth. Lottie. And she seemed to be following a man.

He pinched the bridge of his nose. “Another man.”

“What about another man?” his mother asked.

“They’re everywhere tonight. Ants. Crawling into every crevice. Carrying things away that don’t belong to them.” What was he saying? And why was he saying it? Was his face numb? He reached up, patted it. Yes, certainly numb. Why would Clearford allow his sister to be courted by men who were willing to escape with her into dark corners? The duke should keep a better eye on her. Besides, the book had said no kissing. A very clear dictate. Seemed an entirely sensible rule, as well. No kissing. Not that Quinton wanted to anyway. An easy rule to follow. And then he’d marry a pair of lips that he’d be obliged to kiss and that would be that. Everything solved, everything better.

But why was Lottie slipping into a hallway on the arm of a man?

“Who’s that man?” he asked his mother, but it didn’t come out quite right. All the words felt as fuzzy as his face. “With Lottie? The man with Lottie. Tall, red hair, freckles. Probably has freckles. Do you think he has freckles?” Did Lottie like freckles? Quinton had a few scattered over his shoulders.

His mother craned her neck to peer across the crowd. “That’s Lord Phillipspots.”

One of the three, then. And she probably planned to kiss him, too. But the book, Clearford’s Guide, said, quite clearly, no kissing. So surely Lord Pisspot would… not kiss. The first fellow caught with Lottie out on the balcony had followed the edict virtuously. But what if Pisspot didn’t?

The suitor in the garden had kissed her, throwing the guide’s advice to the wind. Of course, it had been quite a weak attempt at a kiss. Laughable, really.

Quinton laughable, too. He’d followed them out there, squatted behind a bush, and watched, half his attention on the glass of liquid held between their bodies that would prick needles through Lottie’s skull, and the other half on that meeting place between lips. Barely a meeting at all. More of a how do you do while waving as they passed one another on the street.

Quinton pushed off the pillar and swayed in a circle. Upright seemed a difficult posture to manage.

His mother’s hand on his arm steadied him. “You should sit down. Better yet, go home. You can meet the ladies when you’re sober at next week’s tea. No more ladies for you tonight.”

“You’re right.” He nodded. Twice. Three… four times? “No more ladies.” And then he stalked after Lottie. He crept through the door she’d gone through earlier and found a hallway. At its end, shadows gathered, candles had been extinguished.

No one wandered the deserted hall. Had they gone into a room? There were two… three… no, two doors on each side. Hard to tell with everything fuzzy, shifting, the world gone sand, sifting through his fingertips.

And then the shadows moved just a bit at the end, near an alcove. Leaning a shoulder against a wall, he made his way down the hallway, letting the wall guide his slow, lumbering steps. God, he wished he could be bootless so his stocking feet could whisper instead of clack.

But the voices ahead did not seem to notice his thunder-loud arrival.

“I should not kiss you, Lady Charlotte,” a man said. Pisspot. Must be.

“And why is that?” Lottie’s voice.

“There’s nothing settled between us.”

“Perhaps nothing should be settled until we know. I think a kiss should be a mandatory part of courtship.”

Quinton could almost hear the frown gathering around the man’s silence. “Unconventional thought indeed, my lady.”

“Unconventional. Hm. You’ll find that is a word that describes me perfectly.”

“Does it?”

Course it did. Was the man a blind fool?

“I never would have thought so,” Pisspot continued. “You always appear so… perfect.”

“I am not,” she assured. “Will you kiss me?”

Damn, what a brazen woman. She’d always been brazen—even as a child—climbing, running, swimming, hiding frogs in her pockets. Never afraid, his Lottie.

His Lottie.

His Lottie was his weakness. And he could not be weak.

The silence had gone on too long. Her question unanswered for the exact amount of time it took to kiss a lady. Quinton crept closer to the shadows that hid the couple. Sounds—sighs and smacks and Quinton’s hands became fists. His shoulder popped off the wall, and his feet marched him forward until the world of shadows at the end of the hallway swallowed his boot, and he blinked two figures out of the darkness, pressed together, a tangle of arms and skirts and legs. They were kissing.

And something inside Quinton roared to vengeful life because if he could not kiss, then neither should she. His hand grabbed the man’s shoulder. Not a conscious move. His hand moving itself entirely, doing as it pleased, and it pleased to throw Pisspot back and away from Lottie. Pleased to press the man with a hard, unforgiving palm against his chest straight into the wall.

“What would Clearford think of this little display?” Quinton asked, his voice crisp though the words felt heavy on his tongue.

“Release him right now,” Lottie demanded.

Quinton fisted his hand in the man’s cravat. “Shall I tell the duke what you were doing here or should you?”

“No one has to know.” Pisspot wrapped his hands around Quinton’s forearm. “It was barely a kiss. I didn’t even want to.”

Some corner of Quinton’s fogged brain interpreted that as an insult to Lottie. Another corner suggested that Quinton himself insulted her quite often and therefore claimed no ground from which to condemn others. Had a point, that bit of him did.

Still, the other corner yelled quite loudly, No one insults Merriweather!

But you, the inconveniently rational corner insisted.

He flicked it away and squeezed Pisspot’s neck with greedy fingers.

