Peter winced. He hated the fact that his friend was right. But it was true. Gossip was impossible to repress. Even amongst so-calledfriends. The ton would as soon stab one in the back as kiss one on the cheek.
Peter turned his gaze to the dark gardens, then back to Edmund.
“Come on. We’d better go and find her.”
“You should leave,” Edmund said.
“I’m not leaving,” he said firmly, unwilling to run away. He wasn’t a coward, and he never had been. He wasn’t about to become one now. “She’s going to be my wife if she will agree. And you look as if you’re about to send her into a corner as if she’s a child.”
Edmund’s eyes narrowed. “Well, she’s behaved like a child tonight.”
“She hasn’t,” Peter countered harshly. “She’s not a child. She’s an adult. And she knows the consequences of not getting married.”
Suddenly, Peter paused.
Had Ophelia caught him?
As soon as the thought crossed his mind, he threw it away for the foolishness that it was.
Ophelia didn’t even know how. She couldn’t even wave a bloody fan without instruction. And that’s not the sort of person she was, in any case.
He had a strong feeling she was likely the most honorable person of his acquaintance.
It washewho was the one who had experience, who had put them in this position. It was he who had forsaken honor for temptation. The temptation of that feeling she had awoken him. Of the promise of perfection. Of ease. Of something better than he’d ever known.
Perhaps he would be saving Ophelia from a fate of spinsterhood. Perhaps he’d be able to live with himself because of that. And perhaps…. Perhaps, he’d once again be able to find that feeling they’d shared in Hatchards, and again when they’d been alone in the starlight.
Perhaps this wasn’t the end of the world after all.
Chapter 7
Ophelia marched across the dewy grass, and she threw her fan as far as she could into the carefully manicured garden. It clattered and bounced on the ground.
“Men,” she shouted at the shrubberies.
What devils, she thought to herself.
Did they think they could control everyone’s lives? Her life? All ladies’ lives? Apparently, they did, and now she was in a position in which she was going to have to marry Peter. Except she didn’t wish to force him into that position. This had not been her intention. Her intention had been to captivate not to capture.
And this was the most horrific outcome of the dratted book. Oh, how she wished she’d never found it. She wished she’d left it in the closet and hadn’t opened the pages. She wished she had not scanned those words and decided to try their instructions on Peter.
A thought struck her as she charged across the dark garden. Had she, in her heart of hearts, assumed he would be able to resist her attempts at beguiling him? Is that why she thought to try it onhim? Because she knew that a beautiful man like Peter, no matter what, would be able to resist her?
Had she been so dedicated to being a wallflower and spinster that she had attempted to seduce a man who wasn’t seducible?
Except shehadseduced him. Hadn’t she? He’d kissed her.
It had been no dream, even if she had dreamed it a hundred times long ago when girlish thoughts of love had still filled her head. Before the reality of being a wallflower had taken root.
There had been no question of the fact that whatever she’d done with that fan at his instruction, whatever had occurred from their conversation this morning to the one this evening, had caused him to kiss her.
And it had been no small kiss. No brief, dry brushing of lips.
Oh no, it had been bliss.
It had been one of pleasure, and passion, and a world of awakening. That kiss had done things to her heart and soul she had not known possible. She did not care if it sounded like a romantic cliché from one of her books. It was true. In that moment, she’d felt free, alive, soaring.
And, blast, she wanted more of it.