Chapter 23

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

“ L ionel?” Amelia pressed, her hands a vise around his wrist. “You shall have to drag me to wherever you are going if you do not want to answer me, but I will not give up.”

She had not said anything throughout Martin’s visit, but that did not mean that her mind had been silent. For the entire duration, it had raced, firing back and forth like the daisy game she used to play with Isolde and Valery: He likes me, he likes me not.

Lionel gazed at her, suddenly unable to speak, though he had said plenty to Martin.

“You have been avoiding me for days,” Amelia pressed, her throat dry. “Yet, you appear at the exact moment that my brother arrives and, not only that, but you defend me fiercely. I cannot understand it, Lionel! I am… beyond confused, not knowing where I stand with you. One moment, you are warm and kind. The next, you are distant and cold. Indeed, how may I prepare appropriately when I do not know what temperature I must brace for?”

Lionel expelled a weary sigh, his hand covering hers for a moment. “It is simple, Amelia.”

“Is it? Then, you must be reading a different book to me,” she shot back, trying not to concentrate on the touch of his palm against hers, imagining his gentle caress at the Duke of Thornhill’s ball.

Lionel carefully prized her fingers away from his wrist, dispelling Amelia’s hopes that it had been a tender touch, intended to comfort her.

“It is simple, Amelia,” he replied. “You are my wife. I will defend you no matter what, and when I happened to see your brother coming through the gates, I knew I would be needed.”

Rather than allow him to remove her fingers from his wrist, Amelia let go of her own volition. She did not wish to feel any more foolish than she already did by clinging on to him.

“You say that, but how can you defend me no matter what when you go ‘underground’ to escape me?” she said tersely, her heart thundering in her chest while blood rushed in her ears.

“I am always nearby,” he replied softly. “If I were to leave the vicinity, I would tell you.”

She squinted at him, balling her hands into frustrated fists. “You see! Who would not be utterly confused when faced with such a man as you? You are so sweet to me in one breath, then you withdraw with the next. Why, you were just about to try and leave again. You keep doing it and it is… tangling my brain into knots.”

“It is not my intention,” he replied.

“I believe that, but you cannot deny that your intentions have not been clear,” she insisted. “If I am your wife in name only, then you should not be giving me hope like this. You should not gaze at me so intently, you should not hold my face and act as if you are about to kiss me, you should not touch me when my sleeve falls; you should not fly into a foul temper because a handsome gentleman happened to compliment me, and you certainly should not be bothered if other men admire me from afar.”

“You are right; I should not,” he said thickly. “Yet, I am, and I do.”

He caught her by the wrist and pulled her to him, his arm slipping around her waist as if he was about to commence a waltz with her. She gasped as she bumped into his broad chest, barely having time to draw breath before his lips grazed hers in an astonishing, unexpected, doubly bewildering kiss.

His mouth was soft and warm, his kiss slow and fierce at once, as his hand traveled up her arm, following the same path his touch had taken at the Duke of Thornhill’s ball. He cradled her neck as he caught her mouth with his a second time, urging her to kiss him back.

In her shock, Amelia’s mind and body had frozen, but as his kisses began to thaw her, she gave into the feeling of wonder and curiosity that swept through her veins.

Holding onto his lapels and raising up on tiptoe, she kissed him back, hesitantly at first. She had read of countless kisses, devoured the details in secret before her brother or father could deem the book inappropriate, but reading and enacting were not quite the same. And she did not want to get it wrong.

Follow his lead…

She obeyed her thoughts, allowing Lionel to guide her, to teach her in the art of kissing. It was a stirring ebb and flow, a slow and burning graze that could quicken into something hungrier at a moment’s notice, a strange and captivating act that had her melting into his embrace, letting her instincts take over.

The room faded around them, transforming into a bubble where only the two of them existed. She could not hear the birds in the garden anymore, she could not hear the activity of the household staff; all she could hear was the thudding of her heart and the sawing of his breath and hers as their kiss deepened.

But what does this mean? Does this mean he is harboring affection for me, as I am for him? She fought to quieten her thoughts, concentrating on the burning sear of his lips on hers, his arm around her, and the light caress of his thumb against the hot apple of her cheek. Only, she was not embarrassed this time: it was the warmth of joy, however fleeting.

They were so caught up in their kiss that neither of them was paying any attention to what was going on around them. Amelia’s mind was finally at peace, overwhelmed with such happiness that there was no room for anything else. As for Lionel—she could not tell what he was thinking, but at least he was not pulling away. If that was not a good sign, she did not know what was.

Just then, Lionel stopped abruptly, his eyes widening as he suddenly began to topple backward. Thinking fast, even in her merry daze, Amelia grasped for his lapels and yanked as hard as she could. Her arms jarred, not realizing that her slight figure had no chance of being able to pull a man like Lionel back to his feet.

His backside landed with a thump on the low table between the settees, a quiet crack sounding in the room. They had been so invested in their kiss that Lionel clearly had not realized how close the table was to the back of his knees, and once the edge of the table hit that vulnerable spot, he had buckled.

How can someone so formidable be so clumsy? She stifled a laugh, hiding her grin behind her hand.

Lionel raised an eyebrow and peered up at her, a smile of his own breaking out across his face. “A stupid place for a table, if you ask me. You should have gotten rid of it while you were in the midst of your redecorating.”

“But where would people put their drinks?” Amelia protested playfully. “And what would have caught your fall just now?”

He pushed himself back up to his feet. “Believe it or not, I am not usually so prone to accidents.”

He raised his hand, but he did not cradle her face again. Instead, he gently brushed back a lock of hair that had come free of her bun and his smile turned somewhat melancholy.

“I fear you are a danger to me,” he murmured, almost to himself. “Or I am a danger to you. I cannot decide which.”

She gazed up into his extraordinary green eyes. “You are no danger to me, Lionel, and I am no danger to you. Please, do not distance yourself from me again.”

She could already feel the desire to avoid her radiating off him, his posture stiffening, his foot half turned to leave, his gaze somehow distant though he was looking right at her. She almost grasped his wrist again, to keep him with her, but she was not someone who would beg him to stay if he truly intended to go.

He bent his head, kissing her gently on the forehead. “I must leave because I really do have things to tend to,” he told her, “but I will be in my study, where I am not so difficult to find.”

He slowly moved away from her, heading for the door. And though everything within her screamed for her to hurry after him and kiss him again, or at least insist on a walk together, she let him go.

“Lionel?” she said as he was about to cross the threshold.

He turned. “Yes?”

“Where do you go when you go ‘underground’? Some of the staff and I were trying to decide if you were half-mole,” she replied, mustering a smile.

He smiled and tapped his nose. “That is my secret, Amelia. Perhaps, one day, I shall tell you of it.”

With that, he departed, and though it was not as jarring as previous departures, Amelia could not help but feel like it was still a rejection. Milder, pleasanter, with memories of a beautiful kiss that would not fade anytime soon, but still a silent message of ‘do not raise your hopes, Amelia. I do not want you to be unhappy.’

And she realized, with some dismay, that she had let him escape her once again without asking why on earth he thought he would make her unhappy. Indeed, the only thing that could possibly make her despondent was him continuing to put distance between them.

Surely, you can see that… so why do you keep doing it?