She stopped, her hands linked behind his neck. “Are you telling me you cannot control yourself?”
“I’m afraid that’s true. I am but a man.”
“Thank God,” she said enthusiastically, making him laugh.
Making him want to kiss her all over again.
When his mouth crushed down on hers, she tasted of triumph. The kiss sang through his veins. They approached the redbrick summerhouse, moving crablike along the path until they bumped up against an arched oak door.
Kit reached blindly for the latch. “Are you sure?”
“Please.” She fumbled with the knot in his cravat—and Rose was not a fumbler. “You cannot make me wait any longer.”
Though he burned for her, he felt more than a little ambivalent. He’d given his word to Lady Trentingham. “Your mother will be furious.”
“Mum will never know.” Having managed to untie the lace-edged fabric, she kissed the little hollow beneath his Adam’s apple, making his heart thump oddly in his chest. “Besides, she gave birth to Violet barely six months after her wedding day.” Her words vibrated against his throat. “She doesn’t believe in waiting for marriage.”
“Oh, I think she does. She said—”
“What?” She straightened, alarm widening her eyes. “You’ve talked to her about this?”
Kit silently cursed himself for a fool. Her mother had warned him not to tell. “Nothing. Just something I overheard her saying, at court, I believe, that made me think—”
“We’re betrothed now. Everything is different.”
“I have yet to talk to your fath—”
“It’s my own decision, remember?” Reaching around him to open the door, she eagerly pushed him inside and slammed it behind them. “Kiss me, Kit.”
It wasn’t a request he could deny.
The summerhouse was cool and dim, her mouth warm and welcoming. Her intoxicating scent seemed to wrap around him, filling his head, making his throat close almost painfully. His hands found the lacing down the back of her gown, and as he loosened it, baring the silky skin beneath, it hit him with the force of a hammer striking a nail.
Rose was going to be his…for all time.
Despondency had held him in thrall these past days, but now it simply melted away as his heart took flight. The loss of the Deputy Surveyor post seemed insignificant next to the joy of winning Rose. Perhaps he’d never be a titled man, but love, it suddenly seemed, was much more important.
Devil take it if his sister hadn’t been right all along.
Kit’s hands smoothed warm down Rose’s bared back, and she closed her eyes and leaned into him. His kiss was almost desperately tender, and she felt it in her skin, a tight tingling, in her stomach, a melting sweetness, in her heart, an erratic rhythm that sent her blood racing through her veins.
This was right—so right she couldn’t imagine what had taken her so long to realize he was meant to be hers. She should have known that from the first time they’d touched, from that first startling kiss, from the way he made her feel things no other man ever had.
He pushed her gown off one shoulder, his lips searing a path on the newly bared skin. Her knees weakened, and she threaded her fingers into his hair. “Kit,” she murmured, “I love you.”
His head shot up and his eyes bore into hers, that look he had that made her wonder if he could see right into her. She felt the answering flutter in her stomach, the gathering heat lower down.
And her mother opened the door.
Rose whirled around, hiding her bare back, jerking her gown back onto her shoulder. “Mum. I’ve asked Kit to marry me.”
“Oh my,” Chrystabel breathed, apparently not noticing her state of undress. Her eyes grew suspiciously shiny. “You’re supposed to let the man propose.”
“Question Convention,” Kit quoted with a shrug. He moved closer, trailing a finger down Rose’s spine where her mother couldn’t see it.
It took all she had not to squirm with delight. “He did ask me first, but I was stupid and refused him. After the wedding, we’re taking a trip to Italy.”
Kit’s hand stilled. “We are?”
“And France. Everywhere there are beautiful buildings. I have my inheritance—”
“I can afford to travel. Especially now,” he added dryly, “without the Deputy Surveyor post to tie me.”
She breezed over that. “But first, we’ll go to the queen’s birthday celebration at Whitehall. I wish to show the courtiers the sort of man it takes to win me.”
He laughed, a joyous sound that rippled right through her. “She’s planning my life,” he told her mother.
“Get used to it,” Mum said.
SIXTY-TWO
“SIX MONTHS,” Chrystabel said. “You’re my last daughter. This is my last chance to throw a wedding that will be talked about for years.”
Rose shook her head. “Two weeks. Violet and Lily only had to wait two weeks for their weddings.”
Her mother made a big show of sighing. “Three months.”
“I want to be married before the queen’s birthday,” Rose insisted. “One month.”
“Don’t I get a say in this?” Kit asked. “I vote for tomorrow.”
One month it was, and Rose felt victorious.
But her mouth dropped open at what Chrystabel said next. “Kit, I know you’ll be working here occasionally over the next weeks, but I think it would be best for you to go home to Windsor in the evenings. There will be no eight-month babies, understand?”
“Mum!” Rose exclaimed.
Kit just slowly turned red.
Rose recovered first. “Kit would never even think of compromising me.”
“Oh, yes?” Her mother lifted her chin. “Then perhaps the two of you aren’t meant for each other.”
With that, she turned on her elegant high heels and left. “Five minutes,” she called over her shoulder. “I’m sending for your sisters and their families—we’ll have a celebration supper.”
“Five minutes,” Rose said the moment her mother was out of earshot. “Hurry.”
“We cannot finish this in five minutes. Not if I’m to be able to face myself in the mirror afterwards.” Kit took her by the shoulders and turned her around to refasten her gown. “Your first time should be slow and special.”
“Are you sure?” Rose asked.
“I’m