“Release him now!” Lottie’s hands found him, her fingers wrapping around his wrist not currently attached to the hand strangling Pisspot. She tugged at him, and somehow her hand found the sliver of skin between his gloves and his jacket sleeve, found the pulse beating madly there, squeezed tighter. Her fingers hot irons on his already inflamed skin. “Let him go now, Quinton.”

He shoved the man into the light outside of the shadows.

“I’ll not say a word,” Pisspot said, clutching at his throat.

Quinton growled. “If you do…” A warning. Because any woman who had solicited kisses from three men in one night needed someone to encourage those fellows to keep quiet.

Pisspot ran.

Quinton collapsed against the wall, his forehead hitting it with a thud, and his forearms bracing his weight.

“What have you done?” Lottie’s voice was shrill and soft at the same time.

He rolled until his back and shoulders held his weight and pressed his eyes closed.

She poked him in the chest. “Are you addled?”

He nodded. “Foxed.”

She poked him again, and he caught her hand, held her wrist tight. So delicate. And then he opened his eyes and stood to his full height. Her blue eyes glittered with anger, not tears, and she leaned away from him so that he almost held her up entirely with his hold on her wrist. He ran his free hand through his hair and marched toward her. She stumbled backward until her back hit the wall, and he kept going until almost no space existed between their bodies.

Her free hand flattened against his chest, pushing. He ignored the insignificant pressure and lifted his free hand to her face. He traced the bottom line of her bottom lip, explored the indentations at the corners of her mouth, and pulled down that bottom lip gently, just a bit, for a glimpse of white even teeth.

“What is it about this mouth?”

“It-it’s merely a mouth.” Her tone rang calm, controlled, but the brief stutter gave away her panic. “And if you do not remove your hand, I will bite it.”

He chuckled and did as she’d asked, raising his hand to his mouth and tugging his glove off with his teeth. When he’d freed his hand, he dropped the glove to the floor and cradled her jaw, his thumb still sweeping the smooth, plump bottom lip. He only felt. Blocked out and batted away every screaming thought. Only felt—the smoothness of her lip against the pad of his thumb, the soft curve of her jaw, the silken curls behind and above her ears, so close to his fingertips.

“What is it about this mouth?” he repeated. His entire body had become sensation and every sensation her. The small contact of palm and jaw and thumb and lip sent sparks up his arm and throughout his body, pulled the lust heavy in his gut.

“How much have you had to drink?”

“Not nearly enough.” Because he could still feel her. He could still feel the press of her lips against his six years ago. It never went away.

“You should be dancing with other women.” Her voice was breathy now, and she no longer struggled.

“Did you enjoy Pisspot’s kiss, Merriweather?”

“Don’t call him that.”

“Did you?”

“I… yes.” But she’d hesitated too much before that affirmation for him to believe it.

“What was it like?”

“I—” Her tongue darted out to wet her bottom lip, and the tip of it almost touched his thumb.

His cock tightened, not a physical reaction he should be having with her. But the champagne and whisky drowned all care. Almost all care.

“No more kisses tonight, Merriweather,” he said.

“I do as I please.”

He leaned closer, his nose almost brushing hers. “No more kisses.” He’d not been able to rip his gaze from her lips. Not been able to stop the pour of questions he didn’t want answers to into the air. “Did you like it?” Had he already asked that? If he had, he’d not been satisfied with the answer. He didn’t want to know. He had to know.

“Yes.” She lifted her chin, defiant.

“Liar. Did you hear him? What he said? Or did I imagine it?”

She swallowed, her throat working and her lips slightly parting. “I don’t kn—”

“The fool said he did not want to kiss you.”

She made a sound, half growl, in her throat. “Yes, that seems to be the theme of the evening.” Said more to herself than to him.

“A man should want to kiss you.” Not sure what he was saying or why he was saying it. He released her wrist and speared both of his hands into the hair at the nape of her neck, resting his forehead against hers.

Lottie gasped, a soft, slow, ragged inhale. How many times had he heard that sound tonight? What would it be like to hear it in a different context? Not fear or dismay, but desire. He shook his head, trying to fling off those rogue thoughts.

Failing.

“I don’t want to kiss you,” he said, “but it’s all I can think about. Ever since that day in the woods. Damn you. I’ve tried to kiss other women. Nothing works. I feel nothing. You ruined me, cursed me. I don’t want to kiss you… but kissing you is all I can think about.” He flexed, using his grip at the back of her neck to pull her closer still. He could take those lips he had so long obsessed over. He could take them, and he could take her, strip her bodice down low, hike her skirts up high, shove a leg between hers, and grind against his soft, sweet Lottie. His weakness. Not her softness but his.

When a kiss almost sat between their lips, he pushed away from her with a growl and left. He stumbled down the hallway. How long was it? How dark? Like some endless cavern he would never find daylight beyond. But then somehow a wall before him gave way, and there it was—the swirling ballroom. Too much. The glow from the candles above blinding. The music too loud. The dancers too dizzying, churning the devil liquid in his gut over and over and over.

He threw himself to the side and staggered toward an entrance. Exit? Somehow his coach found him. His coach? Strong arms pulling him into it, settling him inside on the seat.

As the darkness took him, he couldn’t quite remember… Had he kissed Lottie? Again?

No, surely not. He’d remember that. And he’d never allow it.