“That depends on how tough you’re feeling today,” Percy teased. “Edmund and I used to swim there during every school holiday, regardless of the weather. We even dared each other to swim when it was snowing.”
Percy sounded so proud of himself that Edmund and Diana couldn’t help smiling, catching one another’s eye as they did so and holding that gaze for a few seconds longer than they needed to.
Every time Edmund looked at Diana now, he couldn’t help remembering how it had felt to explore her softly seeking mouth with his own. He could still visualize the pink flush on her cheeks as she looked up at him with desirous eyes and slightly parted lips.
Then, there was the memory of the way she had gasped softly and said “oh,” between kisses. That came back to haunt him in his bedchamber at night, sparking fantasies about what sounds she would make if he unfastened her bodice and covered her bare skin in kisses.
Or showed her some of the other slow, skilled, and varied ways in which he knew how to use his tongue for a woman’s pleasure…
“Will you be joining us today, Lady Diana?” Jacob asked, as she remained silent.
“Not if you’re swimming, no!” She laughed at the idea, which he clearly hadn’t thought through. “None of you are schoolboys anymore.”
“I won’t be swimming,” Edmund said immediately. “We can take a walk while these two hardy souls are stripped and shivering in the water. Come and keep me company.”
As an old family friend, and with her brother nearby, it was an entirely proper suggestion, but he still didn’t know what she might make of it. When Diana looked at him now across the dining table, considering his suggestion, he was glad that it was desire he saw in her eyes rather than shyness or embarrassment.
Percy and Jacob could have no idea how eagerly he awaited her answer.
“Yes, I’d like that,” Diana said and smiled at him again.
ChapterSeven
“Do you still want to swim then, Wycliff?” Percy asked while lolling lazily in the early spring sunshine at the lakeside. “I could race you to the other side.”
Jacob laughed.
“Lady Diana won the stone skipping contest, Edmund won the guessing game, and I won at charades. You know your lake better than I do and you just want your chance to win something now.”
“That’s true. But I also fear that I ate far too much food an hour ago and will probably sink like a stone, so I’d best not go into the water alone.”
“Race or rescue, eh? Why not…”
“I think that’s our cue to take a walk,” Edmund said, looking up at Diana. She had been sitting with her back against a willow tree and her bonnet cast aside on the ground while Edmund lay at her feet, absently making a daisy chain. Now, he knelt up and placed the flowery crown on her curly blonde head before standing and offering her his hand to rise. She accepted it with a smile.
On her feet, Diana glanced at her discarded hat.
“Leave it,” Edmund urged impulsively. “Please. You won’t need it if we walk through the woods here, will you?”
In truth, she looked so beautiful with the flowers decking her hair and the breeze lightly lifting her curls that putting on the hat seemed a travesty. But he couldn’t tell her that here in front of her brother and his friend.
“Enjoy your swim!” Diana called to Percy and Jacob, who had already stripped off their shoes and jackets. Taking Edmund’s offered arm, she then gave him a thrilling secretive smile as they walked together down the woodland path.
“You look like a dryad, a mythical tree nymph,” he told her when they were alone. “The most beautiful nymph in the forest.”
“If we’re in a world where I am a nymph, does that make you a faun or a satyr?” She laughed, dappled in sunlight and pink with fresh air.
“Whom would you prefer?” Edmund asked. “One is safe and the other more exciting.”
“But you have both of those qualities,” she answered, her hand pressing on his arm.
“I suppose that makes me an ordinary human hero then, simply bewitched by the beauty of the woodlands.”
“A hero coming to rescue me, perhaps…” she said wistfully, her smile fading. Edmund guessed that she was thinking of her impending marriage. Did she want to be rescued? Or was this mild flirtation with him merely a respite from a bitter duty she was determined to accept?
They were some distance from the lake now. Edmund stopped walking and took Diana carefully and deliberately into his arms, stroking her flower-crowned hair. Her arms slid quite naturally around his waist, and her face pressed against his chest.
“What do you want from me, Diana?” he asked her. When she raised her face and looked at him with those determined but vulnerable hazel eyes, her appeal was almost irresistible.