“Very well,” he said, clearing his throat. “Number one: I lost my virginity to a barmaid.”
“False,” she said, smiling at him. Her fingers loosened around his ankle, but he still felt her touch as if she were stroking his leg.
“Number two: I lost my virginity to a married woman.”
“Fal—” She began, and then narrowed her eyes. “True! I can scarcely believe that, North. I would have thought you would respect marriage vows. You seem so . . .”
“Self-righteous?” he suggested.
She dimpled at him. “If the shoe fits.”
“I was a wild stripling. Horatius was alive, and the future was my own. A young beautiful lady, married to an elderly gentleman, had her way with me, to my great enjoyment. Taught me quite a lot too,” he added.
Diana didn’t turn a hair at this statement, which in his estimation would have had a great many maidens fainting, or at least pretending to be shocked. She gave him a wicked twinkle. “It doesn’t seem fair that a lady can’t avail herself of the same instruction before marriage.”
North kept silent a second while he registered the protest that flooded his body at the mere idea of Diana taking instruction from any man other than himself. Diana taking instruction? He had the sense that she would teach a man—him—things that couldn’t be learned from an adulterous affair, no matter how genial.
“I would be happy to teach you anything you wish to know,” he said, keeping it simple.
“Men!” she said, laughing. “You instinctively turn the simplest remark into an invitation, don’t you? Leonidas—” She jolted to a stop, like a colt encountering a wall too high to jump.
“My brother Leonidas,” North said, his heart pounding steadily, “is just your age, isn’t he?”
“He is a month or two younger,” Diana said, her eyes wary. “He’s a terrible flirt, but no more than that.”
North was fairly certain that his face was inscrutable. “Three: I have every faith that Leonidas would not try to seduce my former fiancée.”
“False,” Diana said, with a small but triumphant grin. “You look uncertain around the eyes. Leonidas has only tried to seduce me if offering witticisms count. I suppose if I were a silly, green girl I might have fallen in love with him. That’s number three, and so far I’ve been right every time.”
North pulled himself together because he was behaving like an irritable toddler. He picked up one of her feet.
“No!” she said, trying to pull her legs back, which made her skirts slide up, much to North’s approval.
Grinning at her, he dug his thumbs into the bottom of her foot. “Those shoes must have been miserable to wear.”
She froze on the verge of pulling away. “That feels so good,” she breathed.
The warm, happy sound of her voice jolted sensation down his body and into his loins. “Number four: I bought a special license because I planned to talk you into marrying me as quickly as I could.”
She examined his face. He consciously tried to slow his breathing, aware that it had grown ragged, a result of the slender foot in his hand and her delighted response to his touch.
His fingers trembled, poised to trail caresses from her feet up her legs.
“False?” she asked, uncertain.
He couldn’t stop a smile. “Very astute of you, Miss Belgrave. I bought the special license because I had a vague feeling that you would try to back out. I thought—wrongly—that you were fearful of my family, or the attention given to a duchess.”
“Not the former, but a woman would have to be mad to want the latter.”
North had known many women greedy for precisely the attention that duchesses received. “I meant to use the license only if you couldn’t bear the idea of a ceremony in the cathedral, if you felt strongly that you could not face public scrutiny. I had not imagined,” he said wryly, “that you didn’t want to marry me at all. A measure of my arrogance, I suppose.”
She did not soothe him with a falsehood about herself. Instead, she gave him a rueful smile, wriggled her toes, and nudged her left foot into his hands. “One question more and I will have earned a pair of slippers.” The gleeful sound in her voice made him laugh.
“Fifth and final: I loved you.”
The words hung in the lazy summer air.
“How can I answer that?” she said, her eyes on his. “You’ve since told me and Lady Knowe that I did not break your heart. So obviously the answer is no.”
He kept silent.
Diana let an audible puff of air escape her lips. “Yes?”
North didn’t know what he was doing. What game he was playing. Was he playing for a pair of slippers, a kiss, or something altogether more costly?
“Skip that one,” he said. “Five: Aunt Knowe is one of my favorite people in the world.”
She laughed, palpably glad that the tension was broken. “That’s true. She’s your mother, isn’t she? For all intents and purposes?”
He nodded and shifted position, managing to come to his knees without rocking the boat overly much. “I’m going to claim my kiss now.”
“You didn’t win a kiss!” she said indignantly. “I won shoes.”
He came to her side and tugged her lower into the well of the boat. Propping himself on an elbow, he leaned over enough to kiss her straight nose and her rosy cheek. “I said that I would kiss every freckle,” he reminded her.
“That was foolishness.”
“I love your freckles,” he murmured. Her skin was warm and very smooth, like taut silk. “They’re on the bridge of your nose, but not on the tip.”
“No one loves freckles, and it’s unkind of you to remind me of them.”
He buried his free hand in her hair and looked into her eyes. Meeting those eyes was frightening, like leaping off a cliff. They were so beautiful, a clear gray once again, now that the lake was not in sight.
But more than that, they were the most honest eyes he’d ever seen. True eyes. Eyes that had never lied to him, even when most women would have pretended to have had tender feelings during their betrothal, in order to please him.
