The Courtship

She had the sense he was toying with her, trying to verbally back her into some corner where her dignity and her wits could not join her. Before common sense or some equally inconvenient virtue could stop her, Esther pushed him back so he sat on the headstone, and situated herself with a knee on either side of his hips—a somewhat athletic undertaking, given her riding skirts.

“Enough talk, Percival Windham.” She fisted a hand in the hair at his nape. “I’m tired of talk, and you promised, and I will not be put off by your lectures and interrogations. All day long I step and fetch and smile and pretend, and just this once, I want somebody to attend me. The other girls know to make the men toady to them, but all I get is—”

He kissed her, a fleeting press of warm, soft lips to her mouth. “Do hush, love. You’ll bring Tony with the grooms, and at the very least, for such kisses as you describe, we deserve privacy.”

Esther felt his arm encircle her waist, snugging her to his larger frame, and then a series of little tugs to her scalp.

“You are destroying my coiffure, Percival. Do you know how long I must work to arrange a coronet just so?”

“About five minutes, I’d guess. The rosebuds are a nice touch, but I want to see how long your braid is.”

Esther dropped her forehead to his shoulder and let him have his way with her hair. Maybe he thought that little nothing of a buss qualified as a kiss; maybe he kissed ladies only with their hair in complete disarray. “This cannot have anything to do with kissing lessons.”

“Tell me about your day, Esther. What did you have for breakfast?”

Her braid came slithering down her shoulders to rest along her spine, a kind of hair sigh to go with the soul weariness weighting her limbs and the frustration weighting her heart. More questions, though this question she could answer. “I like chocolate first thing in the morning, and warm scones with butter and strawberry jam.”

Something brushed her ear—his nose? “My mother prefers strawberry jam. Do you like raisins on your scones?”

“I do not. They taste foul when they burn. You are plundering my hair.”

“Just loosening a few pins.”

She cuddled closer, purely enjoying the feel of his hands in her hair. “I haven’t a lady’s maid, though Matilda Pott’s maid is looking after my clothes.”

“Hah. You’re helping her look after Lady Pott’s gowns. You smell even better up close, Esther Himmelfarb. You taste good, too.”

His tongue, soft, damp, and unhurried, had slipped along the place where her neck and shoulder joined. The sensation was both warm and shivery. “Do that again.”

“As my lady wishes.” He lingered over it this time, caressing her flesh with his tongue. It wasn’t kissing exactly; it was more than kissing and made her want to taste him in return.

“Your hair is like moon glow in my hands. I want to see it spread over a pillow by candlelight.” He spoke very softly, the words tickling her ear, until he closed his mouth around her earlobe. “I want to see you naked, but for this glorious, silky hair, Esther, and a smile of welcome for me.”

This was love talk, silly nonsense men concocted to make ladies want to shed their clothes—and it was working. Esther squirmed and realized that Percival Windham’s talk was having an effect on certain parts of his anatomy as well.

How… lovely. How intriguing. “What else?”

He laughed quietly. “Now who has the inconvenient questions? I want to make love to you, of course, endlessly, all night, until you are limp with pleasure and neither of us can move.”

Esther lifted her face from his shoulder, needing to see his eyes. “All I sought were kisses, Percival. You need not flatter and dissemble.”

His expression in the shadow of the angel’s wings was hard to read, but he wasn’t smiling. “Give me your hand, love.”

She obliged, and he brought their joined hands down between their bodies.

“Feel that. A man can’t fake desire. A kiss between a man and a woman should always have a little desire in it.”

If this thick column of flesh was his idea of a little desire… Esther withdrew her hand and felt her cheeks flush. “You haven’t even kissed me yet.”

“Nor shall I.”

For a devastated instant, she thought he was reneging, except his hand fisted on her braid, gently but implacably, and Esther understood in the next second what he was about.

He was hers to kiss. Here in this small, secluded graveyard, peace filling the air and cherubs and angels looking on with eternal smiles, Lord Percival Windham was hers.

“Esther?”

Not so casual now, and how she loved hearing her name on his lips. “I’m thinking.”

Marveling at the possibilities. She made him wait for a few heady moments while she reveled in the feel of his hair in her hands, while she traced the shape of his ear with her nose, and she settled herself on the ridge of his erection. The luxury of time he gave her was a sumptuous gift, one she indulged in shamelessly.

“How does it feel when I do this?” She shifted her weight on him minutely, bringing on all manner of pleasurable sensations.

“It does not hurt. Will you kiss me, Esther?”

There was a “but” in his it-does-not-hurt, one Esther could not fathom. She hitched closer and wished she were in her nightclothes, or in nothing at all.

“Esther, please…”

Ah, the glory of hearing that hoarse, pleading whisper, of feeling it against her bare skin. Gently, slowly, Esther settled her mouth on his, treasuring everything about the moment.

The sound of their clothing rustled when she shifted, and his arm tightened around her.

The feel of his clean-shaven cheek against her palm as she cradled his jaw.

The scrape of his riding boots as he spread his legs and closed his fingers in her hair.

The sweet lemony taste of his tongue seaming her lips.

He keeps lemon drops in his snuffbox.

For long, long moments, that was Esther’s last coherent thought. She became nothing more than the female half of a passionate, unforgettable, indescribable, profound kiss, and how long she existed in that blissful state she could not have said, though for the duration of their kiss, Percival Windham was both storm and refuge, both the inspiration for her desire and the frustration of it.

When Esther at last subsided against his shoulder, she was panting and wishing her clothing to Hades—she was also wishing his clothing to Hades—and enjoying the feel of his hand stroking slowly, slowly over her hair.

“Can you describe that kiss, Esther Himmelfarb? I surely cannot.” There was wonder in his voice, awe even.

“My first kiss?” A modest description, also a confession of sorts. She wanted him never to stop touching her hair in that soothing caress and yet, as long as he touched her in that way, she would have no means of reassembling her scattered wits.

“Our third kiss, my love.”

“Fourth, if we’re to be precise.”

“Third—the little nothing before was just the appetizer. Let me hold you.”

He was counting their kisses. Esther hoarded up that realization and did indeed let him hold her, and hold her, and hold her. At some point, he shifted and rose with her cradled against his chest, and still she did not stir. He carried her—her, Esther Himmelfarb, whom the dainty, petite Charlotte had described as Amazonian—down the walkway to the wooden bench, then took a seat directly beside her.

Esther retrieved her riding glove from a skirt pocket and slipped it on, the better to control the impulse to touch Percival Windham’s hair, to cradle his palm once more against her cheek.

When Anthony came up the walk, whistling an up-tempo version of “God Save the King,” Esther was still