“Blast and da— Dratted gnats! Take a tumble, as in fall, not tumble as in…the other. Blast!”
Flushed pink but with a saucy smile and her arms still about his neck, she rocked backward on one leg then came forward again until their chests almost touched. “Gratified am I, you made that clear.”
Though it seemed reluctant to him, she slowly took her arms down and stepped completely away. “Although…should I behave as I ought, I would now be taking to the snow in a swoon and crying, ‘Lord Frostwood, you dastard! What if someone chances by?’”
He fought the urge to take her into his arms again. “Then I would behave as I ought not and assure you, ‘There’s no one around, my dear. And if there were, I wouldn’t care.’”
As if embracing the role, she magnified her pseudo-protest, pressing both hands to her throat and exclaiming, “But… We can’t! We shouldn’t!”
Convincing himself as well as her, Frost stood his ground in the increasing snowfall and demanded in a mock-gruff voice, “Whyever not? There’s a spray of mistletoe directly overhead, I’ll have you know.”
“There is?” she asked in her regular tone, lowering her arms. “Oh. I didn’t realize we were under a tree.”
They weren’t.
“Of course there is,” he lied without qualm. What was it about her that drove him to do so? He’d never been one to spout clankers before—not since embellishing nonexistent holidays at school.
Frost quickly fished a berry from his pocket—he’d had the forethought to stash several there earlier—and made a great show of stretching toward the cloud-studded sky, which was all that hung over them at present. “Here—don’t bite down now.”
He placed the white berry between her lips then immediately covered them with his own lest she swallow the damn thing. The only thing he wanted in her mouth that didn’t belong there was his tongue.
What was he thinking? His tongue did belong there!
Sucking the berry into his mouth and tucking it alongside his cheek and out of the way, he applied himself to convincing her of the truth of that thought—how very much his tongue belonged upon her person. Inside her person.
How very much he was beginning to believe he belonged inside her heart. As she was swiftly melting his.
Chapter Six
A Slew of Festive Berries
“You are returned from delivering your new feathered friend?” Ed had the audacity to inquire when Frost marched up the drive after his errand later the same day.
The wet clouds had departed and the sun now sparked off the three inches of snow that blanketed the ground from that morning, very few footprints—save his own and a webbed pair alongside—marring its pristine condition.
“Stuff it,” he said. “Have you any idea the look a farmer bestows upon a man who pays him not to butcher prime livestock? ‘Queer titled pudding-head’, I think I heard him mutter.”
Ed laughed then nodded toward the boisterous gathering spilling out of the house, Harriet in the lead. “She hasn’t stopped singing your praises since last night. You spoil her and she’ll think all men are so kind.”
“Kind, eh?” Frost wasn’t used to hearing himself described as such. “Girls are meant to be spoiled.”
“And women? What say you there?” Ed asked with a quizzical expression.
“Depends upon the woman. Any particular one you’re inquiring about?”
“What happened to your nose? It looks larger than usual…and it’s turning purple if I’m not mistaken.”
It felt larger than usual, thanks to its ill-timed collision with a certain female’s bedchamber door. Felt as if he wore a damn elephant on his face. “I’d rather talk about women.”
“Who wouldn’t, old chap?”
“Frost!” Bundled to the gills, Anne rushed over, looking much like her guests if more solemn of countenance. “I owe you my humblest apologies, my lord, for my outburst yesterday.”
“Nay, you do not. Particular bits of information would have stood me in good stead, I cannot help but think, but all is well.”
“But I called you an imbecile. A…simpleton.”
“I’m quite clear on that, my lady, for your colorful expressions still resound plainly in my ears—‘cork-brained simpleton’ I believe it was.” She paled but held his gaze. “Think no more of it. Nor shall I. Where is Miss Isabella?” he asked as casually as he could, noticing she’d yet to join the others now rolling snowballs and tromping through unblemished clouds of white.
“Upstairs resting.”