More fools they, because that implied he had no thirst for the chase. He loved a chase. There were battles he would never again undertake, and there were others that he welcomed joyously.
“I was in love with you,” he informed her, deciding that he might as well make everything very clear. Her breath was warm against his, but she didn’t say anything, just regarded him with the same peaceful silence that enveloped him last night, and the night before. Did she understand that she was his only source of comfort?
Her silence was an invitation. If Diana didn’t want to be kissed, she would tell him. If she hadn’t wanted to comfort him, she would have thrown him out of her chamber instead of offering him toast.
When her mouth opened under his and her arms went around his neck, he felt a distant pang of triumph. It was distant, because the touch of her tongue sent his brain into some other place. His body took control and he relaxed into the warm dregs of the afternoon and the gentle rocking of the boat.
They kissed like explorers this time, learning taste and sound. He memorized the small squeak that came from the back of her throat whenever his tongue tangled with hers. The shudder when he licked her neck. The whimper when he gave her more weight, pinning her hips to the bottom of the boat.
He loved kissing the freckles she hated, pressing kisses on her eyelids and her cheekbones and her finely wrought jaw.
But he kept returning to her mouth and crashing inside, tasting her the way no other man had. His heart was beating so rapidly that he could hear it in his ears.
Her hands were twisted in his hair.
When her hands moved, sliding down his back, sending waves of feeling down his body, he no longer needed to be held to the earth. Everything in him was embodied, pressing her to the bottom of the boat.
She seemed to like it, nipping back at him, combating his tongue with hers, kissing him as deeply a
s she could, her body arched against his chest.
He wanted to run a hand down her leg so badly that he was shaking all over. But . . . kisses were kisses. His sister-in-law had been kissed by any number of suitors; his brother Alaric had used that as an excuse to marry Willa by special license.
That, and Alaric had been madly in love.
“North.” Diana’s voice was little more than a breath of air that traveled as far as his ear and no more.
“Darling.” He kissed his way along her cheekbone and back to her mouth, and the conversation stopped.
By the time she spoke again, North was gritting his teeth because she was rocking against him, arching her back and—
This was no courtship kiss.
“We must stop,” Diana murmured.
“Mmmm.” He was propped over her now, elbows on either side of her head, in the right position to ravish her mouth. One of her slender knees was bent, and her dress had fallen back on her legs.
A gentleman wouldn’t put a hand on her ankle and run it up her calf.
Her arms were looped around his back, but one of her hands caught his before it could go higher.
“No.” The word sounded in his ear with dismaying strength of character.
He groaned. “May I say that your ankle is one of the most beautiful things I’ve ever touched?”
Enjoying the compliment, Diana squinted down at where his golden-brown hand encircled her ankle. Her foot had strands of grass stuck to it—and freckles.
“My foot is freckled,” she cried, dumbfounded, sitting up. “Hell’s bells! Things just get worse and worse around here.”
North threw back his head and fairly bellowed. That was the first laugh that she had got from him, and she loved every joyful second of it.
“My room is dim, and I hadn’t seen,” she explained. “They must be from taking off my shoes and lying in the boat. It’s a good thing my mother isn’t here.”
“For many reasons. Just think of the freckles that would sprout if you took off all your clothing.” North managed a leer so exaggerated that she giggled.
“Freckles are anathema,” she told him, since he had clearly missed this crucial piece of information.
“Anathema,” he said thoughtfully. “A big word for a small spot.”
“They are a terrible blemish.”
“I like them. Smallpox scars would be worse.”
Diana was taken aback by that. “I’ve never seen any.”
“Queen Elizabeth covered up her scars with thick white paint, just the way you did your freckles when we first met. Your freckles should be proudly displayed,” he said, dropping kisses on her nose.
His lips moved to her cheeks, and she lay back again, loving the caress. North began peppering her cheekbones with kisses.
“You’re not still kissing freckles, are you?”
“Yes,” he said dreamily. “Like flecks of sweet sugar.”
“No,” Diana breathed. “That can’t be right.” He’d given her far more kisses than five. But with a sinking stomach, she realized that it could be. From the time she was a little girl, her mother’s abhorrence of freckles had resulted in bonnets that stifled any ray of sunlight.
But here? At the castle? She had formed a habit of escaping to the lake and the punt for an hour or so while the children napped. Lying on her back and allowing filtered sunlight to warm her face.
The tallow candles in her room meant that she’d spent little time looking at her face. The five freckles she used to have must have multiplied.
“They are beautiful,” North said soothingly, a large hand gently stroking her hip. She hadn’t realized she had gone rigid. Her mother wasn’t here. There was no chance that Mrs. Belgrave would sweep into any room where Diana might be and express disgust.
Children didn’t care about freckles.
North didn’t care either—though that was irrelevant.
“We should return to the castle,” she said. Her feet were freckled, her face was freckled . . . She peered down at her chest, what she could see of it.
“No freckles,” North said helpfully. “Perhaps I should examine it more closely.” He pulled aside the fichu tucked into her modest neckline.
“North!”
“Why did you ever . . .” His voice trailed off.
