Page 58 of The Model Debutante
‘Very well.’
Tallie gasped. ‘Seriously? I never thought you would agree.’
‘I have absolutely no intention of losing, so I can afford to be generous. Of course, if you want such a rig, you only have to marry me and you can have one anyway.’
‘You are absolutely the most infuriating man I haveevercome across.’ Tallie reached behind her for the doorknob. ‘Now, are you going to let me out of here?’
‘Once we have sealed the bet,’ he said and took her in his arms. His mouth silenced her protests and he made not the slightest attempt to restrain her, simply allowing the drugging, languorous, sensual slide of his mouth over hers and the insidious caress of his fingers on her throat and shoulder to hold her to him.
Tallie moaned softly and let her body mould to his for a long, shuddering moment. Her lips parted and his tongue slid between them, so gently, so subtly that before she knew what she was doing her own tongue had begun to caress his in turn. He left her mouth and began to nibble the taut tendons of her neck. The blood was roaring in her ears so loudly that she hardly heard the question at first, then he repeated it, murmuring it as his lips teased and tormented the soft skin behind the curl of her ear.
‘Marry me, Tallie.’
Tell me you love me Nick, say it. Then I will marry you. Tell me…
‘You stir my blood, Tallie. Marry me.’
Not enough. Oh I want you too…but it is not enough.
‘No.’ Tallie pushed him away with both palms flat on his chest. ‘No, and I am not going to kiss you again.’
Nick stepped back, his own hands raised in the fencer’s gesture of surrender. ‘I promise not to try – for tonight at least.’
Tallie caught a glimpse of herself in the mirror which hung on the opposite wall. ‘Oh, for goodness sake, just look at me!’
‘I am,’ Nick drawled. ‘You look delightfully tousled and itprovokes the most terrible desire in me to tousle you even more.’
‘Well you can’t,’ she retorted crisply, more to suppress her own longing to be back in his arms than out of any real fear that he would snatch her into them. She smoothed her hair, rescued some pins which were hanging on by their very tips, re-fastened the roses which her maid had tucked into the knot at the nape of her neck and surveyed herself critically, managing not to catch Nick’s amused eye as he watched her. ‘It will have to do. Now, how are we going to get out of here unseen?’
‘Through the window?’
‘You certainly deserve to.’ Tallie looked around the edge of the door and saw with relief that a particularly noisy and energetic country dance was in progress with most of the onlookers’ attention focussed on the dance floor. She slipped out and wove her way through the chairs and pillars until she had put a respectable distance between herself and the retiring room door.
‘Cousin Tallie, may ask you something?’
It was William, appearing at her side as though by magic. Tallie blinked at him, still too shaken by what had just taken place to focus properly. ‘William? Not you as well? It is too much.’
Chapter Twenty
Nicholas sauntered casually out of the retiring room just in time to see Tallie turn from William, fumble in her reticule for her handkerchief and disappear into the sitting room which had been set aside for ladies.
He laid a none-too-gentle hand on his cousin’s shoulder. ‘And just what have you said to Tallie to upset her?’
‘Damned if I know,’ William retorted defensively. ‘All I said was that there was something I wanted to ask her and she said,Not you as well, it is too much,or some such nonsense. Then her eyes filled up with tears and off she bolted.’ He looked aggrieved. ‘I only wanted to ask her to dance. I know I’m not that good a dancer, but no-one has ever burst into tears before when I asked them.’
Nick eyed the firmly-closed leaves of the sitting-out room door, a faint and uncharacteristic line forming between his brows. ‘I suspect she thought you were about to propose.’
‘Propose? Propose what?’ William crooked a finger at a passing waiter, secured a glass of champagne then choked on the first sip. ‘Notmarriage?’
‘Hmm.’ Was that what Tallie thought? That there was a family plot for one of them to marry her because she had been compromised and if she did not marry him, then his cousin would step into the breach?
He regarded William who was coughing indignantly and administered a sharp slap on the back. ‘Stop that racket. Is it so surprising? I’ve been dinning into her the fact that she has been compromised and will have to marry someone.’
‘Well, why isn’t she marrying you?’ William enquired in a whisper, casting a hasty glance round to see if anyone had noticed their conversation. ‘You compromised her. And she’s inlove with you.’
‘What?’ Nick thundered, fortunately under cover of the opening chords of a country dance, then dropped his voice hastily. ‘Of course she isn’t. If she were, she wouldn’t have turned me down.’ Or given me such an effective summing up of my thoroughly unsatisfactory character, he thought grimly. His mind flinched at the memory of her bitingly-expressed opinions – cold, controlling, aloof, amused at the antics of lesser mortals. Apparently pleasant enough to kiss.
William gave an unmannerly snort of disbelief. ‘The pair of you are going about like April and May for goodness sake.’ Nick regarded him incredulously. ‘Very well, not quite like that I suppose, but one can feel it in the air when the two of you are together. A certain something.’
