Page 21 of The Viscount and the Vicar’s Daughter

“Is that what this is about? Confound it, haven’t you heard a word I’ve been saying to you?”

She gave another tug of her hand to no avail.

“I have no interest in Felicity Brightwell, you little idiot. And even if I did, what sort of female do you suppose would marry a penniless viscount and follow him to a moldering heap in Northumberland?”

“I would,” Valentine said. The mortifying words were out before she could recall them. “If I loved someone I would follow him anywhere.”

St. Ashton went still. He searched her face for a moment, his own expression stark in the glow of the moonlight. “Of course you would. You’re an angel. I recognized it the first time I saw you.”

She shook her head. “Don’t do that. Don’t make a joke of it.”

“I mean it.” He leaned closer to her, closer than he’d ever been before. His voice deepened. “Shall I prove it to you?”

The scent of freshly starched linen, polished leather, and lemon shaving soap rose to her nostrils. It was overwhelming to her senses. He was overwhelming to her sense. “N-no,” she stammered.

One of his hands still retained hers, the other reached to brush a stray lock of hair from her temple. His touch was extraordinarily tender. “Let me kiss you, Valentine.”

Oh, goodness.

But she couldn’t allow it, could she? It would be wanton. Worse than wanton. They’d only just met today. And then there was the matter of his reputation and her own—

“Valentine,” he said again.

Her name sounded wonderful murmured in his low-pitched voice. She scarcely had the heart to chastise him. “I haven’t given you leave to use my Christian name, sir.”

“But I must use it. And I must kiss you.” He curved his hand around the back of her neck. “Just one kiss. Something to take away with me to Northumberland. Will you let me?”

His fingers were tracing a random pattern on the sensitive skin behind her ear, his breath warm against her cheek. When had he moved so close to her? “Tristan,” she whispered.

It was all the encouragement he needed.

Tristan bent his head, his mouth finding hers in a brief, respectful kiss. It was the sort of kiss he had no experience with at all. Chaste. Restrained. Profoundly unsatisfying. It was over before it began.

Were he more of a gentleman he would have adhered to his word. Just one kiss, he’d said. But now, with his lips resting lightly against the voluptuous bow of hers, he couldn’t stop at only one. She was too sweet, too pillow soft. His mouth moved over hers again, a featherlight touch of seductive enquiry that quickly gave way to a gentle, searching pressure. He courted her with his lips, nudging, stroking, tasting. Seeking even a flicker of response from her.

She gave it and more.

Her soft mouth yielded to his, lips parting beneath the heat of the next kiss and the next. How many kisses followed? Tristan couldn’t be sure. It seemed to go on and on, one kiss dissolving into another, until her breath came as heavily as his own did. Until somehow they were no longer holding hands but fiercely embracing each other. Until he was murmuring to her nonsensically, repeating her name in a voice that ached with longing. “Valentine, Valentine.”

Her arms tightened around his neck as he drew hot kisses over her jaw, her cheek, her temple. He could feel her fingers sliding through the thick locks of his hair. Could smell the faint scent of orange blossom perfume on her skin. “Tristan…we must stop.”

“Once more. Please, Valentine. Let me…” He captured her lips again, kissing her as passionately as he’d ever kissed any woman before. As he lost himself in her sweetness, a shrill warning sounded somewhere in the depths of his overheated brain. She was an innocent. He had no right to handle her as he would a lover. He had no right to handle her at all. He willed his hands to remain where they were, clutching the corseted span of her trim waist, stroking the slender expanse of her back. But no power on earth could prevent the inevitable drift down to the swell of her hips and up to the lush curve of her bosom. Stroking, squeezing, caressing, while his mouth hungrily plundered hers.

He whispered something to her then. God knew what. An endearment, perhaps. Or a promise of some kind. She pressed herself against him in answer, molding her body to his chest and returning his searing kisses with a soft murmur of pleasure that set his soul aflame. “Oh God,” he groaned. “Valentine. Let me kiss you. Let me have you. I could die tomorrow if only…”

Later he would wonder how long they’d had an audience. He’d anguish over how many had heard him moaning and begging the innocent little vicar’s daughter to let him have her, as if he were a raw lad with his first woman. But now, all that registered was the sound of a high-pitched female scream, followed closely by an enormous crash as a branch of candles dropped to the floor.

“Mama!” Felicity Brightwell wailed at the top of her lungs.

Valentine’s whole body went stiff. She tried to pull away from him, but he would not let her go. “Easy, love,” he said, using his much larger frame to shield her from view of the door. “It’ll be all right.”

And then Lady Brightwell was there. And Lord Quinton. And—Good God!—the Earl of Lynden himself.

It was then that Tristan knew that, as far as he was concerned, things were never going to be all right again.

An hour later, Tristan leaned against the library mantelpiece, his arms folded. His dark hair was disheveled and his cravat, which had been immaculate at the beginning of the evening, was now in magnificent disarray. He looked, in short, like a man who’d been interrupted in the early stages of tumbling a wench—a fact of which he was grimly aware.

Felicity Brightwell had nearly set the conservatory on fire when she dropped the candelabra held aloft in her hand. Following that, she’d nearly deafened him with her wild shrieks and sobs, all the while accusing Miss March of being a “devious little slut” and a “common harlot.” It had taken her mother the better part of the hour to soothe her and then, with Lady Fairford’s assistance, send her off to bed with a posset.