Diana stifled a grin. He was gazing at her bosom as if he was ravenous. North was a predator, a top-of-the-food-chain predator, and she probably ought to worry about that look.
“Are you licking your lips?” she inquired. Frankly, if she was going to fuss about indiscretions with North, she should have started two nights ago.
“Yes,” he said, and a puff of laughter escaped her mouth, because his finely chiseled jaw was practically hanging open. “Lavinia Gray flaunts her breasts, and every man in her vicinity appreciates it, Diana. Why didn’t you, when we were betrothed?”
She scowled. “Why were you looking at Lavinia’s breasts?”
He dropped a hard kiss on her mouth. “They were there, on display, and no man could overlook them. But yours are even more beautiful.”
“So they should have been on display?” she asked tartly. “Is that what you wanted your fiancée to do?”
“I have numerous sisters, and I’ve had two stepmothers,” he said with exaggerated alarm. “I wouldn’t dare make a suggestion about what a woman should wear.”
She sighed. “Breasts are indelicate and immoral. My mother’s judgment, in case you’re wondering.”
“Immoral?” North managed to tear his eyes away. “How can a part of one’s body be immoral?”
Diana rolled her eyes at him. “Don’t be absurd! You don’t go around with that exposed.” She waved her hand toward his breeches.
His lips curved. No, he hadn’t been using lip color, as she and Lavinia had once surmised. That dark rose color was his own.
“Just because I keep my tool wrapped up doesn’t mean it’s immoral,” North stated, his tone purely wicked.
“I must return to the castle,” Diana said. But she couldn’t stop herself: “‘Tool’? Tool? That’s absurd.” Giggling. She always seemed to be giggling around him, like the green girl she wasn’t.
“What term do you prefer?” His eyes met hers, curiosity warring with desire. “I haven’t discussed the subject with a young lady before.”
“Nothing! It shouldn’t be mentioned,” she said, hastily stuffing her fichu back into her bodice.
“Cock?”
His deep voice hung in the air, the silence broken only by the cricket and the gentle lap of water against the boat. Diana’s cheeks turned so red that her ears felt hot. “North!”
He grinned, unrepentant. “Some men talk about their willy, but I think that word references something Godfrey’s size.”
“I see,” Diana said. Her inner voice screamed at her to remember that she wasn’t a shy miss any longer. She was an independent woman. A mother. Sort of. She cleared her throat. “I must return to the nursery.”
Any gentleman would apologize for embarrassing her, but North showed no signs of doing so.
“Are you speaking those words to me because I’m . . .” She couldn’t work out what she wanted to say. Did she want to ask if he felt free to bandy words with a governess because she was part of the household? He didn’t, and she knew it. Did she mean to ask whether he thought she was ruined? He didn’t.
“Never mind,” she amended.
“I’m expanding your vocabulary because I’m a born teacher,” he whispered, leaning over and brushing his lips on hers.
Despite her resolution to return to the castle, her mouth opened. His tongue skimmed her bottom lip and slipped inside. Heat simmered in her belly and down her legs, because he tasted so good.
She loved the way he was holding her shoulders, holding her still so he could kiss her deeply, as if they were one person instead of two.
She put her arms around his neck, and he kept his hands where they were. All they did was kiss. And kiss some more.
She took a breath now and then. He muttered something low, but dived back into her mouth before she understood.
An hour or so later, he pulled back and said, “I suppose you must return to the castle.” His voice rasped, as if he were pushing a rock up a hill. Performing an amazing feat of strength.
Diana had completely lost her head. Her heart was pounding and she felt happier than she had in months . . . no, in years. She smiled, took each of his hands in one of hers, and slid them down her front, brushing her scarf aside.
Her corset had forced her bosom into a single mound, squished together like a bundle of laundry.
But her breasts emerged from the top, because a corset couldn’t subdue Diana’s generous curves. She dragged his hands down, just enough so they rounded her bosom, her hands cupped over his.
The emotionless duke-to-be was gone. Looking back at her was a man whose eyes were turbulent and full of desire.
There was more there, but that desire . . . he wanted her. Freckles and all. With no paint, no wig, no jewels, no silence. His desire was for the real Diana.
To this point, she’d been focused on giving North whatever he needed to heal from injuries she felt responsible for. Acceptance. Kisses. Toast.
But she hadn’t thought . . .
“I believe we should leave the boat now,” North said, his voice low. He slipped his hands from under hers.
She stared at him as he rose in one smooth movement and hauled on the rope. One tug and the boat skimmed onto the grass bank.
North leapt out and turned, one foot on the boat, hand reaching toward her. Diana crawled onto the backseat.
He made a stifled sound, a groan, and she looked up at him. “I don’t want to fall out,” she explained. “I can’t swim.”
“Bloody hell.”
“I know,” she sighed, straightening, but still on her knees. “I shouldn’t go anywhere near water. I wouldn’t let Artie and Godfrey in the boat, I promise you.”
Her eyes dropped. His breeches were tented in front with something very large. Hard. Right at the level of her eyesight.
Slowly she looked up and met his eyes.
North leaned forward, with one hand holding the prow and the other swinging around her waist. Before she knew what happened, he grabbed her, took a step back, swiveled, and placed her on her feet.