It was not that she had retired to sit on the shelf and be a comfort to her mother because after three lively Seasons she had failed to secure an offer. No, Elinor had never come out, not in the way his sisters had, with parties and all the expectation that they would secure husbands. The whole extended Ravenhurst clan appeared to accept from the start the fact that ‘poor dear Elinor’ with her red hair and her freckles, her alarming scholarship and intelligence and her inability to pretend she was a brainless butterfly, was destined for spinsterhood amidst the dusty splendour of her mother’s library. Had any man so much as flirted with her before?
‘I should not have kissed you,’ he said abruptly as they came into the square that sat on the saddle of land a third
of the way up the Vezelay hill.
‘No,’ she said quietly. Out of the corner of his eye he could see that her hands were knotted in her lap, but her face was composed. Was she so used to swallowing insult and neglect then?
‘Not like that,’ Theo pushed on in the face of her lack of response. ‘I was angry with him, and frustrated by not being able to see my way through this problem I have concerning him.’ He reined in. From the far side of the square Hythe got up from the wine shop under the lime trees and begin to walk across. ‘That is not an excuse, you understand.’
‘No,’ she agreed again, her voice colourless as she began to gather up her skirts in one hand so she could climb down.
On an impulse Theo shook the reins and the horse moved forwards. He waved Hythe away and they continued across the square and down the hill on the other side. The road turned as it went, so they were out of view of the houses almost immediately, passing between small trees and bushes, the farmland opening out in front of them. Theo turned the gig into a wide, flat opening that must once have been a small quarry, reined in and wrapped the reins around the whip in its stand.
They were in a small green amphitheatre, quite alone. A skylark was singing overhead. Beside him Elinor sat silent; at least she was not scrambling down in alarm to escape him.
‘Had you ever been kissed before?’ Theo asked abruptly, a way of asking tactfully escaping him.
‘No, I have not. And if that is a sample of what to expect, I am not sorry.’ The tartness in her voice made him smile, despite his guilty conscience. Elinor was not about to succumb to maidenly hysterics. He rather wished she would, he could deal with those.
‘It was an extraordinarily inept performance on my part,’ he apologised. ‘I would like to believe I usually do better than that.’ She was silent, but he could almost hear her mind working. ‘Shall we get down and talk? You aren’t in a hurry to get back, are you?’ That might have been better put, you idiot.
‘This is a lovely spot.’ Elinor jumped down without waiting for him—or commenting that she was quite naturally anxious to get out of his company and into her mother’s protection as soon as possible—and went to sit on a grassy bank spangled with daisies. She wrapped her arms round her knees defensively and watched him as he walked across to stand before her. ‘I think I understand. You really wanted to box my ears, didn’t you Theo?’
‘Yes, I wanted to box your ears. But I also wanted to kiss you.’ He dug deep for complete honesty. ‘I wanted to do both because I did not want him kissing you. Does that make any sense?’
‘Dog in the manger?’ Elinor suggested, untying her bonnet and dropping it on the grass beside her. She tipped back her head and watched him, her expression open and candid and curious. She seemed strangely relieved by that explanation.
‘In a way. It was territorial, certainly. I’m afraid men do tend to react that way when women are involved. If you were my sister I could stand over you and frighten off any man showing an interest. But—’
‘I am not your sister and so other…instincts come into play?’ She was interested, he realised, intellectually interested in how he and de Beaumartin were interacting. ‘And I was not meekly doing what you wanted, so you did the male equivalent of stamping your foot.’ And now she was laughing at him; he could see it in her eyes despite the puzzlement on her face.
‘How very unflattering, the strong light you hold up to my primitive thought processes,’ Theo said wryly. He shouldn’t be feeling better, but he was. Her very lack of feminine wiles was refreshing.
‘So, we have come here so you can apologise, or so you can show me what a proper kiss is like?’ Elinor enquired, taking him aback.
‘Would you like me to?’ he asked, looking down at her, his hat in his hands.
‘I thought you would never ask,’ she said with such startling frankness that he burst out laughing. ‘I am dying of curiosity now. And stop laughing—I am sure you can’t do it properly if you are laughing.’
‘Oh, yes, I can.’ He set his tall hat on the grass and dropped down to sit beside her, stripping off his gloves. ‘But laughing while kissing is an advanced lesson.’
The pupils of her eyes were wide and dark as she watched him, but she did not seem apprehensive. Theo cupped her shoulders with his hands, feeling the fine bones through the cloth, conscious, as he had not been in his anger, of her warmth and the faint, innocent, scent of soap. He wanted to kiss her very much, he realised, pulling her towards him as he bent his head and found her lips, careful, aware that they would be tender.
Elinor came against him with no resistance, her hands clasping his elbows as if to steady herself. He let their own weight carry them down until she was lying on the turf, eyes closed, mouth still pliant under his. The curves of her body were distracting, sending his own body messages he had no intention of listening to. Theo moved, careful not to let her become aware of his instant state of arousal, and concentrated on making love to her mouth.
If Elinor had thought about kisses before, she had imagined sensation purely on the lips. A pressure, warmth, possibly distasteful moistness. This, the thing Theo was doing to her, involved her whole body and every sense, even though he was touching only her mouth and her shoulders.
Distantly she could still hear the birds, almost drowned by the hammering of her heart. Her nostrils were filled with the scents of crushed grass and warm man. Theo smelt of clean linen, of leather, faintly, and not unpleasantly, of hot man and subtly of something she could only guess must be his own, indefinable scent.
His mouth was certainly moist. She had not expected to find that exciting, nor had she expected the heat and the way his lips moved gently over hers, caressing them. Then she felt his tongue running along the seam of her lips, pressing, and understood that he wanted her to open to him. Why? He was not angry with her as he had been before, when she had perceived the invasion of his tongue as an assault, not a caress.
Now the intrusion made her gasp with the sensual shock, the sound swallowed up as his tongue probed, found her own, caressed the sensitive flesh. Then he was sucking, nibbling, at her lower lip and the gasps became moans and she found her body was arching, shockingly, against the weight of his chest as he hung, poised, over her.
And then he had released her, was lying beside her, his weight on one elbow while he stroked the hair back from her flushed face. ‘Now that, Nell,’ he said with a smile that was oddly tender, ‘was a proper kiss.’
Elinor shut her eyes hastily, unable to meet his. Not yet. From behind closed lids she tried to come to terms with her body, which, alarmingly, was not returning to normal now he had stopped. Her breasts ached, there was heat in her belly and lower. She felt restless and agitated and—
What did he call me? She opened her eyes on to the bright sunlight and pushed herself up on to her elbows. Theo’s eyes were dark and heavy-lidded and suddenly she did not want to speculate about what he might be feeling.