Besides, what could a little flirtation hurt? Wasn’t this what country house parties were for? He swept her a bow, eyes locked with hers, his free hand held to his still smarting ribs in theatrical display.
‘She that makes me sin awards me pain.’
The lady cocked her head, sparrow-like. The corners of her lips betrayed her, quirking up into the slightest of smiles.
Oh yes, he had her.
She dropped him a rather frosty curtsy, barely more than a dip of the knees accompanied by the slightest inclination of her head. ‘Nothing emboldens sin so much as mercy, and so sir, I shall show you none.’
Gabriel’s smile widened. Beautiful, well read, and witty? What were the odds? ‘And for this sin there is no remedy—much like the wound you’ve done me, my fair Daphne.’
Her brows drew together as she considered him, the winged shape flattening. She crossed her arms, breasts rising another degree like an incoming tide. She really did look familiar. Why couldn’t he remember? How could he have forgotten such a woman?
Gabriel took one small step to the right, placing himself between her and the courtyard’s only exit. Her gaze left his, darted over his shoulder and back again. His strategy hadn’t escaped her notice. Her moment of panic had dissipated, leaving her calm, and—he grinned again—condescending in a queenly way.
She stared him down, batting her eyes at him the way his cousin did when she thought him deliberately obtuse. ‘Tis a sin to flatter, sir, and you’d do well to remember your Greek; Apollo lost his nymph.’
Gabriel gave a bark of laughter, startling the thrushes in the hedge into flight. They escaped in a loud, chattering swarm, spiraling upwards and away.
‘The sun god must have been a bit slow, but we were quoting Shakespeare, not the classics, let us return to whence we came…’ He smiled his most beguiling smile, the one he used to set young ladies fluttering, to scandalize dowagers. The one that always made his cousin rap him with her fan. He took a deliberate step towards the lady in the monstrous hat. She held her ground, merely raking her glance up and down him appraisingly. ‘Some rise by sin, and some by virtue fall.’
‘Man-like it is to fall into sin, Fiend-like to dwell therein.’
‘That’s not Shakespeare.’ His smile widened. It was beyond his control. He was going to have to kiss her. There was simply no help for it. ‘You’re wandering afield again.’
‘It’s from a German poet, but apt all the same.’
‘Now, now. Let’s stick to our parameters…’ He took another step towards her, getting within arms-length. ‘Repent you, fair one, of the sin you carry.’
‘The sin I carry?’ One arched brow rose. ‘I thought we were speaking of your sin, sir?’
‘My sin? Love is my sin.’
She snorted.
There was no other word for it. It wasn’t a giggle; couldn’t even vaguely be construed a titter. It was a snort, and a rather derisive one at that. Gabriel closed the last step between them, casting his hat aside as he did so. His hands closed on crisply glazed cotton, and for the second time that day, he pulled her into his arms.
He leaned in, ducking his head beneath the brim of her hat, so close her curls tickled his face, fine hairs catching in the slight burr of his cheek. ‘Shall we continue in this sin?’
‘Now who’s wandering?’ One side of her mouth crinkled upwards. A dimple winked in her cheek, un-abashed and unintimidated. ‘Unless I’m mistaken, that’s biblical. Better to have said, but sin had his reward.’
Mirth flooded through him, warming him from the inside out, making him want to taste her even more. He tipped back her hat. ‘Shall I wander further? To sin in secret is no sin at all.’
He lowered his head and captured her lips with his own. He kissed her softly, teasingly. Testing the waters. Giving her every chance to pull away, to slap him…to kiss him back.
She did none of them. She just stood there, cool and stiff as the laurel tree Apollo’s nymph had become.
After a moment she sighed, ennui oozing from every pore, hands trapped limply against his chest. If only he could pretend such disaffection. She was soft and rounded in all the right places. High breasts full above a small waist, what he was sure would prove to be a perfectly heart-shaped bottom hidden beneath layers of petticoats held out by pads. She smelt ever so faintly of soap and rose water. Not the musky ambergris that opera dancers and paphians always seemed to be drenched in, but something that spoke of sunlight, of practicality…of virtue.
He ran the tip of his tongue along her lower lip, trying to provoke a response. No lady had a right to look as she did and smell of virtue. She pressed closer, sliding her arms around his neck, her body softening against his in unmistakable capitulation. He chuckled and adjusted his grip, sliding one hand down to press her hips against his.
With a deceptive twist of her body she stomped down on his instep, hard enough to make his eyes water.
He yelped and let go of her. She stepped back, her gaze scathing, her lips curled into a mocking little smile. She raised her chin another notch, and looking altogether pleased with herself, swept past him as composed as a dowager at court. She didn’t even have the decency to hurry.
Gabriel gathered up his hat and the basket she’d abandoned in her wake and limped back towards the house, smiling all the while at the temerity of his garden nymph. George’s house party was going to be amusing on several counts, and the presence of his assailant promised to contribute mightily to his enjoyment of the next fortnight.
Still swinging the basket in one hand Gabriel let himself into the house via the tall window doors that had been left wide-open to capture the sea breeze.
