Page 23 of The Lady Was Lying
He leaned closer, and his face was abruptly flooded by moonlight, allowing her to see his frown clearly. “I’m sorry I upset you. I’ve already explained my reasons for not kissing you. It has nothing to do with you.”
“It has everything to do with me, and I find myself unsatisfied by your reasons.” Tilting her hips and rolling her shoulders back, she displayed her bosom at a slightly more advantageous angle, but just like the night before, he didn’t glance down at the view she offered. Why wasn’t he tempted?
“What if I promised it wouldn’t mean anything?” she asked, glaring at him.
“You can’t promise that.”
He was wrong. “I absolutely can.”
“You can promise it won’t mean anything to you.”
His statement seemed impossible to misinterpret, but that didn’t stop her brain from scrambling to make sense of the insinuation that kissing her would mean something to him. No other man had ever suggested such a thing. As far as she could tell, men kissed whenever and wherever they wanted without the slightest care for whom they were kissing.
Suddenly uncertain, she paused and tried to determine how to respond. She finally settled on, “I won’t demand anything of you afterward. Once we’ve kissed, you can proceed as if nothing happened between us. I’ll even stay out of the way if you visit Emmeline or Jane.”
He ignored the comment about her sister, either not caring that she suggested he might call on Jane specifically or not noticing. “Did it ever occur to you that if I were to kiss you, it might mean something to me?”
There was no way to misinterpret that. “But?—"
“—I’m not kissing you,” he interrupted. “Not today. Not tomorrow. Not ever.”
“Not ever.” His insistence stung. “There is no need to be rude.” She had wanted a reaction, but she hadn’t wanted that reaction.
She’d known that propositioning him a second time was foolish. He’d already made his lack of interest abundantly clear, and it would be better for both of them if she could forget he existed. Unfortunately, her brain didn’t work that way. It liked to focus on the wrong thing at the wrong time.
If she hadn’t seen him again, she might have been able to forget about his rejection without being dramatic. As it was, it seemed likely that he was going to keep appearing in her life. Emmeline was incapable of ignoring family. She’d probably invite him to Greydon Hall when the season was over, and Belinda would be forced to relive the moment in the garden where she’d waited for the press of his lips and felt nothing but the chill of the night air over and over again. It would eat at her soul and claw at her composure.
But not if he kissed her.
If he kissed her, she’d know, and once she knew, she’d be able to move on. She’d never wanted a second kiss in her life. What was the chance she’d want another from him?
Theoretically possible, but unlikely.
“What does kissing mean to you?” she asked cautiously, returning to his cryptic remark from before as she struggled to figure out how she could convince him. When he didn’t respond, she tried to guess. “Are you worried you’ll fall in love with me? Because if you are, you shouldn’t be. I can assure you that it’s never happened before.”
“How would you know whether a bloke has ever fallen in love with you?” He shifted back into the shadows, hiding his expression once again. “You are frighteningly confident when you assure me of things you cannot control.”
“They didn’t fall in love with me,” she growled.
“Not sure I can take your word for it.”
She scoffed. “You can’t be worried you’ll fall in love with me. You don’t even like me.”
“Do you believe a person can fall in love from a single kiss?” he asked, almost casually.
Warning bells rang in her head, but she responded anyway. “Generally, no. But it is possible. My mother, for instance, knew as soon as she kissed my father that he was the one for her.” It was an oversimplification, because as far as Belinda could tell, it was sex that seemed to push her mother into the realm of love, but since a kiss was a prelude to sex, it was close enough.
“How can you be sure it won’t happen to me? Or you?”
She faltered. Honesty would probably go a long way toward convincing him that she wasn’t the sort to fall in love, but she didn’t imagine revealing that kissing left her cold and detached instead of helplessly infatuated would persuade him to change his mind. “I suppose I can’t, but my experience suggests it’s unlikely.” She needed to tread carefully. Give him something he could believe without exposing the whole truth. “Men have the freedom to explore, while unmarried women are expected to wait until they are chosen and…I’m not willing to wait.”
“You want to be chosen?”
“Not at all.” Nothing sounded more dreadful. Why couldn’t she properly explain herself? “I want to be the one to choose. It’s my future. I should get to decide what it looks like.”
Even in the darkness, she could sense the change in him. The way he stiffened and retreated into himself. “And…do you want to be a duchess?”
Duchess was the last thing she wanted to be, and an emphatic denial escaped. “Absolutely not.”
