“The longer you stall giving me those pretty lips, the longer we’ll be stood in the middle of the road, at the mercy of passing carts,” Nye pointed out.
Realizing he was not going to let her off the hook with this, Mina took a deep breath and squeezed her eyes shut, tipping her face up to receive his kiss. He did not immediately take her up on her invitation and for a moment indeed, she thought he would not.
She was just starting to feel foolish when his lips descended on hers, in a kiss such as Will Nye had never bestowed on her before. His lips were soft yet firm against her own, and infinitely sweet as he molded them to her own. After a moment, she felt his hands cup her face almost tenderly and run his thumbs along her cheekbones in what she could only consider to be a caress.
Never in her wildest dreams would she have dreamt that Will Nye would ever touch her thus. When he lifted his face away from hers, he looked almost as surprised by it as she. He stared at her a moment before taking her hand again. “That was the kiss I should have given you atop the carriage that time,” he rasped.
“The carriage?” Mina faltered, feeling her wits had gone a-begging.
“The first time,” he replied abruptly.
Mina remembered the suffocating embrace that had been her first and almost agreed. But if he had kissed her like this back then, she was not sure how she might have reacted. It would have been far too intimate. This kiss, she realized dazedly, was a courting kiss. It was a kiss given to sweethearts.
She traced the part of her lips and reddened. When Nye turned a heated look her way, she could not quite meet his eye. “Have you ever been courting before?” She heard herself ask and wished she had not.
“Courting?” He shook his head.
“You seem rather good at it,” she said, casting him a sidelong look. “As though you might have had some practice.”
“You’re not so bad yourself, love,” he answered with a wink.
“You’ve never had a sweetheart?” she persisted recklessly; her color heightened.
Again, he shook his head. “Don’t forget, I went to Exeter at nineteen. I had no time for walks on the beach or making up to the local lasses.”
Mina narrowed her eyes. “Maybe not, but I expect there were lots of women in Exeter,” she said darkly.
“None that would have expected me to court them,” he answered, frankly. Mina pursed her lips, then decided it was better to focus on the future and not the past. “What of you?” he asked in a low voice. “Did your father never hire a young schoolmaster that caught your fancy?”
Mina turned her head sharply at the odd tone in his voice. Now it was his turn to color slightly and avoid her gaze. “Nay,” he said roughly. “Don’t tell me, for I’ve changed my mind. It would be better not to know.”
“There was no one,” she admitted. “Not a single suitor. My parents did not mingle in society and we saw no-one that was not connected with the school. I did not consider it before, but I fancy the fact my mother was divorced might have been a reason for that.”
He was silent a moment. “Were they happy?” he asked, sounding slightly rusty, as though unaccustomed to such conversation.
“My parents?” He nodded. “They were devoted to one another,” she said simply. “Weren’t yours?”
Nye frowned. “I think they were, in their own way. My father, old Jacob Nye was not much of a talker.”
“He did not wear his heart on his sleeve?” Mina ventured.
Nye hesitated. “Some would say he was a hard man to know, but he raised me as if I was his own. My mother was…” He paused as though searching for the right word. “Very uneven in her moods. She would be happy one minute, laughing and joking with the best of them. Then the next she would be cast down in the sullens, saying her life was ruined and all chance of happiness gone. You never knew which way she would go.”
Mina thought about this. “That must have been difficult for a child to understand.” She remembered the decoration on the screens and wondered if Ellen Nye blamed her son for the fact, she had ended up a publican’s wife and not taking up a life treading the boards. Or did she blame the fourth viscount for casting her off as a mistress with a handsome pay-off? Had her pregnancy been the reason their liaison had ended when it did?
He shrugged. “I soon learned not to seek her out, but to leave it to her whether she wanted me or no.”
The inn was in sight now and Mina made out two figures in the yard stood watching them approach. As they drew closer, she realized it was Gus and Reuben.
“Good evening!” Gus hailed them cheerily with a wave. His pipe smoke puffed over his head in a thick trail of clouds while Reuben looking surly as ever, turned abruptly away as they turned into the courtyard.
“What’s amiss with Reuben?” Nye asked as they drew level to Gus. He kept a firm hold of Mina’s hand in his and she thought Gus’s eyes dwelt there a moment before he answered.
“Amiss? Why nothing,” he said heartily. “What should there be amiss on a fine day such as this?” He nodded at Mina. “Mrs. Nye,” he added affably. She noticed he did not call her Minnie today.
“Mr. Hopkirk, good evening,” she responded as Nye towed her in the direction of the kitchen door.
It opened before reached it and Edna hurried out, drying her hands on a tea towel. “Oh Mrs. Nye,” she said. “Lord Faris is here
