Page 74 of The Trouble with Tweed

“What?” Her forehead creased.

“I thought that was why you wanted a loveless marriage—in order to avoid…” He shook his head again, then a hollow laugh rang from his throat. “So this whole time, you thought I’d been unfaithful.”

“I wouldn’t say unfaithful—” she began.

“Oh stuff and nonsense, Claire. You and I both know I was courting you seriously. We both know where that would have eventually led. No wonder you’ve called me a rake! No wonder you wouldn’t speak to me.”

He buried his hand in his hair and turned his back to her. Claire didn’t know what to say. She didn’t know if it was the bleak passion in his voice or the fervor in his eyes, but she believed him. Heaven help her, he was telling the truth.

“That was the first time I’d ever been kissed by a lady,” he said. “Ironic, isn’t it? That you witnessed that loss of innocence and determined that I was the biggest rake in all of London.”

Good heavens, she had done that. Claire choked for a moment on her grief.

“I loved you, Claire.” He stepped forward, his eyes blazing.

Loved, she thought, the meaning nearly strangling her.

Had there ever been more devastation contained within the past tense of a word?

“No,” Michael continued, his eyes a bit wild. “I was not a rake then or after, though I have learned some things since.”

“What?” Her mind was still filled with all that she’d have to get rid of, all she’d held on to these four years—the foremost being her belief that Michael was a rake. And the falseness of it meant that she had to rewrite their history completely, this time casting herself as the greatest villain of all.

“I’m just angry enough to show you, Claire.”

Before she could feel more than a thrilling terror at the glint in his eyes, Michael did the last thing she ever could have imagined—he strode to her, took her firmly in his arms, and captured her mouth in a kiss.

Claire found it beyond disorienting, to go from the depths of despair to the heights of happiness and pleasure in half a second. Michael’s lips started too firm to be called gentle, but he quickly softened his hold on her, one large arm anchoring Claire firmly to his chest, the other hand tracing an agonizingly slow path up the center of her spine and back again.

The initial fire of Michael’s fury burned out the instant their lips met. Instead, he gave a low sort of sound—half groan, half grumble—that Claire felt reverberate into her very being. Had she thought she knew what sensation was, before that moment? Had she claimed to have ever truly felt something before?

Claire’s shock ebbed away beneath his gentle ministrations, the deep sigh of his breath, the stark chafe of his cheek against hers. She’d never thought his face looked rough before—Michael was always clean-shaven—but it was. Of all the delights swamping her senses, this was the one that captured her utmost fascination.

She lifted a hand and cautiously brushed it against his cheek—featherlight touches that he somehow felt, even in the midst of their private storm. Claire lay her hand against his cheek and he made a low noise in his throat again.

It was about at this time that Claire realized, with no small amount of surprise, that she was kissing Michael back, and had been for some time. The warmth of his lips had somehow coaxed a response from hers. Improbable, because she’d certainly never kissed anyone before. Nor, she realized, did she ever want to kiss anyone other than him.

Claire was drunk on the feel of his frame pressed close to hers, on every single part of the devastating kiss. Anyone might have happened upon them in the garden, and she would have welcomed the scandal.

If it meant she got to do this every single day for the rest of her life, scandal would have been a paltry price she would have gladly paid.

It was several more aching moments before Michael pulled back from her. Though her head was swimming with what she could only have described as swirls of sparkling light, Claire was certain that it was Michael who drew back, for she pressed herself forward onto her toes to chase him as he went.

“Claire, my dearest Claire,” Michael murmured, brushing several more soft kisses against her lips before he leaned back to study her half-lidded, stupified expression.

Whatever he saw there had stormclouds roiling across his features. Claire couldn’t hope to think of the cause—she was still swimming in the delight of the past minutes and couldn’t have been depended upon to remember her own middle name. It was very hard for her imagine there could be anything wrong.

But Michael certainly seemed to think so. He set her back by the shoulders so abruptly that she had to jerk to keep herself upright. She blinked, then blinked again, stunned by all she’d learned that evening.

Firstly, Michael wasn’t a rake.

Secondly, he was excellent at kissing.

And thirdly, he was so good at kissing, Claire might have readily forgiven him even if he had been a rake.

Fourthly, she wanted to go pull out Lady Berkshire’s hair by the roots.

Fifthly, she wanted to kiss Michael again, as soon as possible. Preferably now.