For Love of the Duke(27)
Katherine took a step toward him. “You are also out in this storm,” she said. He backed away from her.
She took another step toward him. This time, he remained fixed to the snow-laden pavement. The tips of her boots kissed the tips of his black Hessians. Katherine jabbed a finger at his chest. “Furthermore, you sent me a note, requesting my presence.”
“I…”
She waved her finger up at him. “No, Your Grace.” If he weren’t so bloody tall she suspected she could have done a more convincing job of conveying her disapproval with her finger. As it was, she settled for waving the digit somewhere in the vicinity of his neck. “You might have penned a second note to inform me that you wished to reschedule the meeting. It would have been the gentlemanly thing to do.”
He lowered his head, so the tinge of mint, and something surprisingly sweet, the faintest hint of chocolate that clung to his breath, fanned her cheeks. Fire flashed in his endless green eyes, and God help her, with fury radiating from those moss-green irises, she thought he might kiss her. And what was more foolish was the desperate desire for him to kiss her.
“Did you hear me,” he snapped.
Katherine blinked up at him. Well, perhaps he didn’t intend to kiss her. A gentleman would not speak in those cool, modulated tones if he had intentions of kissing—
“My lady?”
Katherine cleared her throat. “Er, what was that?”
“Do you have wool in your ears, my lady?” She suspected it was more likely she had wool in her brain. “I sent round a note.”
He’d sent round a note? Impossible.
“I did not receive a note,” she said a touch defensively, because if he had sent a note, and she’d been foolish enough to brave this frigid winter weather, well, it made her appear like nothing more than a silly ninny hammer.
His head dipped lower and a black strand of hair fell across his brow. “Do you presume to call me a liar?” he hissed.
Odd, that single strand made him appear so much gentler, so much less reserved than the gentleman who’d plucked her from the Thames. Katherine’s fingers fair itched to brush that lock back; so black it bore the faint trace of blue, like the midnight sky. She swallowed. Her eyes went to the faint indentation at the center of his hard, square jaw.
God help her, she wanted to lean up and explore the hard contours of his lips. The wicked thoughts trickled into her consciousness. She wanted to, though.
“I wouldn’t dare,” she whispered. Because it would be the height of impropriety and madness to kiss the stern, frowning gentleman. Ladies didn’t kiss gentlemen.
He gave a curt nod. “Because I do not take charges against my honor lightly.”
What in the devil was he talking about?
“You’re out in the storm as well,” she said.
He glowered at her. “I am not an unwed, unchaperoned—”
“I’m not unchaperoned.”
“Young lady,” he finished.
Her eyes went to his firm mouth. He most certainly was not a young lady. Katherine wet her lips. He’d been abundantly clear since he’d come upon her that her company was not desired here. She should turn around and flee.
What was it about him that held her fixed to the spot?
As he stood on the frozen path alongside the Serpentine, amidst the increasing snowfall, with the biting wind whipping about him, Jasper came to a most unwanted, unwelcome, and staggering realization.
He wanted to kiss Lady Katherine Adamson.
His gaze took in the delicate lines of her heart-shaped face; the almost cat-like quality of her brown eyes. And suddenly, eyes that were once merely brown, put him in mind of the choicest brandy; warm and fathomless.
Jasper’s body blazed to life with a heated awareness of her.
He told himself that his reaction was merely physical.
He told himself it was a betrayal of Lydia and her memory.
Bastard that he was, Jasper couldn’t find the resolve to turn around and leave Lady Katherine’s side.
“Your Grace?” she whispered.
“Jasper,” he said, his voice harsh. God help him, he needed to hear his name upon her lips, to remind himself that, even in just that moment, he lived.
Her soulful brown eyes widened. “Your Grace?”
“My name is Jasper.”
She tilted her head at an endearing little angle, and the tiniest fragment of his battered stone heart reassembled into the configuration of what it once had been. “Jasper,” she whispered, as though tasting it upon her lips.
A primitive growl worked its way up from his chest, past his lips, and he took her mouth in a hard, unrelenting kiss.
Her body stiffened against his, and he thought she might pull away from the volatility of his embrace.